They came in pairs.
Not cadets—officials. Dressed in robes that shimmered with sigil threads and diplomatic immunity. A sudden inspection, summoned by the Echo Summit to "evaluate resonance trajectory alignment" of the First Chorus.
Everyone knew what that meant.
Someone was watching too closely.
"Line up," barked Instructor Zara "Crimson Ink," lips tight, jaw clenched. "You are not being tried. You are being measured. Look steady. Sound silent."
The First Chorus obeyed.
Izel's glyph scroll was inert against her hip, but she felt it tremble faintly—some part of her sensing glyph-logic unraveling from nearby frequencies. Something ancient stirred at the edges of her mind again. She pressed her palm against her thigh to ground herself.
Across the line, Amara al-Rashid stood like a carved column. Head high. Eyes locked forward.
One of the inspectors—the man with the braided silver beard—stopped before her.
"You are the daughter of the al-Rashid calligraphers?" he asked, voice neutral.
She gave him a single nod.
"The only one?" he added, as if confirming something listed on a sealed tablet.
A pause.
"I am the only one admitted," she replied, barely more than a whisper.
He stared a second too long. Then moved on.
Kai caught the flicker of tension in her brush hand. The ink vial at her belt had cracked slightly—thin black droplets seeping onto her palm.
No one commented.
Later, in the dorm commons, the team sat in the familiar silence of emotional debris.
"They weren't testing power," Jian said finally, blade across his lap, cloth in hand. "They were testing obedience."
"No," said Sarika, her voice barely audible beneath the sound of evaporating water. "They were trying to see what cracks already existed."
Kai stood, pacing. "You mean between us?"
"No," said Izel. "In us."
Amara said nothing.
She sat at the window, ink-stained fingers curled around a tightly rolled scroll. Sealed in red. The script on its edge flickered—her family's crest.
She hadn't opened it.
She wasn't sure if she ever would.