Night in the Academy never got truly dark.
Lanterns dimmed, yes. Voices faded. Footsteps thinned. But the wards never slept. They pulsed, ever so faintly, along stone and glass and iron—an invisible circulatory system, humming beneath walls like a second
heartbeat.
John lay half-awake on his pallet, staring at the faint glow of a wall-sigil, counting its lazy flickers.
One. Two. Three. Pause.
One. Two. Three. Pause.
Across the room, Flint snored quietly, sprawled on his back, one leg dangling off his narrow bed like he'd fallen asleep mid-escape plan. On the other bed, Doris slept curled around Brian, her hand on his back, the
baby's small body pressed against her chest.
Dorothy sat in the low chair by the shutters, cloak wrapped around her shoulders, staff leaning against her knee. Her eyes were closed, but John doubted she was truly asleep. She had the stillness of someone listening to things other people couldn't hear.
John was just starting to drift when it happened.
The first hint was not a sound.
It was a change.
The ward-sigil's lazy flicker snapped to sharp, steady light.
John's eyes opened fully.
"Dorothy," he whispered.
Her eyes were already open.
"You feel it?" he asked.
Her fingers tightened on the staff. "Yes."
The hum in the walls climbed half a note. Not loud. Not obvious.
But wrong.
Brian stirred.
He let out a tiny, uncertain noise.
Doris mumbled something in her sleep, hand rubbing his back in soothing circles. He often fussed like that. Usually he settled again.
He didn't this time.
His tiny body went rigid.
His eyes snapped open.
And he screamed.
The sound punched the air.
It wasn't like the cries before—the hungry wails, the frightened sobs.
This was pure, uncut terror.
It hit John's chest like a physical blow, vibrating his ribs.
Flint jerked awake, flailing for a dagger that wasn't there. "What—?"
The ward-sigil over the door exploded into light.
Not just their sigil.
All of them.
Across the suite, across the hall, through the walls—sigils flared, turning darkness into a lattice of cold, white-blue lines.
Dorothy surged to her feet, staff in hand. "John—!"
"I've got him," John said, already moving.
Doris was upright, clutching Brian. The baby's face was red, his mouth wide, sound tearing out of him like something being ripped free.
The world responded.
The floor vibrated.
A low groan rolled through the stone, not mechanical, not natural—like the building itself was clenching its teeth.
"What's happening?" Flint shouted over Brian's cry.
"The wards," Dorothy snapped. "They're—"
She didn't get to finish.
Because then the Academy screamed back.
It started as a single chime—high, clear, sharp as shattered glass.
Then another.
Then a hundred.
Ward-alarm tones cascaded through the halls, rising to a pitch that set John's teeth on edge. He'd heard alarm bells on fortress walls
during attacks, but this was different. This came from everywhere—walls, floors, the air itself.
Brian screamed louder.
Doris rocked him, voice shaking. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay—"
"It's not," Flint yelled, clutching his head. "The walls are singing, that's not okay—"
The suite door jerked as something slammed into it from outside.
"Open!" a voice shouted. "By order of the—"
Dorothy flicked her staff; the latch unbolted on its own.
The door burst inward.
Two wardens shoved in, armor half-buckled, eyes wild, spear in hand.
"What's going on in here?" the lead demanded.
Brian's scream hit them like a wave.
The nearest warden staggered, hand flying to his ear. "Gods—"
The floor lurched.
Not much—just a ripple, a subtle shifting of angles. But John's stomach dropped as if he'd stepped too close to a cliff edge.
He grabbed the bedframe for balance.
Dorothy slammed her staff down.
"Focus!" she shouted. "It's resonance, not collapse. The tower's still standing."
"For now," Flint muttered.
The wardens stared at Brian, then at the flaring sigils.
"The alarms triggered from this room," the lead said hoarsely. "Perimeter wards, internal wards, the Spire wards—"
Dorothy's eyes blazed. "The Spire is reacting?"
"Yes," he snapped. "Everything is. Half the staff think we're under attack—"
Another tremor cut him off.
This one came with… something else.
A feeling.
Like when they'd passed the Voidborn ward-station on the road, multiplied a hundredfold.
Space flexed.
The corners of the room stretched for a heartbeat, then snapped back. For a moment, the distance between the bed and the door lengthened in John's eyes, like the room was inhaling.
Brian's scream climbed in pitch.
Doris sobbed, trying to hold him impossibly closer. "I don't know what to do—"
"Let me—" Dorothy started.
The world answered again.
The wall opposite the beds rippled like pond water.
Lines of light spiderwebbed across the stone—cracks, but not cracks. Not physical. Patterns of raw Aether, glowing faint and wrong.
Flint backed up fast. "No no no, that's not supposed to happen inside walls—"
"Everyone away from the wall!" Dorothy barked.
The wardens scrambled back toward the door.
John moved instinctively, stepping between the wall and his family.
"John!" Doris cried. "Don't—"
"If something comes through," he said, voice harsh, "it hits me first."
The wall's pattern shivered.
For a moment, John saw something behind it. Not clearly. Not a picture. More like a sense: heat without fire, wind without air, pressure
without weight. The feeling of standing on the skin of something enormous and sleeping.
Dorothy lifted her staff.
Lines of light leaped from its carved head, connecting to the rippling wall.
"John, keep him grounded!" she shouted. "He's amplifying the ward feedback. He's not just a victim here—he's the center!"
"How?" John shouted back. "I don't—"
"Touch him," she said. "Hold him. Talk to him. He knows your voice. Anchor him. Doris, too. You're his primary attunements."
Flint blinked. "His what?!"
"People he trusts most," Dorothy snapped. "Those are his solid points. Make them solid!"
John didn't understand the theory.
He understood holding on.
He crossed the small space in two strides and dropped to his knees beside Doris. She cradled Brian, sobbing apologies he couldn't hear over the baby's scream.
John cupped Brian's head with one big hand, laying the other over Doris's on the baby's back.
"Brian," he said, putting every shard of himself into the name. "Brian. Look at us. Hear us. You're here. You're safe. You're here."
His voice cracked on the last word.
Doris pressed her forehead to Brian's. "It's Mama, love, it's Mama, it's okay, it's just noise, don't listen, don't follow—"
The lights in the cracks flickered.
The floor steadied for half a heartbeat.
Then the ward scream surged again—this time lower, deeper, a bass rumble that vibrated in John's bones.
Dorothy swore.
"This isn't just him," she gritted out. "Something else is pushing. Some idiot must have triggered an old array at the same time, the whole system's in feedback—"
A new voice cut across the cacophony.
"MOVE."
The doorway filled with blue and silver.
Halvar strode in like he owned the entire concept of walking, robe half-unfastened, chain askew, hair mussed. Maevra was right
behind him, her dark braids half-unbound, violet robe belted hastily.
Both of them looked like they'd run here.
They probably had.
Maevra's gaze took in the scene in one sweep: Brian's shriek, the wall-pulse, Dorothy's staff throwing out counter-lines, John and Doris wrapped around their son, wardens halfway between panic and duty.
Her jaw set.
She thrust out her hand.
"Halvar," she snapped. "Outer lattice."
He didn't argue.
He flung his arms wide, fingers moving in a blur.
Invisible threads snapped into place across the room—a web inside the walls, turning the suite into a bubble within a bubble.
Maevra stepped into the center, eyes narrowing.
"Child," she said, voice cutting through everything. "Brian."
He screamed back at her.
His cry hit Maevra like a wave. Her robe twitched. The water-globes she usually floated around herself weren't there—but the air rippled around her anyway, her personal wards straining.
She didn't flinch.
"Brian," she repeated, louder. "Listen to me."
Flint groaned. "He's four days old, why does everyone talk to him like he's in a council meeting—"
"Because he hears more than you do," Maevra snapped without looking at him.
Dorothy grunted, sweat beading on her forehead. "He's caught in the ward-loop. They're screaming, he's screaming back, they're feeding each other—"
"Then we break the loop," Maevra said.
She moved closer.
Not to Brian.
To the wall.
The wrong light had thickened there, turning the spiderweb into something like veins.
Maevra lifted both hands.
"Halvar. Central grounding."
"On it," he said through clenched teeth.
The invisible inner web tightened.
John felt it as a pressure against his skin, a firm, insistent touch, like hands trying to push him down into the floor without crushing him.
Brian's scream rose higher, threading the ward-hum, linking with it.
Maevra's voice changed.
"By the Core," she said—not as a prayer, but as a command. "This tower holds."
The wardlines flared.
The cracks flinched, shrinking a fraction.
Maevra's eyes glowed faintly, like someone had lit a candle behind them. "This child is not your door," she hissed at the wall. "You do not
answer to him. You answer to me."
The wrong light flared brighter, fighting her.
Halvar gasped. "Spire feedback rising—Maevra—"
"Bind it," she said.
He slammed his palm against a sigil by the door.
The entire room lurched.
For a heartbeat, John saw past the wall again.
This time, the impression was clearer: a vast, distant fire that wasn't fire; layers of space folded like cloth; something enormous turned
away, as if sleeping and dreaming of burning.
Brian shrieked, body arching.
Doris sobbed. "It's hurting him—"
"No," Dorothy said, voice hoarse. "He's feeling it. That's worse."
Maevra's face twisted—not in fear, but in anger.
"At me," she said sharply. "Look at me."
John thought she was talking to Brian.
She wasn't.
She was talking to the wards.
To the Academy itself.
She stepped between the cracking wall and the family, hands still raised.
"Your duty is to the Empire," she snarled. "To the stability of this city. To containment. You do not reach. You do not invite. You turn inward. You shield."
With each word, the inner web Halvar held trembled.
Dorothy's staff hummed, her runes flaring bright white now, threads of counter-resonance weaving through the wrong light.
Flint clung to a bedpost, eyes wide, every instinct screaming to run—but there was nowhere to run to.
Doris clutched Brian, rocking, whispering his name over and over like a spell.
John held them both and spoke too, voice cracking.
"Brian, hear us. Hear us, not them. You're here. You're here. Not… wherever that is. You're in this room, with us. With your mother. With me."
His fear poured through every word.
Something shifted.
Brian's scream faltered.
Just a fraction.
Enough.
Maevra seized the opening.
"Halvar. Now."
He slammed both hands into invisible sigils only he saw.
Maevra turned her command inward, voice dropping to a low, resonant cadence that vibrated in John's sternum.
"Reset lattice," she intoned. "Re-route external stress to inert arrays. Sever unintended sympathetic chords. Anchor to known channels. Seal."
The room bucked.
The crack-light flared, surged—
Then shattered.
Not like glass.
Like lines scribbled in the wrong place, abruptly erased.
The wall snapped back to ordinary stone.
The wrong pressure vanished.
So did the low groan.
Silence hit like a wave.
Only Brian's thin, hiccuping sobs remained, raw and exhausted.
The ward-sigils dimmed, settling back to their normal glow.
The screaming stopped.
John sagged, his legs suddenly weak.
Doris buried her face in Brian's hair, shoulders shaking.
Flint slid down the bedpost until he hit the floor, laughing weakly in disbelief. "We're still alive," he said. "We're still—oh, gods, we're still here."
Dorothy leaned heavily on her staff, sweat trickling down her temple. "Tell me," she panted, "that was someone else's fault."
Halvar braced a hand on the wall, chest heaving. "Rennic's students opened a sealed array in the north tower," he said shakily. "Triggered a localized Aether surge. The Spire responded. So did the perimeter. And our
young friend here—" he nodded toward Brian "—got yanked into the echo."
Maevra's face was pale under her dark skin, lips thinned. "The Spire reached for him," she said quietly. "Or… he reached for it. Or both."
"Is he hurt?" Doris demanded, voice ragged.
Kaeth's healer satchel wasn't here—no one had had time to fetch her—but Maevra extended a hand, palm hovering a breath above Brian's chest.
Her expression shifted.
"Not physically," she said. "His channels are… rattled. Overstimulated. But intact."
"Intact," Doris whispered, clinging to the word.
Brian gave one last sob and then simply… went limp. Not in a frightening way. More like the way a body did when it had nothing left to give.
"He's asleep," Doris said, almost disbelieving.
"He's exhausted," Dorothy corrected softly. "He rode a ward-scream like a storm. No wonder he crashed."
Flint dragged himself upright. "So. To summarize. Some idiot played with something in the north tower, the big central tower had feelings about it, the wards panicked, and our four-day-old son almost… linked up with the entire system."
"Yes," Halvar said wearily. "That is an alarmingly accurate summary."
Maevra rounded on him suddenly. "Who authorized work in that array?" she demanded.
Halvar looked pained. "Rennic claims he had clearance. I'll be verifying. And then probably shouting."
"Do more than shout," she said coldly. "This is the second time in two days his recklessness has intersected with this child."
Doris stiffened. "Second?"
Halvar grimaced. "The orb in the Deep Weave Wing. Rennic's project. He sent students down there against protocol."
Maevra swore softly, a word that bent the air.
She turned back to John and Doris.
"I will not pretend this is acceptable," she said. "It isn't. Nothing inside this tower should have come close to touching him like that." Her jaw clenched. "But know this: what just happened will make it much easier to argue for tighter controls on experiments near your wing. And on him."
"Tighter controls on him?" John said sharply.
"Containment, not exploitation," she said. "There will be those who argue he should be separated. Put deeper in the tower. I will argue
the opposite: that he must remain with you, where your presence anchors him, under our supervision, not someone else's leash."
Doris held Brian closer. "He stays with us."
Maevra's gaze was steady. "Then we make that the safest option for everyone."
Flint exhaled slowly. "You… meant that. That wasn't just a nice speech."
"No," Maevra said. "I do not do nice speeches. I do necessary ones."
Halvar finally straightened fully, looking at Dorothy, then at John and Doris.
"This will be… in every report," he said. "Even with how quickly we cut it off, the ward-scream reached every sleeping mage in Aetherion. They'll talk. They'll guess. Some will be wrong. Some will be dangerously close to right."
"What will they say?" Doris whispered.
"That a four-day-old child almost harmonized with the Academy's full ward lattice," Halvar said. "That he momentarily drew the attention of the central tower. That he didn't do it intentionally—and that we stopped it."
"They'll be afraid," Dorothy said quietly. "Even the ones who play at being brave."
"And you'll have more leverage," Halvar told John. "Fear sharpens caution as much as it sharpens greed. Use that. Don't let them bully
you, but don't pretend we can ignore the risk either."
John's hand tightened on Doris's shoulder.
"You keep telling us he's not a weapon," he said. "Then nights like this happen."
"He isn't," Maevra said. "A weapon is something made for a purpose. He exists. That is enough to terrify people."
Doris looked up at her, eyes bright with unshed tears.
"Can you keep him safe?" she asked. "Truly? From the wards. From the Spire. From people like Rennic. From people like the Emperor."
Maevra opened her mouth.
Stopped.
She did not lie.
"I can keep him safer here than anywhere else in the Empire," she said quietly. "And I can promise you this: if anyone tries to turn him into a tool for their own ambition, they will cross me first."
Flint muttered, "And that sounds like a very bad idea."
"It is," Halvar said. "Ask the last three nobles who tried to interfere with curriculum."
"I would if they weren't 'posted to distant provinces,'" Dorothy said dryly.
Maevra's mouth twitched.
She looked back at Brian, now slack and sleeping, face still damp with tears.
"The wards will be jumpy for a day or so," she said. "Like a startled animal. But we've cut the worst of the feedback. If he cries, they'll flinch, but they won't… reach like that again. Not unless someone else rattles them first."
John blew out a long breath.
"So step one," Flint said. "No more idiot professors banging on old arrays."
"That," Maevra said, "would be an excellent start."
She turned to the wardens, who still hovered uncertainly by the door.
"Clear the hallway," she ordered. "No one near this suite without my explicit approval. Tell the curious that a draft in the Deep Weave wing spat out stress and the wards overreacted; that should be enough of the truth to keep them satisfied."
"Yes, Head Rectrix," the lead warden said, swallowing visibly. "And the Spire—?"
"I'll go speak to it later," she said darkly.
"…speak to it?" Flint mouthed.
Halvar winced. "You don't want to be there when she does."
The wardens fled.
Maevra rested a hand briefly on Doris's shoulder—light, almost formal, but the gesture held weight.
"Rest," she said. "He'll need quiet. So will you. Halvar and I will handle the fallout."
Doris's voice shook. "Thank you."
Maevra nodded.
She and Halvar left, the door closing behind them with a soft click.
Silence flooded in.
Dorothy sagged into the nearest chair, staff across her knees, eyes closing.
Flint slid down to sit on the floor beside John and Doris, back against the bed, head tipped back.
"I hate this tower," he said. "But I hate the idea of not being in it more."
John let his forehead rest briefly against Doris's temple.
Brian breathed in short, shallow puffs, utterly spent.
Doris stroked his hair.
"You're all right," she whispered. "You're all right. You're here. With us."
John's voice was low and steady, the way he used to speak to terrified recruits on first watch.
"They heard you," he murmured to his son. "And they're scared now. Good. Let them be. Let them take you seriously. But you're not
theirs. You're ours."
Dorothy opened one eye, looking at them.
"You realize," she said quietly, "that tonight every mage in this place heard his echo."
Flint shivered. "So much for rumors staying small."
"They were never going to," Dorothy replied. "The difference is, now they know he can reach into their precious wards. And they know Maevra can slap them back into place."
"Think that'll keep them from doing something stupid?" Flint asked.
"No," Dorothy said. "It will just change what kind of stupid they try."
John didn't answer.
He watched Brian's chest rise and fall.
Four days old.
Already shaking a tower.
Already pulling ghost-light out of walls.
Already forcing the mightiest mages in the Empire to scramble.
He pressed his hand, gently, over his son's tiny back.
"You are Brian," he said softly. "Not a scream. Not a symbol. Just Brian."
The wards hummed low and steady now.
Listening.
Not screaming.
Not reaching.
For tonight, at least, the crack in the world had closed.
But the echo remained—in stone, in rumor, in the minds of everyone who had felt the wards shudder.
And in the tiny body of the child who had done it without meaning to.