The air inside the Headmaster’s office was no longer the sterile, climate-controlled environment of an elite academic institution. It had become a pressurized crucible, thick with the scent of charred mahogany, expensive tea, and the overwhelming, floral-and-ozone perfume of high-tier Spirit Power.
The words that had just fallen from Leo Shaw’s lips were so saccharine, so shamelessly poetic, and so utterly out of place in a room filled with the nation’s most hardened military and academic elite that the world seemed to tilt on its axis. Quinn Wainright, the Senior Proctor of the Azure Dragon Academy, felt a literal chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. His skin erupted in a wave of prickling goosebumps, and he felt a phantom ache in his teeth, as if he had
