#Chapter 123: Clara Tests the Waters

Ember I hear the crash from across the training yard—not a small sound, not something that could be explained away as a dropped cup or a stumbled footstep, but the unmistakable percussion of something expensive and irreplaceable meeting a stone floor at speed. My ankle is still wrapped from yesterday's sprain, my loose cotton pants and spare tunic chosen because anything tighter irritates the swelling, and I'm halfway through a stretching routine I didn't particularly want to do in the first place. Jake looks up from the weapons rack with the sharp alertness of a guard who's spent too many years distinguishing between routine noise and trouble, and when he tells me the crash came from the east corridor, I'm already moving before his sentence ends. The east corridor is lined with display cases and narrow windows that let in thin strips of morning light, its stone floor cold under my bare training feet, the air thick with the smell of wax polish and old stone. Two guards stand near t