By the time the next morning rolled around, the tower's hum had become part of John's idea of "normal."
He'd never thought that would happen.
Normal used to be wagon wheels and distant howling and sharp-eyed men with bad tempers and worse knives. Now it was wardlight and chalk stars and the quiet, padded throb of stone that knew his son's name.
He was halfway through tightening his boots when Dorothy cleared her throat.
"Walls," she said. "Floors. Now we graduate to the dangerous part."
Flint, still half-buried under his blanket, groaned. "Let me guess. Roofs."
"People," Dorothy said.
Flint pulled the blanket off his face. "That's worse."
Doris, sitting on the bed with a sleepy Brian tucked into the sling, looked wary. "You think we're ready?"
"No," Dorothy said. "But neither are they."
John's fingers paused on the leather strap. "Who's 'they' this time?" he asked.
"Everyone in this tower who has plans," Dorothy said. "Which, unfortunately, includes half the student body and most of the faculty.
You need to learn how they feel in the lattice. Not just what they say. You'll get more warning from a sour hum than a pretty speech."
Flint squinted. "You want us to go… feel people?"
"Subtly," Dorothy said. "This is not an invitation to press your palms against strangers and stare. We're going to the refectory."
Doris tensed. "Again."
Dorothy nodded. "Again. You survived last time. This time, you listen harder."
John laced his boots tight and stood. "Brian comes," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Dorothy said. "He's part of the hum now. And he'll tell us things whether we ask or not."
Brian burbled something against Doris's chest, as if in agreement.
Flint dragged himself upright, grabbed his knife, and tucked it into his belt.
"Fine," he said. "Let's go be socially anxious and magically paranoid. That seems efficient."
The corridor felt different when you walked it with the intention of listening to more than bricks.
John's palm brushed the wall in passing—habit now, not hesitation. The corridor lattice vibrated under his fingers, familiar layers
stacking into a pattern he was starting to recognise.
General hum: baseline.
Halvar's buffer-knot: thick, steady, slightly stubborn.
Door wards: quick, pricking pulses.
All ordinary.
It was the gaps he watched for now.
Places where the hum thinned or frayed or carried a sour taste.
Nothing like that this morning.
Just the distant echo of someone three doors down arguing over forgotten notes and an empty jug.
At the refectory arch, the ward-sheen tingled over his skin, checking identity, carrying a faint smell of ozone.
"First step," Dorothy murmured. "Pick four people you know. Anchor them."
"Anchor," Flint repeated. "You mean, label."
"Call it whatever makes your brain cooperate," she said. "Halvar. Maevra. Serais. Vela. You've felt all of them near you. You know what their presence does to the room. You're going to find them without looking."
"Without looking," John echoed.
It felt like being told to track footprints blindfolded.
But he listened.
The refectory was a storm of sound and motion—students in colored robes, staff in plain ones, servers darting between tables with trays. Wardlight hung in the air, soft and diffuse.
The main faculty table glowed brighter in the lattice—more power gathered in one place, more attention bending toward it.
He shut his eyes for a heartbeat.
Who here made the air sharper?
Who made it heavier?
Who cooled it?
Halvar was easy.
Even before John picked him out visually, he felt the man's presence like a steadying weight—an exhausted, iron bar propped under a sagging roof. The wards around him didn't flare. They… steadied. The hum smoothed near his chair.
"There," John murmured.
Dorothy nodded. "Good. That's 'tired steel.' Remember that flavor."
"Feels like paperwork and unslept nights," Flint said under his breath.
"Accurate," Dorothy replied.
Maevra was harder.
The Head Rectrix sat near the center of the faculty table, a thin woman in layered grey, hair coiled into a severe knot. She didn't move
much. She didn't need to. The air around her did it for her.
The lattice above her chair sharpened.
Not brighter.
Sharper.
Like frost along the edge of a blade.
John felt it on the back of his neck before he found her with his eyes.
"Cold lightning," Doris murmured. "But… not hollow. There's weight under it."
"Stone and storm," Dorothy said. "She's tied into the foundations more than most. Don't stand too close when she's angry; the wards
lean with her."
Serais, at his smaller table to the side, was a softer note. The hum around him warmed, like sunlight through stained glass. It wasn't
comforting, exactly. It was… watchful. A gentle pressure that pushed some people toward better choices and made others itch.
"Feels like… a candle in a draft," Flint said. "Seems small, but somehow the room keeps shaping itself around it."
Dorothy's mouth twitched. "That's faith."
Then there was Vela.
John hadn't realised how much he'd come to hate her presence until he tried to feel it instead of just see it.
She sat three seats down from Maevra, head bent toward a pair of older students. Her hair was scraped back, her mouth pinched in what
might have passed for interest.
The wards around her felt…
Off.
Not wrong in the Paragon way.
Not oily.
Just… sharp and sour and too tightly wound, like wire coiled around a glass jar.
The lattice over her place in the world had been smoothed by years of proximity, but there was a reactive tension there—a sense of constant measuring, evaluating, predicting.
Doris made a face. "Feels like being stared at by cold glass," she said.
Flint grimaced. "Like a ledger that thinks you're a bad investment."
Dorothy nodded. "That's her. If you ever feel that flavor near the door to your rooms again, you shout."
"Gladly," John said.
They found their alcove.
The family bench felt oddly home-like now—back to the wall, a manageable slice of the room in view, the soft wardline humming faintly overhead. Brian settled in Doris's lap, eyes wide, fist crammed in his mouth.
They ate.
Or pretended to.
It was hard to pay attention to porridge when Dorothy kept saying things like "someone just lied three tables over" and "feel how the air shifts when a rumor moves."
"Rumors move?" Flint said.
"Yes," Dorothy said. "They're like drafts. The lattice carries them."
John tried.
He felt waves of chatter wash through the hall, the ups and downs of conversations, the way laughter made the wards vibrate a little higher, the way anger made them thump lower.
He wasn't sure he could pin them to specific tables yet.
But he could tell when a patch of air changed mood.
"That corner's nervous," he said, nodding toward a cluster of mid-year students in blue-trimmed robes.
Doris brushed her fingers lightly along the table's edge. "They're… waiting," she said. "For something. For someone."
Kael appeared not long after.
He slid onto a bench near the middle of the hall, tray in hand, dropping a few seats away from a knot of students in flame-trimmed red.
He caught John's eye, gave the barest nod toward the group, then turned his attention deliberately to his food.
"Vela's favorites," Dorothy said quietly.
Flint snorted. "Of course they wear red."
"Not all fire mages are Paragon sympathiser's," Dorothy said. "But all Paragons love fire. Don't let the overlap confuse you."
John listened.
The students near Kael hummed hotter in the lattice—young, eager, unstable.
Most of them felt like half-controllable bonfires: sparks and smoke and bravado.
One felt different.
Oily wasn't quite the word.
Bright wasn't either.
He tasted both.
A student near the end of the bench—tall, pale, hair tied back in a strict knot, eyes too still—had a resonance that made John's teeth
itch.
The lattice around him vibrated slightly out of sync with everyone else's.
Not enough to draw the ward's direct attention.
Just enough that, once John noticed it, he couldn't un-feel it.
"What's that one?" he murmured.
Dorothy followed his line of sight.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Teren," she said softly. "Old line from the north. Strong fire, weak impulse control. Vela's been cultivating him for years."
Doris winced. "Feels like…"
She groped for words.
Flint supplied, "Like oil on hot water."
"Yes," Doris said. "Exactly."
"Paragon?" John asked quietly.
"Not yet," Dorothy said. "But he's leaning that way." She frowned. "And he's carrying something."
"Carrying?" Flint asked. "Like a knife?"
"Like a knot," Dorothy said.
The hairs on John's arms rose.
He watched Teren.
The student laughed at something his friend said, a sharp, brittle sound. His hands moved as he talked, and for a heartbeat, John saw the inside of his wrist.
A bracelet flashed.
Not jewelry.
Twine.
Knotted.
Three small, pale beads threaded through it.
John's breath caught.
"You see it?" Dorothy asked.
"Bracelet," he said. "Bones. Knots."
"Left wrist," Doris whispered. "Same pattern Lyr burned. Smaller."
Flint's grip tightened on his spoon. "He brought Paragon bait into the refectory?"
"Calm," Dorothy murmured. "Watch."
Teren's fingers toyed with the bracelet while he spoke, thumb rubbing over the beads as if it were a habit.
No ward screams.
No sudden flares.
Whatever the knot was doing, it was quiet. Passive. A charm, not an active hook.
Yet.
Kael's fingers tightened around his cup.
He saw it too.
His gaze flicked up, met John's, and in that split second, his eyes said everything: There. That's one of them.
"Can the wards detect it?" John asked under his breath.
"Not easily," Dorothy said. "It's too small. Slipped through as a 'personal effect.' The only reason we feel it is because we've been
breathing knots all week."
Doris's mouth twisted. "Do we tell Halvar?"
"Of course," Dorothy said. "Just not by shouting 'Paragon' in the middle of breakfast."
Flint exhaled slowly. "What if he… touches Brian with that?"
"He won't," John said.
The certainty in his voice surprised him.
Doris looked at him.
He met her gaze.
"He won't get close enough," John repeated. "Not as long as I'm breathing."
Brian gurgled, oblivious, stirring at the vibration of his father's voice.
The bracelet hummed faintly.
Teren laughed again, unaware of the way a handful of people across the hall had just drawn a quiet line through his name.
Halvar made it easy.
He always did, when he could.
He approached their alcove near the end of the meal, tray in hand, as if he were simply making a circuit of the hall. Students watched him with a mix of fear and fascination, some straightening their posture as if he might grade them based on how they chewed.
He sat on the bench opposite with a sigh, setting his tray down without much interest in the food.
"Dorothy," he said. "John. Doriane. Flint. Brian." He nodded at each in turn. "Tell me something that will ruin my day less than the reports I've already read."
"We can feel your paperwork from across the room," Flint said.
Halvar blinked. "That is both unhelpful and accurate."
"We saw one," John said quietly.
Halvar's attention sharpened. "Where?"
Doris nodded toward the red-robed cluster. "End of the bench," she murmured. "Bracelet. Knots."
Halvar didn't turn his head.
He didn't need to.
His eyes flicked sideways, just once, registering without staring.
"Teren," he said.
"You know him," John said.
"I know every student with more fire than sense," Halvar said. "My question is what you felt."
Dorothy summarized in a few words—oily hum, knot pattern, similarity to the charm Lyr had burned in the garden.
Halvar's jaw flexed. "He hasn't missed chapel," he said. "He pays attention in ethics lectures, argues loud in theoretical seminars, and has not, to my knowledge, set anything on fire on purpose in six months. And yet."
"Yet he's wearing a Paragon toy," Flint said.
"Or something modeled after one," Halvar said. "Symbols spread. Half the time idiots copy them because they think they look dangerous, not because they know what they do."
"Is that better?" Doris asked.
"No," Halvar said. "But it's a different problem."
He shoveled a spoonful of porridge into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, then said, "Thank you."
"That's it?" Flint asked.
"For the moment," Halvar said. "We can't drag him out by his hair for owning a ugly bracelet. We can pull his files. Check who he spends extra hours with. Which texts he's checked out in the last month. What he scribbles in the margins when he thinks no one's looking. We can move him to a different seat. Assign him extra ward duty. And we can plant three different people near him who know the difference between boredom and zeal."
"Kael's already one," Dorothy said.
"Yes," Halvar said. "And very pleased with himself, I suspect."
As if on cue, Kael chose that moment to ridicule a friend's miscast spell, drawing laughter. He glanced not-quite-subtly toward their alcove, then away again.
Halvar's lips twitched. "Useful boy," he muttered.
Doris stroked Brian's hair. "So we… wait," she said. "Watch."
"For the moment," Halvar repeated. "I'd prefer to know whose bracelet that was before it landed on his wrist. And who encouraged him to wear it here. Pulling him now would alert them."
Flint's mouth compressed. "Feels like letting rot sit."
"It's more like following the trail of the smell," Halvar said. "If I swat every fly I see, I never find the corpse they're on."
Doris made a face. "Thank you for that image."
"You're welcome," Halvar said blandly.
He pushed his tray away.
"You're doing well," he added, almost as an afterthought. "All of you. Most people take months before they can tell Maevra from Serais in the lattice, let alone Teren's little trinkets."
"We've had… motivation," John said.
"Yes," Halvar said. "So have they."
He rose, adjusted his chain, and left, pausing only long enough to clap a hand briefly on Kael's shoulder as he passed.
Just a touch.
A casual gesture.
But John saw the slight flare in the wards around them—a thin thread of reassurance, of I see you. Keep watching.
Kael's shoulders straightened.
He didn't look their way again.
Back in the suite, the air felt cooler.
Not because the wards had changed, but because the world outside their walls had taken on sharper edges again.
Doris laid Brian in the cradle.
He squirmed a little, then fixated on the chalk stars, soothed by their familiar glowless lines.
"You trust Halvar?" John asked Dorothy quietly.
"Yes," Dorothy said. "Trust him to be tired, stubborn, and more ruthless than he pretends. He'll use Teren to map the infection. He won't ignore it."
"That's not the same as trusting him with Brian," Doris said, no heat in her voice—just weary clarity.
"No," Dorothy said. "But you don't need to. You're still here."
Flint paced once across the room, then back.
"That bracelet," he muttered. "What if there are more? What if half the students have one tucked in their sleeves and we're just not… tuned enough to feel them?"
"Then we get tuned," John said.
Flint huffed. "Listen to the soldier preach magic."
"No," John said. "Listen to the father preach vigilance."
Doris gave him a look that was half pain, half affection.
Dorothy sank into her usual chair, staff across her knees.
"Today you learned three things," she said. "One: people hum. Two: some hum sharper than others. Three: your own fear hums loudest of all if you let it."
"That's encouraging," Flint said dryly.
"It should be," Dorothy said. "It means you have to learn to hear yourselves, too. To know when you're reacting to them and when
you're reacting to ghosts in your own head."
Doris's gaze dropped to Brian.
"He's the one they want," she said.
Dorothy shook her head. "They want what he represents," she said. "A key. A door. An excuse. He's not any of those things yet. He's a baby who sneeze's like a lightning spell and drools on linen." Her voice softened. "We have time before he becomes what they think he is."
"Do we?" John asked.
"Some," Dorothy said. "Not enough. Never enough. But some."
Brian yawned.
One of the chalk stars glimmered faintly as his hand waved in its direction.
"That one," Doris said. "He always makes that one glow."
"The crooked one," Flint said.
Doris smiled, a little. "Our son likes the imperfect star. Good."
John rested his palm on the wall near the cradle, half-closing his eyes.
The lattice hummed.
Steady.
The corridor knot thrummed on the far side, solid and reliable.
Somewhere deeper in the tower, a smaller vibration had joined the pattern—a tiny, bright, out-of-tune hum that matched the bracelet he'd seen.
He could feel it now.
Not as a threat.
As a mark.
They had a face.
That mattered.
"First suspect," he murmured.
"First we can name," Dorothy said. "There will be more."
"We're not hunting," Doris said. "We're… what? Listening? Waiting?"
"We're surviving," Dorothy said. "And making sure that when the Paragons finally shove hard enough to break something, we're not the ones that crack."
Flint sank into his chair, rubbing his eyes. "Feels like we're holding a line we can't see," he muttered.
John looked at Brian, at the chalk stars, at the ward-sigil.
"Then we keep learning where it is," he said. "If we can hear it, we can brace it."
Doris reached for his hand.
He took it.
The room hummed around them.
Outside, in lecture halls and side rooms and quiet corners, bracelets and whispered chants and forbidden symbols shifted along student wrists and under desks.
Inside this room, they had one name, one knot, one boy reaching for crooked stars.
It wasn't enough.
But it was a start.
They had learned the taste of Vela's cold glass, the smell of Halvar's tired steel, the warmth of Serais's flickering candle.
Now they knew the feel of oil on hot water, twine threaded with old mistakes.
Next time that hum moved closer to their door, they would feel it before it knocked.
Faces in the hum.
Lines on the map.
Hooks and leaves and chalk-light.
A world of patterns.
And, in a suite padded with two blankets of stone, a family determined to learn how to read them before those patterns wrote their son's fate for him.