Students traded badges—hand-carved sigils that glowed faintly when held to the heart—for moments of impossible clarity: a glimpse of a future exam solved on a scrap of parchment, a whispered compliment that unknotted months of self-doubt, a paper boat that floated across the fountain and returned with a pebble engraved with a small, true thing about you. Teachers moved among them, unmasked, laughing as if they had been teenagers all along.