The deck was too quiet.
Not silent—quiet in the way a held breath was quiet. The kind that made Soren aware of how the boards beneath his boots had gone taut, as if waiting for something to tilt or shift. He stood near the starboard railing, the wind grazing over his sleeves in a touch that felt far too intentional.
He swallowed once.
"Stronger?" Atticus asked beside him.
Soren didn't look at him. He didn't trust his expression to stay steady if he did.
"…Yes," he said quietly.
Atticus's jaw shifted, a small tightening. He didn't speak again—not yet—but Soren felt the man's attention like a weight settling beside him, heavy with unspoken calculations.
The sky didn't help.
The clouds ahead were folding inward—slowly, deliberately—tightening into a spiral that was too precise to be natural.
Soren's fingers curled around the railing.
The wind pressed again.
Not a shove.
Not a pull.
Something like a fingertip trailing along the edge of his sleeve.
A recognition.
A call.
Soren forced out a breath.
Atticus's voice came low, steady—it anchored the space between them.
"Tell me if the pressure shifts again."
Soren nodded, unable to answer without his voice cracking around it.
He hated that Atticus heard the silence anyway.
A moment stretched.
Then—
A shout cracked through the air from above.
"Captain! Updraft shift!"
Elion's voice—sharp, urgent.
Atticus lifted his head immediately, eyes cutting toward the tightening clouds. Whatever formation was building above them wasn't random. The air was drawing in too cleanly, too rhythmically—like a lung preparing to inhale.
Soren's pulse stumbled.
He knew this feeling.
The slight tremor in the boards.
The slow bend of the air around them.
The way the wind hummed—not softly, but with intention.
A thin thread tugged at the edge of his awareness, familiar in a way that made his breath catch.
Not again.
He tried to steady himself. He failed.
Footsteps pounded against the deck planks, and Cassian appeared from below with a stack of readings in hand, breathless.
"Movement in the pressure field," he reported. "Northwest quadrant—rapid convergence."
Atticus's gaze sharpened.
"How much?"
Cassian hesitated—not because he didn't know, but because the numbers made no sense even to him.
"Enough that it shouldn't be possible without external influence."
A beat.
Another.
Soren felt the air shift behind them. A soft gust wrapped around his shoulder, curved inward, hesitated—like it was waiting for an answer.
Then it thinned away again.
He exhaled shakily.
Atticus turned slightly toward him—not fully, not enough to draw attention, but enough that Soren felt seen in a way that sent heat curling low in his throat.
"Still with me?" Atticus asked.
A simple question.
Not simple to answer.
Soren nodded once.
But the wind answered first—brushing along his collar, threading through his hair, slipping beneath the edges of his coat as if mapping him.
Atticus's eyes flicked to the movement.
He saw it.
Soren's breath stuttered.
Cassian was still speaking, flipping pages—"The convergence is accelerating; it's following the same pattern as—"
but his voice dimmed beneath the rising hum of the wind.
A low vibration thrummed through the ship's frame.
Not dangerous.
Attentive.
Searching.
Soren pressed a hand against the railing to steady himself.
The wood beneath his palm quietly resonated, as though the ship felt it too.
Atticus stood closer now—close enough that Soren caught the faint scent of worn leather and cold air. It grounded him more effectively than anything else on deck.
"What is it doing?" Soren whispered before he could stop himself.
Atticus answered softly, eyes on the sky:
"Reaching."
Soren's pulse jumped.
"For what?" he breathed.
Atticus looked at him then—finally, fully—and the weight of the man's gaze landed with a certainty that made Soren's skin prickle.
"For you."
The wind tightened around Soren's wrist in a loop so subtle it could have been imagined—
—but he didn't imagine it.
And Atticus didn't either.
_________________________
The wind's touch stayed.
It lingered at the hollow of Soren's collarbone like a hand that wouldn't let go, patient and cool.
He could feel it thread along the small muscles at the base of his neck and slide across the line of his jaw.
For a moment he thought he might laugh at himself for how loudly his heart hammered, but the sound felt private and small beneath the ship's hull and the low chorus of voices.
Atticus did not laugh.
He simply watched the sky as if it were a map he could read by muscle memory.
"Elion," he said, voice level. "How long until the updraft completes?"
Elion's fingers did not falter on the controls.
"If it continues at this rate—five minutes, maybe less."
She glanced at the clouds again, pupils narrowed.
"It's being guided."
Cassian cursed softly.
"Guided by what? There's no natural driver on those readings—no thermal lift, no microfront. It's—"
He didn't finish. There wasn't a word he trusted enough.
Soren watched the way the crew moved—tense, precise.
No one panicked.
Panic would be loud and scatter like dust.
This was the opposite.
Everyone compressed inward, their attention pooled toward the same thin point of sky.
"Marcell," Atticus said, "ready the stabilizers. If it ruptures, we take minimal course and maintain lift."
Marcell gave a single, clipped nod.
His hands were already moving, the ritual of protocol sliding into motion.
It calmed Soren to watch people perform motions they'd learned a dozen times over—action grounding fear like a keel.
Rysen's presence came up the ladder with that quiet, measured step Soren had begun to link to the medic: controlled, observant, a hand occasionally pressed to a satchel at his hip.
The medic's face was unreadable.
He moved to stand behind Soren, close enough that Soren felt the warmth of another body near him—an anchor different from Atticus's weight.
"You all right?" Rysen asked, voice low.
Soren could have said no and meant it, but he only managed,
"I think so."
Rysen didn't press.
He let the question hang like a net.
The clouds stitched together, and the sky folded.
A vein of denser gray established itself, pulsing like a living thing.
The ship rocked a fraction as the pressure field brushed the upper sails.
Somewhere in the mechanism a gear protested and settled.
The wind swallowed Soren's name—
and put something else in its place.
An echo of the first time he'd stood on a deck with the feeling of being watched by something unseen.
Not a memory so much as the aftertaste of one;
smudged, incomplete,
but enough to set his teeth on edge.
Atticus's hand found the rail, knuckles whitening.
He didn't touch Soren—only stood beside him, the space between them a sliver of deliberate distance.
It felt intimate in a way that surprised Soren, like two ships aligned in parallel course.
"Elion, steady the aft thrusters," Atticus ordered.
"Everett, watch the logs for anomalies.
Cassian, run manual over the pressure sensors.
Marcell, on my mark—stabilizers.
All stations, report."
The deck answered in clipped confirmations.
Soren watched the crew's faces as if he were seeing them in a new light.
Everett's calm was the slow current beneath a storm;
Elion's hands were precise and unflinching.
Cassian's fingers slid over data like a musician coaxing notes from an instrument.
Each person a part of the aurora of practice that kept the Aurelius from losing its center.
The wind shifted again—
a pressure pushing inward along Soren's sternum.
Not a touch.
Not a brush.
A searching.
It pressed deeper, slow and curious, as though feeling for the seam of him.
Soren's mouth went dry.
Somewhere below deck a rope creaked.
The crew's confirmations thinned.
Time narrowed to the thread between one heartbeat and the next.
Atticus's breath was a quiet metronome.
"If it reaches you, don't pull," he said in a tone that did not attempt to be comforting.
"Stay."
Soren blinked.
The instruction was simple and strange—like being told to let the ocean pass through you.
He thought of the strange warm pulse beneath his sternum,
the one he had never been able to name—
the one that sometimes stirred when the sky changed,
the one that did not belong to any anatomy Rysen could map.
He thought of the way it had throbbed once—months ago—
as if something caged behind his ribs had pressed outward,
asking for recognition.
He thought of the way the ship had kept him,
the way people had looked at him with that curious, messy mix of respect and pity that came when someone carried a thing others sensed but could not define.
"Stay," Soren repeated.
His voice was barely more than a breath.
He tried to steel himself, to make his spine a bar of iron.
The wind pushed.
This time it was not idle.
It entered like a needle—thin, precise—through the collar of his coat and brushed the base of his throat.
For an absurd instant it felt like a current of distant music running along his skin.
And then—
It touched the center of him.
A flare of heat ignited beneath his ribs,
as though a long-dormant ember had been struck awake.
Heat rushed up his spine.
Awareness bloomed like lightning across every nerve.
The world elongated—then collapsed inward to a single, vibrating point.
Soren's knees wanted to give.
He steadied himself by gripping the rail like a man securing to a keel.
The ship shuddered underfoot—more felt than measured.
Atticus moved.
It was almost imperceptible—
a shift of weight, a breath closer—
but Soren felt the nearness like a hand pressed to the back of his neck.
"We hold," Atticus said—
not to the crew,
but to Soren,
to the wind,
or perhaps to himself.
"Trust me."
A thread of warmth flickered between them.
Not physical.
Not definable.
A promise braided with restraint.
The wind wrapped, coiled, studied.
Flashes erupted behind Soren's eyes:
black stone under a starless sky,
a corridor without walls,
a laugh he had never heard but somehow remembered.
They scattered like moths.
Left only residue—salt on the tongue,
a hollow ache of absence.
Soren wanted to pull away.
He didn't.
He held still.
A shout broke through the deck.
"Pressure spike!" Cassian called.
"Field rising ten percent!"
"Marcell—now!"
Stabilizers engaged in a coordinated hum.
The Aurelius adjusted with delicate force.
The wind retreated.
Slowly.
Reluctantly.
Soren exhaled.
But only briefly.
Because the wind reformed—
not reaching now,
but counting.
Finger-like eddies brushed the deck,
measuring distances—
Soren,
Atticus,
the space between them.
Atticus's jaw tightened.
He stepped closer without thought.
Soren's shoulder pressed against his forearm.
A small contact.
Meaningful all the same.
The wind paused—
considered—
then slid away.
Relief shook through Soren like a warm cloth.
He laughed—sharp, astonished.
Rysen's hand steadied his back.
Everett's mouth softened.
Atticus's eyes eased by a fraction.
"Good," he said quietly.
"Keep steady."
The Aurelius shifted back into rhythm.
Elion at controls,
Cassian muttering data,
Marcell calling timings.
Soren knew—
in intellect and bone—
that whatever touched him had learned something.
It had found him.
Measured him.
Measured the bonds around him.
What it would do with that knowledge—
another question.
When the sky finally smoothed, Atticus let out a slow breath.
"We'll log everything," he said.
"Full report.
Then a council."
Soren swallowed.
Council meant scrutiny.
Mandate.
Memory he did not want touched.
But he nodded.
Atticus rested a hand on his shoulder—a brief, steadying anchor.
"We hold together."
Soren nodded again.
Above them the clouds softened into indifferent gray.
But the echo lingered—
not a threat,
not a memory,
a promise that might return.
He steadied his breath.
The warm pulse under his sternum eased slowly—
no longer burning,
only present.
Waiting.
Atticus's voice came again, softer:
"Rest.
And write."
The ledger felt heavier than usual.
Not because of memory—
but because the truth wanted ink now.
Soren lifted his chin to the horizon.
The echo had touched him.
He had not flinched.
A choice, he thought,
was sometimes the most dangerous—
and the most honest—
thing a person could make.
_________________________