Two days passed after the second years returned from Nalim, and by the end of the second day, the academy had begun to feel alive in a way it had not during the assessments.
The first years had already returned from Vlardia days before the second years, and most of them had spent their own recovery time whispering about what they had endured, comparing injuries, laughing at their own mistakes, and pretending they were far more composed than they actually had been.
When the second years returned from Nalim looking half-dead and carrying the kind of exhaustion that made even walking through the halls seem like a task, the first years quickly understood that their three-day assessment had been mild compared to whatever nightmare the second years had survived.
