The transfer light didn't fade so much layer by layer, the cold-white brightness peeling back until the floor beneath Lin Yue's feet stopped being an idea and became something solid again.
Polished tile. Grey-veined, faintly reflective, the kind that never scuffed no matter how many boots crossed it.
The Game Hall.
For a long moment, nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Seven people stood in a loose, unconscious cluster near the transfer pad, still angled toward each other the way they'd been angled in the Academy's dissolving courtyard, as if some part of all of them expected the floor to still be made of chalk.
It wasn't.
Lin Yue's first thought, distant and almost embarrassed by its own smallness, was: the lights don't flicker.
