"Kraft, Kraft, are you there?"
Liston clutched a stack of medical records and knocked on the professor's room, which had been taken over by an uninvited guest. His knuckles rapped against the thick solid fir, sending back a dull echo.
A faint echo came from the other end of the corridor, as if someone were knocking on another door at the same time, an unseen visitor keeping him company. The Academy had been built in the style of a church, with many long corridors and spacious halls, as well as winding spiral passageways and staircases. It had inherited the same cavernous echoes, too.
The candles in Saint Simon Church burned day and night, and hymns and prayers rang out without end, their echoes naturally filling every corner with a sacred grandeur. But in the Academy, the effect felt excessive and out of place. At dawn or late at night, when few people were around, the echoes seemed to shift closer and farther away, as if someone were following you. Turn around, and the place would be empty, creating quite the opposite atmosphere.
Liston disliked that atmosphere. It always made him think of ghost stories lurking in the depths of his subconscious. It was especially unnerving when he left alone after a midnight dissection, momentarily lost his way, and heard an echo behind him. It could scare the tools right out of his hands.
Aside from the classes he had to teach, he spent most of his time at his clinic. Unless he was dissecting with Calman, he had no desire to linger at the Academy. If Lucius hadn't been absent for two days straight, he wouldn't have come looking for him in person that evening.
There was no answer from behind the door. Liston hesitated. He knew Kraft was extremely