The silence that followed Leo Shaw’s declaration was not merely a lack of sound; it was a physical weight, a pressurized vacuum that seemed to suck the very oxygen out of the Headmaster’s office.
Quinn Wainright, the Senior Proctor from the Azure Dragon Academy, stared at Leo as if the boy had suddenly sprouted a second head made of Mutated Flora. His thin, wire-framed glasses had slipped to the very tip of his nose, and the delicate porcelain teacup in his hand was trembling so violently that the Spirit Air-infused liquid inside was beginning to slosh over the rim.
Gordon Jordan, the battle-hardened Colonel from the Military Martial Academy, was in a similar state of paralysis. His hand, which had been reaching for a folder of top-secret deployment maps, was frozen mid-air. His face, no
