Arwen's POV
The shadow wraiths come through the east courtyard c***k like smoke finding a gap under a door.
Not all at once. In sequence, each one pulling itself through the breach with the specific deliberate movement of things that do not need to hurry because hurrying is for creatures that can be stopped. They are not solid. They are not quite transparent either. They exist in the register between those things, visible enough to track and resistant enough to matter, and the moment the first one clears the breach the academy's alarm system activates at a frequency I feel in my back teeth.
The student body responds the way a school responds to something it has been told about in theory and is now encountering in practice. Badly, then better.
The first thirty seconds are pure chaos.
S
