The Sanctum swallowed the sound of their footsteps.
Adrian walked between Saelen and Godfrey, the three of them moving down a corridor that looked grown rather than built. Light ran beneath the glassy floor in slow currents, pulsing under his boots in a way that made him feel like he was walking on the surface of a sleeping thing.
The walls were pale. Not white—something softer, almost translucent, with veins of brass and dim silver threading through them like nerves. Every time Saelen passed a lamp, it brightened a fraction. Every time he passed one, it dimmed.
'Good. Even the architecture's voting.'
At the end of the hall stood a circular arch. Gold sigils crawled over it—constantly rearranging, never quite settling into anything his mind could hold. It made his eyes ache if he looked more than a heartbeat.
Saelen lifted her hand.
The sigils peeled back as if they'd been painted on water. The arch unraveled into nothing, air folding open in a silent ripple.
"Inside," she said.
Adrian stepped through.
The chamber beyond felt like the inside of a clock and a cathedral at the same time.
White stone floors etched with wide circles of runes. Brass ribs climbing the walls in clean arcs. Suspended rings turning in the air above the center of the room, each rotating at a slightly different speed. The hum in the air vibrated in his teeth.
A man waited by the central circle. Broad shoulders, short dark hair gone gray at the temples. Crimson coat with brass trim, sleeves rolled to the forearms. His face had all the warmth of an audit.
"Subject: Garth Whitlock," he said. "Sanctum intake file verifies identity. We will begin resonance assessment."
Adrian had to stop himself from saying: *That's not my name.*
Saelen inclined her head. "He's ready, Examiner."
*Ready was generous.*
The Examiner looked at Adrian like a scale waiting for weight. "Step into the circle."
The runes carved into the floor gave off no light yet. Just lines in stone, waiting. Adrian's throat felt dry in a way that had nothing to do with air.
"Is this going to hurt?" he asked.
The man's eyes didn't change. "Only if something is wrong."
"Comforting," Adrian muttered.
He stepped into the circle.
The change was immediate.
The lines beneath his boots lit up in soft blue. Then gold. Then blue again, the colors chasing each other around the ring before running inward toward his feet. Ether coiled up his shins like cool smoke, tightening into bands he could feel without feeling.
The air thickened. It was like trying to breathe underwater.
"Keep still," Saelen said, voice even. "It's reading you, not attacking you."
"Hard to tell the difference," he managed.
He could feel something now—not a touch, not pressure, but a… noticing. Like being watched from the inside out, by something that had never learned shame.
The light under his feet pulsed.
Once.
Then again.
His heart fell into rhythm with it, or the other way around. He couldn't tell which was leading and which was obeying.
Then there was a second beat. Slightly late. Slightly wrong. As if his own pulse had an echo that hadn't caught up yet.
The floating rings above him turned faster for a moment, then slowed.
"Baseline frequency acquired," the Examiner said calmly, adjusting a brass device locked around his wrist. "Minor variance. Within tolerance."
Minor. Sure.
Lines of light rose from the circle, thin as hairs, and brushed his wrists, his temples, the back of his neck. They felt like cloth charged with static, not painful, just invasive.
"Relax," the Examiner said. "This measures internal flow."
"And if I don't?"
"Readings distort," the Examiner replied. "And you get to do it again."
*Right. So: relax. In the living engine of a magic hospital. While my pulse has a stutter.*
Adrian forced his shoulders to loosen.
Heat spread from his chest in a slow wave. Not hot enough to burn, but wrong—like someone had thickened his blood and set it to simmer.
The Sanctum's hum shifted. The sound in the walls tried to match the rhythm in his body. It fell just short, like a choir missing a note.
Then everything dipped cold.
The blue light flickered. A faint hiss, like wind over a wire, slipped into his ears.
Under it, something else. Not a word—more like the shape of one pressing close to the edge of hearing. A presence leaning in.
His skin crawled along his arms.
"Breath control dropping," the Examiner said, tone unchanged. "Stabilization?"
Saelen was already moving. She stepped to the edge of the circle and lifted her hand.
Silver flowed from her palm in a clean ribbon, drifting through the air like poured mercury. It wrapped around Adrian's chest and shoulders, cool and steady, a second skin of light. The hissing cut off as if a door had shut. His lungs unlocked.
The Sanctum's hum steadied again.
"Better?" she asked.
He nodded once. Talking felt like it might break whatever fragile truce had formed between his heart and the floor.
"Circulation restored," the Examiner said. "Instability within manageable range for early awakening."
Manageable. Great. Like a gas leak that hadn't exploded yet.
The Ether threads withdrew from his skin. The light sank back into the stone, leaving only a faint afterglow.
A panel in the center of the circle folded open without sound. A chair rose out of the floor—one smooth piece of metal, jointless, like it had grown there.
"Sit," the Examiner said.
"You do realize nothing about this looks inviting," Adrian said, even as he sat down.
The chair was cold and perfectly molded to him. A little too perfectly. He didn't like the implication that something had measured him while he was unconscious.
Three crystal spheres floated up behind the chair and took position around his head and shoulders. They rotated slowly, humming in different pitches.
"Reservoir calibration," the Examiner said. "Don't move."
Light from the spheres slid through him—no heat, no sting, still felt in a way that had nothing to do with nerves. It was like someone humming along the outline of his thoughts, mapping him with sound.
The mirror across the room—one smooth sheet of metal set into the wall—flickered.
His reflection blurred, then snapped back into focus. For a heartbeat the shape wasn't his. Taller. Different shoulders. A sharper jaw. Someone he didn't know but almost recognized in the way a nightmare recognizes you.
His breath hitched.
He blinked hard. The mirror showed only him—pale, tired, wrong eyes in a wrong face.
*Get it together. Stress. Sleep deprivation. You died this week. Hallucinations are allowed.*
The spheres dimmed. The hum tapered off.
"Reservoir density: within normal range," the Examiner said. "Core alignment: irregular, but functional. No recorded abnormalities."
Adrian let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Normal. Irregular, sure, but normal. No "broken core," no "collapsing soul engine," nothing catastrophic.
*Maybe I'm just… messed up in the usual ways.*
Saelen glanced at the device on the Examiner's wrist. "And the whisper phenomena?"
The Examiner shrugged a fraction. "Residual resonance. Crossing leaves an impression. It usually fades."
Usually.
Adrian didn't like how that word settled in his ribs.
"You reported auditory layering," the Examiner went on. "Voices. Echoes."
"Yes," Saelen said. "When I first stabilized him."
Adrian hated the way they talked about him like a patient and a case file in the same breath.
The Examiner tapped something into the device. "He'll need a Communion evaluation once his flow settles. We'll schedule a Thaumaturge from that school tomorrow."
"Communion evaluation," Adrian repeated. "That's… what, talking to things?"
"Talking around them," the Examiner said. "Determining whether anything answers back is the important part."
*Right. Not ominous at all.*
The chair sank back into the floor when he stood. The crystal spheres drifted away, merging into the brass ribs of the ceiling like drops of water returning to a river.
"You're stable enough to move freely within the Sanctum," the Examiner said. "Within escort." His eyes flicked once to Saelen and Godfrey. "Acclimatization will reduce the strain."
Acclimatization. Like getting used to a new altitude. Or a new gravity. Or a second heartbeat that didn't want to be second.
Adrian stepped off the circle.
The floor looked solid again. Ordinary stone.
It still felt like it was waiting.
The air in the hallway outside felt thinner, but that might have just been him.
Godfrey walked a half-step behind, as if he'd been assigned shadow duty. His footsteps were too light for someone his size. Saelen matched Adrian's pace easily, hands folded behind her back.
"Was that it?" Adrian asked. "For today?"
"That was the initial resonance assessment," she said. "It tells us whether your Core is stable enough to keep you alive, and whether you're at risk of harming others by accident."
"And?"
"You're alive," she said. "And you're not a danger yet. That's better than many who arrive here."
Yet. Nice little needle in the sentence.
"The rest comes in stages," she continued. "Physical acclimation. Controlled Ether circulation. Basic grounding techniques. Later, Communion and discipline-specific tests."
"Discipline?"
She glanced at him. "Your school of Ethercraft. Arcanist, Metamorph, Artificer, Invoker. It's too early to tell which path your Core will favor. The Channel rarely leaves that clear, even for clean awakenings."
He caught onto one word anyway. "The Channel. That… road between worlds?"
Her expression didn't move, but something in her posture tightened like a string plucked once.
"The path you crossed," she said. "Yes."
"Is what I'm… hearing," he said carefully, "normal for people who go through it?"
Saelen went quiet for a few steps. Lamps blinked overhead in a slow rhythm, echoing their pace.
"No one crosses it without hearing something," she said at last. "But not everyone remembers."
Which wasn't really an answer.
They turned down a narrower hallway. The hum in the walls felt closer here, like the sound was following him instead of the other way around.
"You'll be registered in the Codex today," Saelen said. "Name, age, Ether signature, initial observations. Once your resonance stops fluctuating, we'll revisit your classification."
"Codex being…?"
"A living record of everyone awakened beneath the Veil," she said. "The City is Concordia. The Codex keeps track of all who move inside it."
He tried to imagine a database made of books and light at the same time. "And if I don't… stabilize?"
"Then you won't be allowed out of the Sanctum," she said plainly. "Or into yourself."
He believed her.
They walked in silence until a different smell pushed into the air: warmth, spice, something savory and solid. His stomach reacted before his mind did, twisting low with hunger that reminded him he still had a body, even if the body wasn't his.
Saelen noticed. "Good," she said. "Your appetite's returned. That will help."
"Hunger helps?"
"Alive people get hungry," she said. "It's confirmation."
The cafeteria was larger than the lecture halls he used to teach in.
Rows of pale stone tables under high ceilings ribbed with brass and glass. Lanterns hung in the air, swaying slightly as if caught in a wind he couldn't feel. Rails of light carried trays of food between serving stations in steady, silent loops.
Adrian stopped just inside the threshold.
Some of the dishes were… wrong. Bowls holding liquids that glowed softly from within. Plates of fruit that shifted color when touched. Meat that hissed with cold steam instead of heat.
He swallowed.
Saelen followed his gaze. "You're not required to consume Ether-augmented food immediately," she said. "Your Core doesn't need that strain yet."
"Good," he said. "Because that thing is… looking at me."
On a nearby plate, a slab of something purple shifted like it was deciding whether it wanted to be food at all.
He moved down the line until his brain finally caught something that didn't look like it had crawled out of a spell diagram.
Lasagna. Slightly burned at the edges. Ordinary. Real.
Relief hit him harder than it should have.
He grabbed a plate and a cup of water and retreated to a corner table where the lantern-light didn't fall as strongly.
The first bite nearly made his eyes close.
Salt. Tomato. Cheese. Simple, heavy comfort. It anchored him in a way the chair and the circle hadn't. Human food doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
Another bite.
And another.
His muscles loosened. The knot between his shoulders unwound a millimeter.
*Okay. You're eating. You're sitting. You're not strapped to a glowing floor. This is progress.*
The hum under his feet returned.
He froze, fork halfway to his mouth.
Softer here, muted by clinking dishes and low conversation, but there—faint vibration running up through the legs of the chair, into his spine.
Then came the sound.
Not words. Not exactly. Thin, layered murmurs at the edge of hearing, like voices under water behind a wall. Too many to count. Too far away to separate. Close enough to make his teeth tighten.
His grip cinched around the fork.
*No.*
He stared down at the plate, stabbed another piece of lasagna, shoved it into his mouth like that could force the air to behave.
The whispers held a moment longer.
Then faded, dissolving into the background hum of the Sanctum as if they'd been nothing but imagination.
Adrian let out a slow breath through his nose.
His hands were shaking.
It annoyed him more than it scared him.
*You're exhausted. You died, got transplanted into a miner, dragged through a magical storm tunnel, poked by glowing needles. Brains misfire when you kick them hard enough. That's all this is.*
He kept eating until the plate was clean.
Around him, wardens and attendants and people in varied coats moved in calm lines. Laughing in low tones. Arguing over something. Stretching tired shoulders. Living lives that assumed this was normal.
At one table, a young man traced patterns in the air with his fingertip. A tiny spark followed each motion, hovering for a second before winking out. His companion swatted his hand down, murmuring something that sounded like *not here.*
Adrian's gaze drifted to the tall window along the far wall.
Concordia lay beyond—copper rooftops spill-slick with rain, steam vents exhaling in slow plumes, bridges like arteries lit with faint Ether light. The city looked no more real from here than it had from the carriage, but it was at least consistent. His brain liked consistency. It needed it.
As he watched, the lantern above his table flickered once.
Just once.
The light through the window dipped at the exact same moment, like something very large had moved between the city and the sky.
Then everything steadied.
The lantern.
The window.
The hum.
Conversation never even hiccuped.
Adrian set the fork down carefully, as if noise might re-invite whatever had passed.
In the glass, his reflection stared back faintly.
For a second he thought he saw another outline just behind his—a shadow at his shoulder, slightly off, trying to stand where he was.
He blinked.
The second shape was gone.
Behind his eyes, his pulse kicked twice in quick succession, trying to sync with something he couldn't name.
He pressed his palms against the cool stone of the table and breathed until his heartbeat settled into one rhythm again.
Somewhere, deeper in the Sanctum, something unseen finished adjusting to his presence.
He couldn't feel that.
But the building could.
And it remembered.