—Natasha's POV—
The Lyceum was the ossified heart of Ashbourne University. It was not a building for discourse, but for veneration—a towering Gothic monument to legacy, where the air itself felt pressed between the pages of ancient, unyielding law.
Its rib-vaulted ceiling vanished into perpetual shadow, and the walls were a gallery of judgment: marble busts of long-dead warrior-scholars stared down with blank, sightless eyes, their frozen expressions seeming to disapprove of anything as fleeting as the present moment.
The stained glass windows showed stories of fights and promises. They were colored like the sky when the sun goes down all purple and blue. This made the floor look really weird with shadows that looked like they were moving on their own. The room was made to make people
