Soren's office looked the same as it always did.

Same dark wood desk. Same bookshelves floor to ceiling. Same view through the narrow window of the academy's inner courtyard, where students moved between classes in groups that had gotten tighter and quieter over the past three weeks.

But Soren looked different.

He was standing when we came in, which he never did. And when I looked at him properly, not the surface of him, not the headmaster performance, he looked like a man who had been ...