By the fifth day in the tower, John realized the Academy had rhythms the same way the road did.
Not wind and dust and wagon wheels, but bells and lectures, ward pulses and mealtimes, the murmur of recitations bleeding through stone.
"Today," Dorothy said, "we add one more rhythm to your collection."
John looked up from tightening the straps on his boots. "Which is?"
"Books," she said. "And students being fools near books."
Flint groaned from the table, where he was carving something unnecessary into a scrap of wood. "We're going to the library, aren't we?"
"Not the library," Dorothy corrected. "The Stacks. Capital S. The Grand Aetherion Reserve of Collected Knowledge."
Flint squinted. "That sounds like 'library' with more syllables and more wards."
"Exactly," Dorothy said.
Doris, sitting on the bed with Brian nestled in the crook of her arm, frowned. "You want to take him in there?"
"No," Dorothy said. "I want to take you and John. You need to know what exists above your heads when you sleep. Brian stays here."
Doris's arms tightened. "I don't like leaving him."
"I'll stay," Flint said before Dorothy could answer. "Someone has to guard the heir to the Screaming Walls."
Doris shot him a look.
He gave a small, earnest shrug. "I'll shout if anything breathes wrong. You know that."
She hesitated.
Brian's eyes were heavy, his tiny body slack and warm. He'd been calmer since the chalk stars appeared above his cradle. The nights were still broken by fussing, but the sharp, chased panic had eased.
Dorothy softened. "Sixty, maybe ninety minutes," she said. "Not longer. You see the shape of the Stacks, you see who watches them, and then we leave. You may never feel comfortable knowing what they've hoarded
here. But ignorance is worse."
Doris brushed a fingertip over Brian's cheek. He wrinkled his nose, displeased by the interruption.
"All right," she murmured. "Fine. He stays with Flint. We go."
Flint placed a hand over his heart. "I will not let him be stolen, studied, or sermonized while you are gone."
"That's surprisingly specific," John said.
"I've been listening," Flint replied.
The route to the Stacks was not the same as the one to the refectory or the training grounds.
It lay deeper, coiled around the axis of three towers, down stairwells whose walls grew thicker and colder. Lanterns here burned steady and bright, blue-white and glass-shielded. The air smelled of paper, ink, and the faint metallic bite of old magic baked into shelves.
Halvar met them at the final landing.
He wore his formal chain, though his robe sleeves were rolled up, exposing forearms inked with small, practical sigils.
"Didn't think you'd come yourself," John said.
Halvar snorted. "If I let you walk into my Stacks alone with Dorothy, I'd never see half my rare volumes again."
Dorothy lifted her chin. "If you didn't want your books read, you shouldn't have left them lying around being interesting."
Halvar gestured toward a heavy door bound in dark iron. "This is the public entrance," he said. "Students, lower staff, guild
representatives. They get three floors, supervised access, and nowhere near the
good shelves."
"Good shelves?" Flint would have said. John thought it anyway.
"We're not using that door," Halvar added.
He led them to the right, past a blank stretch of wall.
John saw nothing special about it.
Halvar reached up and tapped his chain three times.
A sigil bloomed faintly in the stone: a circle split by two intersecting lines.
"Head access," Halvar murmured.
The wall shifted.
Not physically. John felt it move before he saw
anything—space bending, seams rearranging. Then an archway appeared where there had been only stone, opening onto a narrow stair down.
Doris stiffened, instincts flaring.
"Relax," Dorothy murmured. "It's just a fold."
"I used to make folds," Doris shot back. "Now I prefer my walls honest."
John touched her shoulder. "We can turn back."
She shook her head. "No. I ran from this before. I won't again."
Halvar stepped through the arch. "Stay close," he said. "The fold doesn't like indecision."
"That's comforting," John muttered, following.
The stair felt… wrong in ways his soldier's mind couldn't quite quantify. Each step was the same size, the same angle, but distance
warped. After ten steps, he felt like he'd gone much farther. After twenty, he could have sworn they were level with the training grounds again. After thirty, his ears popped.
Then it was over.
They emerged into a circular hall lined with doors.
Here the air was still.
Not quiet—there was a sound, but it wasn't voices or footsteps.
It was pages.
The soft whisper of paper moving somewhere unseen.
Wards hummed underfoot, threads woven so tight and fine John couldn't distinguish one from another.
"The Crown thinks the Academy's main weapon is its mages," Halvar said quietly. "They are wrong. This is far more dangerous."
He opened one of the doors.
The smell of books rolled over them like a tide.
The head-level Stacks were nothing like the small caravan libraries John remembered, with their handful of ledgers and tattered prayer-books.
This was… endless.
Shelves climbed three stories high, reached by narrow iron staircases and sliding ladders. Lanterns floated in the air, moving slowly
along cables that weren't attached to anything obvious. Some rows held neat, well-copied texts. Others groaned under the weight of scrolls bound with ribbons, tablets carved with archaic script, and etched metal plates that faintly vibrated in the hand.
"It's a good thing I left Brian with Flint," Doris
whispered. "If he hiccuped here, the shelves would fall on us."
"They'd try," Dorothy murmured. "But they'd bounce. The Stacks protect themselves."
A thin, elderly woman appeared from between two shelves, carrying a stack of books taller than her chest. Her grey hair was braided into
a thick rope tipped with a copper cap. She wore simple brown, unmarked by rank.
"Rector," she said. Her voice held the rasp of someone who spent most of her days speaking softly. "You brought guests."
"Master Archivist Lyr," Halvar said. "John. Doriane. Dorothy. This is the woman who knows more secrets than the rest of us
combined."
Lyr sniffed. "Exaggeration. I only know where they live." Her gaze flicked to Doris, lingering for half a heartbeat. "Voidborn child returned," she murmured. It wasn't quite a question.
"Voidborn who ran from being a child," Doris said. "And who's not planning to resume the post."
Lyr's eyes crinkled. "That, at least, is consistent." She shifted the books to one arm with disconcerting ease. "I've locked down three categories since your scream," she said abruptly. "Everything on practical
dimensional manipulation, everything on ward-key resonance, and everything Vela
has ever written that could be misused by someone with more power than sense."
Halvar blinked. "You locked Vela's work without asking?"
"She files in my house," Lyr said. "She plays by my rules. She may fume, but she will not find her diagrams where she left them." Her gaze sharpened on John. "You understand what this place is?"
"A target," John said.
Lyr nodded once. "Good. Most people think it's a treasure chest. Treasure gets stolen. Targets get defended."
Dorothy's eyes gleamed. "I've always liked you."
"Flatterer," Lyr said. "You may browse the top layer. Anything that hums at you, don't touch. Anything that hums at him"—her eyes cut to Doris's chest, as if seeing Brian even through stone and distance—"we burn."
Doris swallowed. "Agreed."
Lyr vanished between shelves with shocking speed.
John exhaled slowly. "Is everyone in this place terrifying?"
"Yes," Halvar said. "It's part of the entrance exam."
They moved through the aisles.
Halvar pointed things out as they went. "Local history. Trade logs. Theological disputes. Banned spells. Emergency manuals. You can't access the last two without my authorising the shelf. Or Lyr's."
John's eyes caught on a row of titles in faded ink.
On the Sealing of the First Flame.
Spatial Collapse Events and Their Mitigation.
Voidborn Trials: A Study in Necessary Cruelty.
His hands clenched.
"Those should be burned," he muttered.
"And lose what they cost?" Dorothy said softly. "Mistakes have to live somewhere. Otherwise we repeat them faster."
"Some of them read like instruction manuals," Doris said, voice tight.
"Those," Halvar said, "Lyr tends to misfile somewhere very unfindable."
They stopped at a table where several volumes lay open under a glass dome.
"What are these?" John asked.
"Contacts," Halvar said. "Records of known Paragon cells, cult scripts, intercepted chants. Ren sends copies of everything they seize. We cross-reference. Sometimes we find patterns."
Doris's skin crawled. "They write their rituals down?"
"Zealots are scholars with worse manners," Dorothy said. "They love words almost as much as they love fire."
John peered through the glass.
He couldn't read the script—the letters twisted in a way that made his eyes ache—but he recognized some symbols. A crude spiral. A flame sigil with a line through it. A strange jagged mark that looked disturbingly like the crack they'd seen in their wall.
"Seen that before," he said.
Halvar's face tightened. "Yes. It's an old mark. They took pieces of Voidborn notation, stripped out all the warnings and context, and kept the parts that look like doors."
"Of course they did," Dorothy murmured. "Never met a door they didn't want to kick."
Doris reached out, fingers stopping just before the glass.
Her breath hitched.
"Don't," John said, catching her wrist.
"I know," she whispered. "I wasn't going to touch. It just… smells familiar."
Halvar's eyes flicked to her. "Smells?"
"In the way magic has a smell," she said. "Burned air. Cold stone. I remember seeing that mark in the old diagrams. Only once. There was a story. Something they did that even they regretted."
"Where?" Halvar asked quietly.
She closed her eyes.
"A mountain town," she said slowly. "High. Snow. They tried to cut a line—break the connection to a wardstation that was overloading. It half-worked. The ground settled. The town… didn't."
John's stomach lurched. "Didn't how?"
"Stay where it belonged," she whispered. "Pieces of it ended up miles away. Buried. Folded. A whole family found half a roof upside down in the valley days later." Her eyes opened, haunted. "They stopped using that mark after. At least in the open."
Halvar's jaw tightened. "The Paragons using it now means they found records your ancestors buried as deeply as they could."
Doris nodded, throat tight.
"So every time they scratch that into a ritual circle," John said, "they're trying to do what your family refused to."
"Yes," Halvar said. "Without their understanding. Or their restraint."
Dorothy tapped the glass lightly. "Which is why we're here instead of pretending this doesn't exist."
A soft echo of footsteps approached.
Kael appeared at the end of the aisle, a slim volume tucked under his arm. He froze when he saw them, glancing guiltily at Halvar.
"I'm not in the restricted ring," he said quickly. "Master Lyr said I'm allowed on this level if I don't touch anything that glows."
Halvar nodded. "You are. For now." His gaze sharpened. "We'll pretend this isn't a coincidence."
Kael's eyes flicked to John. "You got my note?"
"The feather?" John said. "Yes. Garden bench. Second hour."
Kael's shoulders loosened a fraction. "Good. I didn't want to write too much; the birds get jealous."
"What do you have?" Dorothy asked.
Kael hesitated, then lowered his voice. "Students are talking about last night's council," he said. "They heard Vela got scolded. Some are delighted. Some are furious on her behalf."
Doris breathed, "Of course."
"She's not saying much," Kael continued. "Which is worse. The quiet ones plan more."
"Any talk of… action?" Halvar asked.
"Nothing overt," Kael said. "But a couple of her favorites were muttering about 'waiting for a better opportunity' and 'catching true
resonance in the wild.' They're young. They think they're subtle. They're not."
Doris's face went cold. "They think they're going to corner my son in a hallway and see if he glows."
Kael's jaw clenched. "Yes."
"We'll make sure they don't," Halvar said. "Names?"
"Teren. Myla. The usual constellation of sycophants," Kael said. "I can give you the list later, in a safer place."
Halvar nodded. "Do so. We'll adjust patrol routes. And class seating."
Kael hesitated. "There's another rumor," he said. "Less… concrete. Some of the upper years are betting on who gets 'first proper access' to the Echo. They treat it like a competition. Prize is undefined, but the talk
itself is—"
"Enough," Halvar said, voice suddenly sharp. "You were right to tell us."
Kael dipped his head, looking a little pale. "I know I'm trespassing in matters above my rank," he said. "But the last time the Academy
treated people like prizes, my brother jumped. I'd rather not see it again."
Doris's expression softened. "You're not trespassing," she said. "You're the only reason we hear half of this before it explodes."
Kael's mouth wobbled for a heartbeat, like he wasn't used to being thanked.
He covered it by shifting the book under his arm. "Also," he added, "someone's been scraping symbols into the desk near my seat. Not in chalk. Etched. Hidden under ink stains."
John tensed. "What kind of symbols?"
Kael grimaced. "Paragon-adjacent. Not the forbidden word. But phrases about the 'pure flame' and 'cleansing the chaff.' I've reported it
twice. The instructor sanded it once. It came back."
"Where?" Halvar asked.
"Northwest lecture hall, tier three," Kael said. "Seat twenty-two. Back row."
Halvar's eyes darkened. "I'll see to it personally. And I'll find out who's sitting there."
Kael nodded, relieved. He paused, glancing at the shelves. "I should go," he said. "Lyr lets me in here on the condition that I 'don't get in the way of people with more interesting problems.' Her words."
"You're part of the interesting problem," Dorothy said mildly.
"That's not encouraging," Kael said. But his eyes gleamed.
He slipped away between shelves.
Halvar watched him go. "That boy is going to cause me so much work," he muttered.
"Useful work," Dorothy said.
Halvar sighed. "Unfortunately."
They didn't stay much longer.
Lyr caught them on the way out and pressed a slim folio into Doris's hands. "Voidborn vector diagrams," she said. "Redacted. I took out the
bits that make walls wobble. Fill in what the old scribes got wrong, if you like."
Doris stared at the folio as if it might bite her.
"I'll… see," she said.
Back up the folded stair, through the shifting arch, into air that smelled less of ink and more of stone and people. John's head felt slightly stuffed, like he'd been underwater too long.
"How do you stand it?" he asked Dorothy. "All that… weight. History. Mistakes."
"I don't," Dorothy said. "I visit. Then I leave. Same as the road. Too much of anything—dust or books—and you forget there are other ways to breathe."
Brian was exactly where they'd left him.
Cradled.
Alive.
Not glowing.
Flint was at the table, whittling a small block of wood into something that resembled a bird with a crooked beak.
"Status report," he said as they entered. "One: no robed intruders. Two: no screaming wards. Three: he spat up on me twice and drooled
on my shirt, which I choose to interpret as an oath of fealty."
Doris took Brian back, relief making her shoulders drop.
"What did he do while we were gone?" John asked.
Flint considered. "Stared at the stars. Fussed once when it rained harder. Calmed when I hummed. I don't know if that last part was because of the song or in spite of it."
Doris kissed Brian's temple. "Good job," she murmured.
Flint preened. "See? Already an excellent uncle."
John told them about the Stacks.
The sealed texts. Lyr's quiet ferocity. The Paragon mark on the tablet. Doris's half-buried memory of a torn-apart town.
Flint whistled low. "They tried to unplug a line and ripped a village into confetti. The cultists read that and thought, great idea, let's do it again."
"Zealots never met a catastrophe they didn't want to reverse-engineer," Dorothy said.
"And Kael?" Doris asked.
John relayed his warnings.
By the time he finished, Doris's expression had settled into something flinty and sharp.
"They're making bets," she said. "Like he's a sport."
"Yes," Dorothy said quietly. "And that is only going to get worse."
Doris shifted Brian so that he lay cradled in both her arms, his head pillowed on her forearm. His eyes blinked open, unfocused but curious.
She looked down at him.
"They think you're a prize," she said softly. "A resource. An experiment. A risk. A story. Anything but what you are."
"And what's that?" Flint asked, gentler than his words sounded.
She kissed Brian's forehead.
"Mine," she said. "Ours. A person. Even if you can't hold your own head yet."
John placed a hand over hers.
"We draw our own lines," he said. "Maps. Limits."
Dorothy nodded. "We've seen their archives," she said. "Now we build our own. A ledger of who reaches too far, who pushes too hard. So when the time comes, we know who to stop first."
Flint flipped his little bird in his fingers, as if weighing it.
"We're making a lot of lists," he said.
"It's a big danger," Dorothy replied.
John glanced at the chalk stars above the cradle.
"We saw their version of the world," he said. "Threads and seals. Warnings and misfiled shame. They've drawn lines over everything and called it understanding."
He looked at Brian.
"For you," he murmured, "we'll draw fewer lines. And we'll teach you how to erase the ones that shouldn't have been there in the first
place."
Brian yawned.
His tiny hand lifted, fingers spreading.
The chalk constellations above him glimmered faintly, like embers stirred.
Then settled.
Outside the walls, along unseen lines in the land, Paragon cells argued over what the echo in the world meant and how to use it.
Inside the tower, in ink and chalk and whisper, other people argued over how to contain it.
In this small room, they added their own quiet resistance to the map.
Not with spells.
Not with decrees.
With choices.
Stay.
Watch.
Listen.
And, when necessary, push back.
The Stacks whispered below.
The wards hummed above.
And between them, a newborn breathed, his existence already tugging at lines drawn long before he was born.