Morning sunlight struggled to pierce the thick mist still clinging to the marshes around the Dorne estate. The swamp had an odd way of holding onto the night, like it refused to let go of its ghosts. Our little ghost-hunting excursion from the night before had left most of Class C in various stages of sleep-deprived trauma, but that wasn't enough to grant mercy.
Because I was still their instructor.
And chaos, after all, had a schedule.
"Alright, shameful degenerates," I announced, kicking open the creaky barn door of what had become our makeshift field base. "Rise and shine! Today we dissect trauma."
Felix let out a muffled whimper from beneath a pile of blankets.
Julien groaned, halfway upside down on a haystack. "Professor, it's barely dawn."
"Exactly. Dawn means discipline. Discipline means development. Development means one day you might die with a sliver of dignity."
"That's not how that sequence goes," Mira muttered, combing swamp gunk from her dark hair.
