The next morning, the tower sounded… different.
Not louder. Not quieter. Just clearer.
John wasn't sure if something in Aetherion had actually changed overnight, or if it was just that, after hooks on wardlines and two
blankets of stone, he was finally paying attention.
Either way, the hum was no longer background.
It was there when he woke—a low, steady vibration under the mattress, through the floor, in the bones of the walls. He'd felt it before, of course. But it had been like wagon wheels on a long road: omnipresent, easy to
ignore until they broke.
Now he listened.
Hum.
Pause.
Hum.
Pause.
The rhythm felt… familiar.
Like a heartbeat.
Like breathing.
Like counting steps along a wall.
"Good," Dorothy rasped from the chair. "You're hearing it properly."
John turned his head.
She looked marginally less dead than she had the night before. Color had returned to her cheeks; the smudges under her eyes were still
there, but lighter. Her staff rested against her shoulder, not clutched in a white-knuckled grip.
Brian was awake, too.
He lay in the cradle, eyes open, staring past the chalk stars at the ceiling itself, as if testing the limits of his world. His fingers curled and uncurled in slow, exploratory movements.
Doris sat cross-legged by the cradle, hair braided back for once, a cup of tea cooling beside her. She'd drawn new lines among the stars in the night—tiny additions, barely visible, linking some dots, leaving others
alone.
"How can you tell I'm 'hearing it properly'?" John asked.
Dorothy tapped her temple. "You're frowning in the right place," she said. "Between the brows. That's a listening frown, not an 'I forgot my sword' frown."
Flint groaned from his pallet, dragging a blanket over his head. "Too early for ward jokes."
"It's never too early to stop being stabbed in the soul," Dorothy said.
"Unfortunately, also true," he muttered.
Doris brushed a fingertip over Brian's tiny fist. "You said we'd start with walls," she reminded Dorothy. "Before you changed your mind."
"I never change my mind," Dorothy said. "I simply rearrange the order of my decisions."
Flint pushed himself upright, hair a disaster. "If this is going to be some 'stand very still and feel things' exercise, I demand more tea."
"You'll get tea when you can tell the difference between a ward pulse and indigestion," Dorothy said.
Flint squinted at her. "Sometimes I'm not sure you can."
She ignored him.
Instead, she levered herself up, joints cracking, and walked to the wall nearest the door. She laid her palm flat against the stone.
"Rule one," she said. "You don't push. You listen."
John came closer, watching.
"Most people think magic is about shouting at the world until it does what you want," Dorothy continued. "That's how you get cracked walls and dizzy apprentices. The Voidborn—" her eyes flicked briefly to Doris
"—knew better. Before they bent anything, they listened to see where it was already leaning."
"You're not going to make us bend anything," Doris said sharply.
"No," Dorothy said. "We're not bending. We're noticing. There's a difference." She nodded at the wall. "Come on. Hand up."
John hesitated, then pressed his palm against the stone beside hers.
The rock was cool.
Not cold.
Not warm.
Neutral.
He exhaled slowly.
"What am I meant to feel?" he asked.
"Nothing, at first," Dorothy said. "Because you're too busy trying to feel. Stop that."
"That's very helpful," Flint muttered.
"You too," Dorothy said. "Up."
Flint rolled his eyes, but he shuffled over and slapped his hand on the wall on her other side.
Doris stayed by the cradle a moment longer, watching.
Brian's gaze slid from ceiling to wall to her face.
She kissed his forehead. "I'll be right here," she murmured, more for herself than for him.
Then she rose and joined them, laying her hand between John's and Dorothy's.
The four of them stood there in a crooked line, palms against stone, looking faintly ridiculous.
Dorothy closed her eyes.
"First," she said, "you breathe."
"We're already breathing," Flint said.
"Louder, then," she replied.
He huffed a laugh, which didn't help.
John shut his eyes.
Inhale.
Exhale.
The habitual soldier's rhythm—match breath to steps, to spear drills, to the rise and fall of a watch.
He synced it to the flicker of the ward-sigil above the door.
Pulse.
Pause.
Pulse.
Pause.
"Now," Dorothy murmured, "pretend you're not listening to yourself. You're listening through yourself. Your hand is not the important part. The wall is. You're just the bridge."
"Bridge to what?" Flint asked.
"To not dying," she said.
He shut up.
The first sensation John registered was his own skin—rough calluses, the faint tackiness of dried sweat, the tiny pulse in his wrist.
He pushed his awareness past that.
Stone.
Cold, slightly damp. Like touching the side of an old well in winter.
Behind that—
A faint… murmur.
He frowned.
The temptation was to lean in—to push deeper, to press his will into the wall.
Dorothy's fingers rapped lightly against his wrist.
"Don't shove," she said without opening her eyes. "You don't kick down a door to find out if someone knocked."
He eased back.
Listened again.
Hum.
Not a sound, exactly.
More a presence.
Like the feeling of being near a sleeping animal and sensing its breath without hearing it.
"Good," Dorothy murmured. "That's the general lattice. The ward blanket. That's what most people mean when they say 'the wards.' Smooth, even, constant. If that ever spikes, you yell."
"How do you know it's not just blood in my ears?" Flint said.
"Because the blood doesn't change with the bell schedule," Dorothy replied. "Listen. There's a second note."
John strained.
At first, all he could find was the base hum.
Then, as the silence stretched, he caught it.
A faint, higher vibration.
Quicker.
More… alert.
"Faster," he said quietly. "Closer to the surface."
"The corridor wards," Dorothy said. "The ones that notice motion, identity, noise. They sit on top of the general lattice like a second blanket. They're what I tugged last night to cut the line."
Doris's eyes were closed, brow furrowed.
"I feel three," she whispered.
Dorothy's head turned. "Where?"
Doris bit her lip. "The two you said. But there's… something under. Lower. Slower. Like… stone humming to itself in its sleep."
Dorothy exhaled. "Foundation echo," she said. "Voidborn bones. Most people can't feel that unless they're standing in a ritual circle."
"I grew up on stories about it," Doris said. "That's not the same as liking it."
John couldn't sense the third layer.
He tried.
He got only a vague impression of weight.
He opened his eyes.
"Is it important that I can't feel that one?" he asked.
"Not yet," Dorothy said. "You feeling the general lattice is enough for now. Doris has a head start. Her blood remembers. Yours will learn."
Flint frowned. "I feel… something that tickles. Like standing too close to static."
"Focus," Dorothy said. "Where?"
"Higher," he said. "Not in the wall. More… in the air. Between my hand and my face. Like cobwebs I can't see."
Dorothy smiled, brief and sharp. "Door ward," she said. "Halvar wove a tighter identity check over your threshold last night. It's subtle. You're annoying enough to notice it."
Flint preened. "So I'm special."
"You're sensitive," she said. "Which is an entirely different curse."
Doris opened her eyes, pulling her hand back, flexing her fingers. "It feels like being half back in the old training halls," she said quietly. "Listening for cracks."
John glanced at her. "Is that… bad?"
"Yes," she said. "And no." Her jaw tightened. "Last time, it was for them. This time, it's for him."
They all looked to the cradle.
Brian yawned, unimpressed by the importance of the exercise.
His fingers curled around empty air, as if searching for a familiar touch.
Doris went to him immediately.
"You did well," Dorothy said quietly, more to John and Flint. "Now you know what 'ordinary' feels like for this room. The next step is noticing when 'ordinary' turns into 'wrong.'"
"That sounds like a lifetime's work," John said.
"It is," Dorothy replied. "Unfortunately, you're on an accelerated schedule."
Later, after breakfast—porridge again, tea again, a small tray of sugared nuts that Serais had somehow smuggled past refectory
rationing—they tried the corridor.
John didn't like it.
He understood the need.
That didn't make it feel less like stepping out from behind a shield.
Dorothy went first, staff in hand.
"Short walk," she said. "Five doors down, then back. You keep your hands free. You don't touch anyone. You don't stop longer than it takes to breathe. If you feel anything that makes your teeth itch, we go back inside. Understood?"
"Understood," John said.
Doris adjusted Brian's sling, tightening the wrap that held him snug against her chest. He'd fallen into one of his heavy, limp sleeps,
limbs loose, face slack.
Flint checked the hall both ways, fingers twitching, the butt of his knife visible at his belt.
The wardens at either end straightened as they emerged.
"How's the line?" Dorothy asked the nearer.
"Quieter than last night," the warden said. "Captain Orane's people found two bundles of twine and bone charms knotted into a drain grate. Burned them." His lip curled. "Smelled like bad incense and worse intentions."
"Any marks?" John asked.
"Scratched on the stone under the grate," the warden said. "Same jagged thing your Rector's been yelling about."
"The Paragon crack," Doris said softly.
The warden shuddered. "We scrubbed it. Then we filled the grooves. Then we posted a man there. Nothing's humming now."
"Good," Dorothy said. "Listen for anything that tries to hum back."
He nodded.
They walked.
Five doors down.
No more.
The corridor looked the same as always: stone, sigils, occasional doorways, a narrow slit of window at the far end showing a damp
slice of sky.
It felt different.
John kept his shoulders loose, his pace measured.
His instincts wanted him to prowl—head on a swivel, hand on his sword. But that would draw more attention than it deflected. So he walked like a tired father escorting his family for a brief stretch of air.
Inside, he watched.
The wards here hummed a little brighter than in their room. The corridor net was thicker—designed to monitor multiple suites, not just one.
"Try it," Dorothy murmured.
He reached a hand out, brushing fingertips against the wall as they walked.
The stone vibrated faintly under his skin.
He felt the general lattice.
The quicker rhythm of corridor wards.
A faint, higher prickling—door wards, Halvar's new additions.
He listened for anything else.
Nothing.
Normal hum.
Normal pressure.
No thin, oily thread.
Doris walked beside him, one hand lightly resting on the other wall, Brian's weight against her chest. Her face was calm, but her eyes flicked occasionally to the sigils glowing above doorframes.
"How many of these are empty?" she murmured.
"Half," Dorothy said. "Reserved for visiting families, minor nobles, guild representatives. Most are too nervous to bring their children
near you at the moment. Which is convenient, because I don't want their noise near him either."
Flint trailed a step behind, fingers grazing the stone at hip height.
He made a face. "Someone argued in that room yesterday," he muttered.
"Excuse me?" John said.
Flint jerked his chin at a closed door. "There. Feels… sharp. Like when people glare at each other across a table and don't say what they mean."
Dorothy glanced sideways at him.
"You're picking up emotional residue," she said. "I should've guessed."
"That's a thing?" Flint said.
"Yes," she replied. "Not for most people. For you, apparently. Congratulations. You're cursed in yet another way."
"Wonderful," he said. "Add it to the list."
They reached the fifth door.
Dorothy stopped, laying her palm flat against the wall.
"Here," she said quietly. "Feel this."
John and Doris both reached out.
The stone under their hands felt… thicker.
Not like two blankets layered.
More like a knot in fabric.
The hum was still there, but it had a different flavor.
Denser.
Slower.
"What is it?" John asked.
"Halvar's buffer," Dorothy said. "He wrapped this section of corridor extra tight. If a line like last night's comes sneaking along, it hits this and has to go around. Costs them more effort. Makes more noise."
"So it's a good knot," Flint said.
"For us," Dorothy said. "For them, it's a wall. I wanted you to feel the difference so you don't panic when you sense it from your room. Not
every variation is an attack."
Doris exhaled slowly. "Feels like… thicker air," she said. "Like walking into humidity."
"Exactly," Dorothy said. "Remember that. The part that matters isn't that something feels different. It's whether that difference has teeth."
"You're very calming," Flint said.
"And you're very alive, which suggests my methods work," she replied.
They turned and walked back.
By the time they reached their suite again, Brian had begun to stir.
Not in fear. Just the cranky discontent of a child who had been asleep and was now, inexplicably, not.
Doris kissed the top of his head. "We're going back in," she murmured. "Don't start humming at the bricks yet; we're not done learning which ones are ours."
Inside, the room felt… safer.
Not because the threat was gone.
It never would be.
But because they now had words—or at least sensations—for things that had been previously only fear.
Blanket.
Knot.
Ripple.
Hum.
They ate, rested, repeated the exercises on and off through the day.
Sometimes with hands on the wall.
Sometimes with bare feet on the floor.
Sometimes with eyes closed, backs pressed against the same stretch of stone, breathing together.
Doris learned faster than John.
It wasn't surprising.
Her bloodline hummed to this place.
She could pick out foundation echoes now without trying, distinguishing them from the general lattice. The knowledge made her uneasy, but it also sharpened her resolve.
"If I can feel when the ground is tired," she said once, hand on the wall, eyes distant, "I can feel when the Paragons try to lean on
it. That has to count for something."
John's progress was slower.
He could tell "ordinary" from "shifted" more clearly now, but the subtler layers still eluded him. The only time he'd ever paid attention
to the feel of walls before was when they were vibrating under siege engines.
But he kept trying.
He was good at repetition.
The legions had taught him that.
Flint was annoyingly quick at sensing emotional flavors.
"Someone laughed here," he'd say, brushing a section of corridor.
"Someone cried here."
"Someone tripped and swore here."
Dorothy alternated between amusement and exasperation.
"You're supposed to be listening to the wards," she said.
"I am," he protested. "The people stuck in them are louder."
By late afternoon, John found he could walk from one end of the suite to the other and know, with his eyes closed, exactly when he passed the doorframe, the cradle, the garden-facing wall.
The cradle was the strangest.
The stone around it hummed differently.
Softer.
Less tense.
Like the tower itself was holding its breath in a slightly gentler way near that patch of floor.
"Because of him?" John asked quietly.
"Yes," Dorothy said. "He's already rewriting the lattice. Just a little. Enough to make it hesitate before leaning on him."
"Is that… safe?" Doris asked.
"No," Dorothy said. "But it's reality. The question isn't whether he'll change the wards. It's whether we shape those changes or let them happen in whatever way hurts most."
Doris grimaced. "You never give the easy answers."
"I threw my easy answers down a well years ago," Dorothy said. "They kept getting people killed."
In the early evening, Kael arrived.
He knocked in their pattern—two taps, pause, one tap—and stood in the doorway with his usual air of cautious apology.
"You look tired," he said, peering at them.
"You look like you've been eavesdropping," Flint said.
"That's my job," Kael replied.
He stepped just inside the threshold, eyes flicking over the room. His gaze lingered on the cradle, the chalk stars, the faint glow of the
ward-sigil.
"You changed the lattice," he said quietly.
Doris blinked. "You can feel that?"
Kael shrugged one shoulder. "The corridor outside feels… muffled. Like there's a blanket over certain frequencies. And the air in here
is thicker. In a good way." His brow furrowed. "Almost like the way the garden wards feel, but tighter."
Dorothy nodded. "Two blankets of stone," she said. "Halvar's and mine. You're getting better at noticing."
Kael looked faintly pleased, then remembered why he was here and sobered.
"I have news," he said.
The word sat heavily in the air.
"Bad?" John asked.
"Not the worst kind," Kael said. "But not good. Vela held a 'special seminar' this afternoon for her favored students. Officially about 'rare lineages and their responsibilities.' Unofficially…" He made a face. "…about your son."
Doris's jaw clenched. "What did she say?"
"That Voidborn bloodlines have always been both blessing and threat," Kael said. "That uncontrolled power invites disaster. That the Academy has a 'moral obligation' to study and guide such cases for the good of the Empire."
Flint rolled his eyes. "She loves that phrase."
"She also suggested," Kael continued reluctantly, "that if the family proves… uncooperative, the Emperor may have to intervene directly. For 'public safety.'"
Doris's fingers dug into the cradle edge hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
"She's calling for Imperial kidnapping in a student lecture?" Flint said. "Bold."
"Clever," Dorothy countered. "If she feeds that idea to enough young mages, by the time she says it in council, it'll feel less shocking. Just 'what everyone's already thinking.'"
Kael nodded. "Some of the students were horrified," he said. "Some nodded along. A few asked questions about… procedures." Disgust tinged his voice.
John's hand found the hilt of his sword.
"What sort of procedures?" he asked, dangerously calm.
"How one measures early channel stability," Kael said. "Whether certain emotional triggers could be tested. Whether 'controlled exposure' to stress would hasten development."
Doris's face went white.
"She's talking about… triggering him on purpose?" she whispered.
"Yes," Kael said. "In theory. For now."
Dorothy closed her eyes briefly. "She's always loved experiments more than people."
"Halvar won't allow it," John said.
Kael hesitated. "He'll try to stop it," he said. "So will Maevra. So will Serais. But Vela plays a long game. She's been outmaneuvering
council votes for years, even when she 'loses.' She plants ideas. Watches them grow."
Flint rubbed his temples. "So while we're worried about cultists scratching at the walls, we have a professor scratching at the laws."
"Welcome to Aetherion," Dorothy said.
"Is that all?" John asked Kael.
"No," Kael said. "Speaking of scratching—someone etched another symbol in the northwest lecture hall. Near my seat again." He grimaced. "This time it's the jagged crack with three little dots under it."
Doris made a choked sound. "That's—"
"The mark they used for the town that tore," Dorothy finished grimly. "Three dots for the families who died in pieces."
Kael looked ill. "They're using it like a badge."
Dorothy's voice cooled. "Halvar has names?" she asked.
"Some," Kael said. "He watched who fidgeted when he ordered the desk replaced. He's very good at watching."
John had noticed.
"I thought you should know," Kael said. "If the Paragons are crawling along the outer wards and Vela is stirring the inner ones, you should
at least know which faces to avoid in hallways."
"We appreciate it," John said.
Kael's gaze moved to Brian.
The baby was awake now, staring at their visitor with unfocused curiosity, the corners of his mouth damp.
"That's… him?" Kael asked, voice softer.
"Yes," Doris said.
Kael stepped no closer.
He stood just inside the ward, eyes gentle and a little sad.
"He looks…" Kael started, then faltered.
"Small?" Flint supplied.
"Human," Kael said.
Doris's throat tightened. "He is."
"I know," Kael said. "It's just… in lecture halls, they talk like he's already a spell gone wrong or a prophecy on legs." He shook his head.
"It's harder to swallow that nonsense when you can see his nose is slightly crooked."
Doris blinked. "Is it?"
"A little," Kael said. "From the side."
John snorted despite himself. "Thank you for that crucial intelligence."
Kael smiled faintly. "Any time."
He sobered again. "I'll keep listening," he said. "If Vela pushes harder, if the Paragon marks spread, if any student starts talking about 'tests' in a way that makes my skin crawl—"
"You tell us," Dorothy said.
"And Halvar," John added.
"And me," Doris said.
Kael nodded once, serious as any sworn soldier.
"Bench," he said. "Second hour. Or feather."
Then he left, footsteps quiet in the corridor.
The door closed.
The room hummed.
Doris stared at the cradle, at Brian's small face, at the chalk stars above.
"They all have plans for him," she whispered. "Even the ones who mean well."
John's hand settled on her shoulder. "So do we," he said. "We just happen to include 'letting him choose his own' as part of it."
Flint flopped into his chair, throwing his feet up on the table.
"So," he said. "To summarise today's education: we've learned to hear the tower breathe, the Paragons are still scribbling in stupid places, Vela is plotting, and our informant is uncomfortably perceptive about
noses."
Dorothy snorted.
"Missing one thing," she said.
"What's that?" Flint asked.
She nodded toward the cradle.
Brian had lifted his hand again.
Not in panic.
In exploration.
His fingers stretched toward the chalk stars.
One of them glimmered.
Just for an instant.
No crack.
No scream.
No hook.
Just a tiny, harmless pulse of light.
"He's learning the difference between inside and outside too," Dorothy said quietly. "Between safe humming and dangerous."
Doris watched, eyes shining.
John slipped his arm around her, listening to the walls, to the floor, to the small sounds of his son's breathing.
For the first time since they'd entered the tower, he felt not just besieged, but… slightly ahead of something.
The hooks would come again.
The marks would spread.
The professors would scheme.
The cults would scratch.
But now, when the hum changed, they would know.
And they would not be alone in hearing it.
Two blankets of stone.
A handful of allies.
A child with crooked nose and dangerous blood, reaching for chalk stars instead of cracks in the world.
It wasn't much.
It would have to be enough.
For now.