Ten Minutes to Midnight - The Rule of Private Rooms

The mechanical rumble of shifti

The mechanical rumble of shifting brass gears slowly faded from the

Spire’s vertical central shaft as dusk settled over

Outside the lancet windows, the sky had turned the color of bruised plums, casting long, dark blue shadows across the cold slate floorboards of the third-floor gallery.Felix

Lin stood in front of

Room 304, holding his heavy bronze key.beside him,

Ross was examining his own heavy brass lock, his knuckles raw from the bitter cold of the evening wind.

The lean border boy’s yellowed hair was still damp with sweat, but his silver-tinted eyes remained hyper-focused on the iron doorframe.”Quiet,” Kaelen suddenly muttered, his hand freezing over his door latch.Felix tilted his head slightly.A sharp, rhythmic click-clack echoed down the narrow stone corridor.

It wasn’t the sound of heavy iron-shod boots.

It was the precise, unhurried strike of wooden-soled sandals against polished slate.Madam

Wood emerged from the shadow of a bronze support pillar, her thick, grey-streaked hair secured neatly behind her ears.

She carried no lamp, yet her heavy slate-grey coat snapped with military precision at every step.Thirty-six

Vanguard freshmen immediately straightened their backs, drawing back against the damp stone walls of the gallery.Madam

Wood stopped directly in the center of the third-floor walkway, right over the vertical drop of the central air shaft.

Her dark, weathered face was illuminated solely by the flickering, sulfur-yellow glow of a wall-mounted oil lamp.”You have five minutes before the lower gates lock for evening meditation,” Madam

Wood rasped, her voice cutting through the quiet like a rusted file dragging across iron. “Listen closely.

Cadre operates under one absolute rule regarding these living quarters.”She reached out with her left hand, tapping the iron frame of

Kaelen’s door with a thick, leather-wrapped knuckle.”Rule

Wood declared flatly. “Your private room is an absolute sanctuary.

No instructor, no senior student, and no classmate may cross your threshold without your explicit verbal invitation.

If any student attempts to pick a lock, force a door, or enter an occupied chamber without permission, five

Credits will be deducted instantly.”A quiet murmur rippled down the corridor.

Credits was an absurd penalty—enough to buy two months of top-tier field rations or a forged black-iron shortsword.”Why?” Caleb

Vance asked from the shadow of

Room 308, his voice carrying the entitled curiosity of a capital noble. “If the

Academy encourages masked trials and field competition in the valleys, why lock the dormitories so fiercely?”Madam

Wood turned her head slowly toward

Her cold, grey eyes locked onto the boy until he involuntarily shifted his weight backward against his doorpost.”Because a soldier who cannot sleep without checking over his shoulder dies of nervous exhaustion before his second campaign,” Madam

Wood said quietly. “Inside your room, you rest.

Inside your room, your

Core rotates without distraction.

Outside your room… you are fair game.”As she raised her right arm to point toward the lower stairwell, the wide leather cuff of her dark grey sleeve rode up slightly.Kaelen’s breath caught sharply in his throat.Felix, standing three paces away, narrowed his eyes.Tucked half-inside

Wood’s wide leather sleeve, resting against her scarred forearm, was not an iron rod or a hidden blade.It was a living, fist-sized viper.Its scales were a dull, sickly olive-green, patterned with jagged black diamonds that seemed to absorb the dim lamp-light.

The creature’s triangular, broad head rested motionlessly against the warden’s wrist, its pale yellow eyes unblinking, its thin black tongue flicking out once, twice, testing the cold air of the corridor before retreating beneath the heavy wool cuff.Madam

Wood didn’t glance down.

She simply lowered her arm, the heavy leather cuff sliding back over the viper’s smooth, terrifying scales as if she were hiding nothing more than an extra handkerchief.”Enter your rooms,” Madam

Wood ordered, her voice dropping into a flat, absolute register. “Lock your bolts from the inside.

The gear-staircase shifts to the lower foundry level in three minutes.

Anyone caught wandering the central shaft after the bell will spend the night hanging from the drainage chains.”She turned on her wooden sandals and glided away toward the central spiral.Kaelen swallowed hard, his face pale as he turned to look at

Felix. “Did you see that?” Kaelen whispered, his voice barely audible over the low thrum of the water-wheels below. “Her sleeve… that was a

One drop of its venom turns a man’s blood into thick lard in twenty seconds.””I saw it,” Felix murmured, a small, quiet glint touching his dark eyes as he fitted his bronze key into lock

Number 304.A warden with a pit viper in her sleeve and an automated clockwork tower over a three-thousand-foot drop, Felix thought as the heavy iron bolt clicked smoothly into place. Welcome to college.