The portal crackled with a hum before spitting William out onto a grayish valley. The air smelled faintly of damp earth and a lot of freshly cut vegetation. The sky was covered with dense clouds, and hundreds of apprentices were clustered together like cattle in formation.
As he walked towards the crowd, William began to notice something strange: many faces were familiar to him.
Too familiar.
"They're all nobles," he murmured to himself. "And not just any kind of noble… they were heirs of ancient houses, of weighty surnames, with the same haughty, arrogant faces that had looked down on him since day one."
He swallowed and, with a simple gesture, activated his communication collar. His intuition told him that something very bad was about to happen, so he wanted to know if it was directed at him or Lia.
"Are you okay? Where are you?" he sent to Lia.
A few seconds later, the reply came:
