Morena stepped into the hallway, leaving behind the anxious muttering of other people, the slumped shoulders, and the collective dread that fell over the room the moment Varra mentioned the assignment.
A week was the deadline.
For most of them, that might as well have been a death sentence.
But for Morena, it was simply time she now had to allocate properly; while she had already sensed elemental energy, she wanted to make some progress in meditation by then.
She walked steadily, her mind already shifting to what mattered. Meditation would take up the bulk of her time, but she needed more than brute repetition. If she wanted to get ahead, if she wanted to surpass the ones who started with more than her, she needed information.
The AI was her strongest tool; it was the only really useful thing she had in this life, and she couldn't waste it.
