In the armory corridor, Mara had been right about the Tier 2.
It came through the armory breach eight minutes after Bright had been told about it, and it came the way Tier 2s always came in confined spaces — too large, somehow, too present, the ambient soul force it displaced creating that specific pressure-change that experienced Shroud runners learned to read as get out or fight now, there is no third option.
The corridor outside the armory was not empty. It had four students in it — third-years, combat-track, who had come for emergency supplies and found the supplies already scattered and the breach already open and had the presence of mind to form up at the corridor's narrowest point with whatever they'd grabbed from the floor.
