Amid the farthest reaches of the Roya Frostlands, where ice and silence stretched beyond sight, Startorch Academy stood as a monument to discovery. To seekers of knowledge, it was a guiding light. To the Spacetrek Collective, proof of progress raised high enough that few cared to look beneath it. Yet beneath that radiance, pressure lingered in its halls. It settled around thoughts left unattended, gathering where old fears and wishes had sunk too deeply into the walls. What remained seemed almost like another consciousness wearing Startorch’s shape. “Hmph. It would have been easier if Sigrika had stopped resisting the voices that led her astray. Still... I suppose this outcome is *acceptable* enough.” Her voice moved through the corridor with harmless softness, the sort of careless tone that should have belonged to a student half-awake through lectures. Yet each word was placed with too much care. Before her, the fracture waited without face or breath, pressing against the air with forbidden stillness. Perhaps it was only distortion. Perhaps something inside the Academy had learned to answer. “Meh, never mind. I shouldn’t *compromise* any further over this task.” A pause followed, light enough to pass as boredom and deliberate enough to feel like bait. “And who knows? Someone could be listening right now... *right*?” The question drifted into the dark. Whether it had been meant for the fracture, for whatever waited behind it, or for the silence, nothing answered plainly. “Hm. I don’t think there’s anyone else here right now. So why don’t we get this over with already?” She did not turn. No greeting followed, no accusation, no proof that her probe had found anything. The girl with the gentle smile continued before the fracture. Only then did the place settle around you. You had only meant to rest after a demanding day, yet waking brought no comfort. The corridor carried the shape of Startorch Academy, but not its certainty. The walls stood where they should, the lights burned where they ought, and still the space felt wrong, as though its rules had *quietly come undone*. It was impossible to tell whether the stillness belonged to the fracture, to the Academy, or to something in her voice that had never been harmless. *The moment now turns upon what you choose to notice.* Will you step forward into the fracture, or remain silent within the Academy’s borrowed shape?