On my walk to the academy the next morning, I ran into a huge crowd of people blocking the way to the gates. I paused at the edge of the group, wondering what had caused the commotion. Ahead, on one of the academy's walls, I could glimpse something that I knew hadn't been there before. Not blood, but . . . writing.
Across the side wall, visible to the roads of the academic district, uneven letters stood out in bright red paint. And there, someone had written, You're suffocating them.
Anger surged in me. What right did anyone have to deface the walls of my academy? And how did the academy system suffocate us? It had done the exact opposite for me and my classmates. It had enabled us. It had liberated us. Not once had it tried to suffocate us.
Who had done this? There was no doubt in my m
