The sound that followed was not thunder.
And yet it rolled through the ballroom like a stormfront gathering at the edge of something sacred—hollow and sharp and utterly final. A breath had not yet finished crossing the lips of a hundred wide-eyed students when the gilded double doors at the far end of the ballroom groaned open, slower than seemed necessary, revealing nothing but shadow for a heartbeat too long.
Then he stepped through it.
Atlas Blackwood.
He did not hurry. He did not smile. He did not pause.
He walked with the kind of silence that made noise irrelevant, like the entire room had forgotten its song simply to watch him cross a threshold. He was dressed in deep maroon—not red, not burgundy, but a blood-rich shade so dark it swallowed light and returned only consequence. T
