'Any ideas?' Seteth asked.

Ferdinand and Edelgard raised their hands.

'Someone that hasn't answered already?'

Edelgard lowered her hand. Seteth told Ferdinand to do the same. He studied the silent Black Eagle students, tapping his foot as he did so. Most of them sat slumped at their desks, not meeting his gaze. 'How about you, Dorothea?'

Dorothea jolted upward in her seat, only just stopping her cap from sliding off her head at the last moment. She blinked. 'S-Sorry, could you repeat the q'-

'Linhardt, this is the third time I have asked you to not sleep in my class. Do not let me warn you again.'

Linhardt yawned. 'Sorry.'

Seteth glared at him and then back at Dorothea. 'What did you say?'

'I, um… asked if you could repeat the question.'

He sighed. 'How do you suppose- Ferdinand, I told you to put down your hand. How do you suppose we deal with the threat of the Blue Lions? They have a strong close-combat core in the form of Dimitri, Sylvain, Felix, Ingrid and Dedue. Any suggestions?'

Dorothea threaded her hands together. 'Well… we could um… try and lure them away from the others and hit them with magic and arrows.'

'We could lure them all into the forest perform a flanking manoeuvre an'-

'Once again, I did not ask you, Ferdinand. You must allow your classmates to contribute to the plan. But you both make good points. We now have two interesting ideas for countering the Blue Lions that we shall analyse momentarily. What about the Golden Deer? They have an emphasis on long-range attacks in the form of archery and magic. From our position on the field, does anyone have any suggestions on how we can deal with them?'

Edelgard raised her hand again, followed quickly by Ferdinand. Seteth felt like throwing his book at both of them. He looked around the room once again. In the corner, on her own, he saw Bernadetta with her head down.

'Ah, how about you, Bernadetta? Any ideas?'

Bernadetta jumped. There was a loud thud as her knees connected with the table. 'W-what?' she asked.

'Any suggestions on how we might deal with the Golden Deer in the mock battle?'

The girl's breath sharpened, 'I…um… I-I don't know.'

'Come now,' Seteth said. He walked towards her desk. 'Surely you can think of something. Doesn't matter what it is, the point of this is to get you all actively thinking.'

His shoes echoed off the cobbled floor as he moved down the centre line of the room. To Ferdinand, he was a frustrating individual who didn't seem to realise his military capabilities. To Petra, he was a stern-looking man who sometimes spoke too quickly. To Edelgard, he was the last person she wanted as her professor.

To Bernadetta, however, he was the same as everyone else. Someone to be afraid of, so when she saw the man moving towards her, with his eyes locked on hers, her heartrate spiked. 'I'm… sorry, I d-don't know.'

'Anything at all,' Seteth said. 'Just one thing.'

'N-no.'

'Please, Berna'-

Bernadetta sprung upward, once again whacking the table with her legs. Seteth's eyes widened. 'Bernadett'-

Bernadetta's face scrunched up and tears rolled down her cheeks. She shook her head, barrelled to the door and left. Her sobs echoed back into the classroom.

The room fell silent. Seteth sighed and closed his eyes.

'Gosh, six whole chapters of the "Compendium of Light and Dark" memorised by Monday? Seteth sure does want us prepared for Wednesday,' Dorothea said, not quite frowning but close to it.

'We must also be studying the… "strategees" …. of Loog,' Petra said.

'Are we really the only class that has homework to do?' Linhardt mumbled. 'Surely there must be someone that we can talk to about this injustice?'

'Although I do agree that Seteth has heavily focused on theory work,' Ferdinand said. 'Theoretical knowledge is the foundation in which we can build ourselves on.'

The man, Edelgard knew, was only forcing out false positivity because she wasn't, and it was his way of proving himself better than her. His voice, however, told a different story to his words. She could tell when he was truthful or not, it was one of the few benefits of him speaking all the time. And she was sure that the others could sense his nonsense as well. They trudged along the courtyard. Petra walked with her head down. Bernadetta (who Dorothea had brought back to the classroom after she'd ran away) was pale and her eyes were still blotched red from crying.

'So, one week nearly gone already,' Dorothea said, picking her nails. 'How are we feeling about the mock battle?'

The pause that followed was answer enough.

'Do not worry about the mock battle yet,' Edelgard said, unable to bear the silence. 'Just take it day by day.'

They reached the top of the courtyard. They mumbled goodbyes to one another and then trudged off in different directions. Hubert walked with Edelgard.

'My lady, may I suggest that tomorrow we request that Jeritza becomes our professor? If we do it as a class, then I believe Seteth will have little choice but to say yes, or at the very least, to recommend it to Rhea when she returns.'

'No decision has been made on Byleth yet,' Edelgard said.

'He will not be kept on,' Hubert said. 'Seteth wants him gone, he is merely waiting for the archbishop to return so that he can make his dismissal of him official, and once that joke of a man departs, Seteth and Rhea will seek out a replacement professor, which is why it is of the utmost importance that they know we want Jeritza.'

Edelgard nodded slowly but said nothing. Hubert didn't like that.

'Byleth was comprehensibly beaten by Caspar,' he continued. 'He has my gratitude for saving your life, but such a man is incapable of leading us… or working for us, for that matter.'

Edelgard still didn't respond.

Byleth passed the time by sitting in one of the wooden chairs, gazing out the window. Outside he saw stunning, golden-bricked buildings that shone in the sun. Every brick was evenly shaped and each row was consistent, no chipped stone, no uneven shapes or too much cement caked onto any part of them. They had been built with a careful precision that he hadn't witnessed anywhere else. He counted them. One building had one thousand and seven bricks facing him, the other, had nine hundred and sixty-eight. When he'd finished counting, he looked beyond them and saw mountains stretch into the distance. Travelling with Jeralt, he'd seen them many times, but from a different side of them. There were roads that cut through from the rest of Fódlan to the monastery, he was certain, but his father had made sure to keep him away from them.

He continued to study the outside world, trying to ignore the gnawing thoughts in his head.

He then looked up at the sky and watched the wisps of cloud float by. The sky started off as a bright blue, but gradually turned to lilac, and then to a feint pink. Most people would think it was beautiful, but it made his stomach twist. The changing colour meant evening was approaching.

He carefully rose to his feet and shuffled towards the restroom, scraping the chair forward as he did so. The prickling pain and dizziness started "boiling" on his fourth step and he lowered himself down onto the chair. That morning, he'd needed to sit down on the chair twice on his way to the restroom. This time he needed to sit down five times before he reached there.

It's getting worse, fast, he thought.

He saw the pink sky as he exited the restroom and a shiver crawled down his spine. He moved carefully, the "boiling", worsening with each step he took. He didn't want to go back to his bed, the sheets were hot and sweaty, but he knew from the pain that he'd need to lie down to stop the sensations from overflowing.

Step by step, he shuffled forward. Step by step, the sky darkened.

It was when he went to lower himself onto the chair for a sixth time that his leg buckled. He landed on the chair with a thump and prickling pain shot up his back.

He froze, cursing. The pain moved across to his abdomen and up to his chest and a light-headedness struck him. As he sat there, he heard the bells ring outside, signalling that it was evening and time for dinner. Soon, it would be dark, and he would need to sleep… and then…-

'It's just a dream.'

He was back in his bed by the time Moira and Seteth came to see him. They asked him how he was, and he relayed his struggle to get to the restroom. Seteth asked him questions in the same interrogation-style as he done the day before, yet Byleth sensed that the man was finally taking him seriously, to an extent at least. On one hand, that was a good thing, on the other, he didn't like it.

He didn't like the troubled look on the man's face.

Seteth sighed. 'Assuming you are telling us the truth then it seems as though you are suffering from a mystery issue of some kind. Moira suggested that some of your symptoms might be sleep and diet-related, but there is clearly something else going on as well if healing magic is truly proving ineffective on you. Moira will provide you with stronger vulneraries this evening and hopefully they will help. If not, then we will need to discuss your options tomorrow.'

Byleth didn't know what the man meant but he didn't want to. He looked at Moira, the woman who'd repeatedly told him that healing magic always worked and that he just needed to give it time to take effect. Her face was pale and she didn't meet his gaze.

When she and Seteth left a short while later, he realised something that made him groan. He'd forgotten to ask if a messenger had been sent to Jeralt. He looked at the bell beside his bed but didn't try to shake it.

He didn't want the tingling pain to get worse.