Klaen first noticed them from the upper observation terrace.
They moved along the valley road in disciplined intervals—without banners and without unnecessary display. Armor reflected the light cleanly, unmarred by ornamentation. Not ceremonial. Operational.
Knights of the Middle Continent.
They did not advance toward the academy.
They bypassed it.
Their direction was unmistakable: northward toward the capital of Caladan.
Klaen rested his hands against the cold stone parapet and observed without projecting presence. Distance mattered. Not physically—informationally. The knights were performing reconnaissance, not conquest. Their formations were loose enough to adapt, tight enough to respond instantly.
If his memory did not fail him, he had read about them before.
Not in tactical manuals, but in pathway treatises.
The Middle Continent did not favor breadth of magic. It favored specialization.
Lunal.
Property attribution at scale.
They did not cast outward spells. They modified themselves.
Strength reinforced at the skeletal level. Reflex sharpened by localized acceleration fields. Weapons granted transient attributes—heat without flame, force without mass, lightning without discharge.
Effects were embedded, not released.
A knight did not throw fire.
A knight became the condition under which fire occurred.
That was why they were feared.
Lunal allowed persistence. A construct held within the body was more stable than one projected into open space. Less expressive, but harder to disrupt. Counter-grammar was difficult when the spell was not externalized.
Klaen watched as one of the knights halted briefly, crouched, and pressed a gauntleted hand to the ground. The gesture was minimal.
A faint shimmer passed through the earth beneath him—an evaluative pulse, not a probe. Information gathered without disturbance.
They're efficient , klaen thought.
They resumed movement almost immediately.
No one from the academy intervened.
That absence was intentional.
Klaen exhaled and stepped back from the parapet. Observation was permitted. Engagement was not.
For now.
...
Instructor Arden stood at the narrow window of his office, hands clasped behind his back.
He had already seen the knights.
That was not what concerned him.
They were behaving too correctly.
Reconnaissance without provocation. Clean movement. No testing of ward thresholds. No symbolic assertions of dominance. They were not here to frighten Caladan.
They were here to measure it.
Arden was tall, spare in build, his hair worn short and unadorned. His uniform bore no embellishments, only the faint abrasion marks of long use. His eyes were sharp, but not restless—trained to linger on what others dismissed as resolved.
He trusted none of it.
The Middle Continent did not deploy knights casually. Lunal specialists were assets, not scouts. Sending them this close to Caladan's sphere meant one of two things.
Either they believed the Dark Knight was already beyond concealment.
Or they believed Caladan would not respond.
Both possibilities were unacceptable.
Arden turned from the window and activated the room's internal wards. Not defensive—privacy filters. He disliked incomplete information traveling unchecked.
Halvren's inference had been correct. The Dark Knight was a pretext. Not a lie, but not the full equation.
Pressure was the objective.
Presence was the method.
And if Caladan failed to react appropriately, escalation would follow—not through spectacle, but through inevitability.
Arden reviewed the academy's current roster mentally.
Students experimenting near Ars thresholds.
Congeris practitioners still refining internal stability.
Promising, but not ready.
None of them should encounter a Middle Continent knight directly.
He closed his eyes briefly.
The knights were not attacking the academy.
Yet.
That restraint was more troubling than hostility.
Because it meant the next move would be deliberate.
And deliberation, in the Middle Continent, always preceded commitment.