The break ended, and Soren came back through the academy gates carrying one bag and one word.
Soon.
It had followed him the whole break, through the market mornings and the pack's borrowed coast week and Maren's campaign to teach Mona swimming, which had ended in a hole dug to water and everyone conceding the mole had technically swum.
The word didn't repeat.
The dream didn't return.
It just sat where it had been set, and he'd stopped waiting for it to explain itself and started waiting for it to be due.
The gates were the same gates.
Nothing else was.
◆◆◆◆
The first-years saw him before he'd cleared the courtyard.
He watched it move through them, the turn, the lean, the word passed mouth to mouth, that's him, that's the class, and a boy with a new uniform and an old scanner actually raised the scanner before his friend slapped it down.
Soren walked through the middle of all of it with his bag on his shoulder and his face bored.
