The return to the Dark Knight Academy was not gentle.
One moment, the second-year students were scattered across Nalim, each of them waking, resting, hiding, walking, fighting, or simply enduring whatever final moments the realm had chosen to give them. The next, blue teleportation Myst swallowed all one hundred of them at once and deposited them inside the Eastern Grand Hall, right back where the assessment had begun seven days ago.
The grand hall looked exactly the same as it had before they left, but the students did not.
All across the wide stone floor, second years appeared in flashes of fading blue light, and almost immediately, the hall filled with heavy breaths, low groans, startled curses, and the sound of bodies nearly giving out now that they were no longer standing inside Nalim. Some students landed on their feet and managed to remain upright through sheer pride.
