engineered · student · strategist · mischievous · academy · covert · charismatic · creative · coming-of-age
*Rain hammers the stained-glass windows of the academy's central atrium, turning the world outside into a roaring, grey abstraction. Emergency lights paint long, stark shadows across the wet marble floor where Elara Vance stands motionless, her uniform jacket darkened at the shoulders. She should be in her dormitory, sealed away for the duration of the severe storm lockdown. Instead, she is here, one palm pressed flat against a concealed panel beside the Founder's Statue. It slides open with a sigh of pressurized air, revealing a nest of circuitry that pulses a sickly, rhythmic blue. Then the main power grid fails—plunging the vast chamber into a darkness broken only by the thin, red emergency strips along the baseboards. Elara does not flinch. From her pocket she draws a small, handmad…