The humming woke Kael before the bells did.
Not the normal hum—the tower's steady, background thrum that he'd grown up treating like weather. This was thinner. Higher. A tight, almost metallic whining threaded through the usual bass, like someone drawing a knife-edge down a harp string.
He lay still in his narrow dorm bed, staring at the underside of the bunk above.
Hum.
Pause.
Whine.
He felt it in the soft parts of his face, behind his eyes, like a headache thinking about starting.
"Not good," he muttered.
His roommate snored on, dead to the world and any subtlety smaller than a fireball.
Kael swung his legs over the side, hissed once as his bare feet hit cold stone, and padded to the window slit. The ward over it shimmered faintly with the tower's pulse.
Beyond, the city was a scatter of lantern dots in predawn murk. The Spire loomed to his left, dark against a paler sky.
The whine sharpened.
Kael's skin prickled.
This wasn't the outer hook feeling from three nights ago when the wards had screamed and it had felt like the whole tower had been welded to his teeth. This was… inside. Closer. Like a bad idea working its way through stone.
"Of course," he breathed. "Because we can't have one quiet night."
He grabbed his boots, didn't bother with proper lacing, and snatched his cloak from the peg. His usual knives stayed where they were,
hidden in the trunk—open weapons in the dorm drew too many questions.
The resonance around him tugged.
West.
Down.
He trusted it and moved.
The Red Wing dormitory corridors were nearly empty at this hour. A single lantern burned at each arch, wardlight dimmed for night. Most
students were either asleep or pretending to be while cramming runes into their heads by candlelight.
Kael passed a door and felt the hum hitch—anger, frustration, a muttered curse. Failed assignment, probably.
He kept going.
The whine grew as he descended.
Down a flight, then another.
Not toward the main training grounds.
Not toward the chapel.
Toward one of the old lecture halls tucked near the tower's western curve. The ones that had bad reputations and worse acoustics.
He turned a corner and saw it: light under a door that should have been dark.
And a line on the floor.
Not chalk.
Not paint.
Just a faint, glowing scratch where no scratch should be, running from the doorframe into the corridor lattice like a crack in a pane of
glass.
Kael swore under his breath.
Of course it was here.
He flattened himself beside the doorway and listened.
Murmurs.
Three voices.
Young.
Stressed.
Trying very hard to sound confident.
"…told you, it's harmless. It's just a focus aid."
"Then why are we doing it at night?"
"Because the lattice is quieter. Do you want real data or not?"
"Teren, if this gets us hauled in front of Maevra again—"
"It won't. Vela said—"
Kael didn't need the rest.
He knew that tone.
He knew that arrogant, brittle edge in Teren's voice.
And he knew, now, exactly what kind of "bracelet" the other boy had been fingering at meals.
Kael risked one quick glance around the frame.
Three students stood in the empty lecture hall.
Desks had been pushed back to clear a space in the center. The wardlines originally braided into the floor for standard practice drills had been… altered. Someone had rubbed away two of the standard safety sigils and replaced them with jagged lines that made Kael's stomach twist.
Teren stood at the circle's heart.
Red-trimmed robes, hair tied back, jaw set in fierce, self-satisfied determination.
The bone-bead bracelet glinted on his wrist.
He held it out like an offering.
The other two—Myla and Jen, if Kael remembered right—stood at the circle's edge, hands hovering over faintly glowing anchor marks. Their faces were drawn tight in the half-light, fear and excitement fighting it out
behind their eyes.
The whine in the lattice sharpened.
Kael's teeth hurt.
"…just a resonance echo test," Teren was saying. "Vela says if we can match the tower's hum, we'll get a clearer sense of what the 'event' actually was. Think of the paper, Myla. 'On Emerging Aetheric Nodes in Infant
Subjects and Their Implications for Ward Stability.' You'd be cited for years."
Myla swallowed. "We're not touching the kid," she said. "Right? This is just the wards."
"Just the wards," Teren said. "We're not savages. We're not Paragons." His mouth curled on the word. "We're scholars. We're improving security."
Kael felt sick.
He could hear Vela's rhetoric all over Teren's words. The careful way she made things sound like duty instead of obsession.
He couldn't prove she'd told Teren to stand here tonight.
He also couldn't imagine anyone else who'd put the idea in his head.
The resonance whine climbed another notch.
Something in the circle's scratches started to answer it.
Kael's instincts screamed.
This was exactly the kind of half-informed,
theory-heavy idiocy that got people killed.
He didn't have time to fetch Halvar.
He barely had time to think.
The tower hummed through his bones, the memory of Dorothy's hand on the wall, John's steady voice muttering about hooks and lines. He swallowed hard, stepped into the doorway, and said, "You're going to crack your own teeth if you keep that up."
Three heads snapped toward him.
Teren's eyes narrowed. "Kael," he said flatly. "This is a controlled seminar. You're not invited."
Kael snorted. "You're in an unapproved hall with altered wardlines and contraband knots. The only 'control' here is your delusion."
Jen flushed. "We're not doing anything illegal," he blurted. "Just measuring hum levels. Rector Halvar—"
"Rector Halvar," Kael said, "would have started this experiment in the daylight with six wardens and Lyr standing by with a fire bucket. Who gave you that bracelet?"
Teren's jaw tightened. "None of your—"
The whine crested.
All three of them winced.
The bracelet's beads glowed faintly, lines etched into their surfaces flaring with ugly, jagged light.
The circle on the floor answered.
Kael felt the hook then.
Not as sharp as the one that had clawed at the outer wards days before.
Smaller.
Inside.
Like a needle instead of a harpoon.
It threaded itself along the wardline under the hall, hunting.
Not outward.
Up.
Kael's stomach lurched.
He knew exactly where those lines led.
The family suite was quiet.
Too quiet.
John woke in an instant.
No push from outside.
No hand on his shoulder.
Just a sudden, vivid awareness of wrong threaded through the hum.
The room's lattice shivered.
Not from the western wall this time.
From above.
Brian stiffened in the cradle.
His hands flew up, fingers splayed.
His eyes snapped open, pupils blown wide in the dim light.
He didn't cry.
Not yet.
He listened.
Doris was already halfway to the cradle, heart pounding.
"Dorothy," John snapped.
The older woman was on her feet before he finished her name, staff in hand, gaze cutting upward.
The extra blanket of wards she'd woven around the suite thrummed underfoot, trying to decide how to react.
"Not outside," she said. "Inside the net. Stupid, stupid children…"
Flint rolled off his pallet with a curse. "Where?"
"Lecture hall," Dorothy hissed. "Red Wing cluster. They've anchored a link circle and they're trying to ride the tower's resonance like a horse."
The hum sharpened.
Brian made a small, choked noise.
His fingers curled, reaching for something they couldn't touch.
The chalk stars above the cradle flickered in and out of sync with the room's pulse, some glowing, some dimming, like a pattern trying
to form and failing.
John's hand went automatically to the wall.
He felt the line—a thin, bright thread racing along the corridor lattice, up and in. It wasn't the thick, oily rope of the Paragon cultists. This was raw, jittery student magic piggybacking on structures it didn't understand.
"It's hitting everything," he said through his teeth.
"Then we cut it," Dorothy said. "Again."
"How?" Doris demanded. "It's inside this time."
Dorothy's mouth went hard.
"From the inside," she said.
She slammed the butt of her staff into the floor.
In the lecture hall, Kael felt the blow before he heard it.
The world lurched.
The wardlines under his feet jumped like startled cats.
The circle's glow flared, then faltered, as if someone had slapped it from above.
"What was that?" Jen yelped, stumbling back.
Teren swore, clutching his head. "Interference," he spat. "Someone's trying to shut the test down."
"Someone," Kael echoed. "You mean the tower. You idiot."
The bracelet's light wavered.
Then concentrated.
For one horrible heartbeat, all of it was aimed upward, pouring raw, unfocused resonance along lines that should never have been abused like this.
The whine reached a pitch Kael couldn't bear.
His vision blurred.
He saw—
—not the lecture hall—
—but another room, another time.
A child screaming.
A town tearing.
Stone sliding sideways like liquid.
Voices crying out in a language he didn't know but felt in his bones.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Then—
THUM.
The same counter-blow Dorothy had used on the outer hook slammed into the circle from below.
Not at full force.
Here, she had to be careful.
The lines went white.
The bracelet snapped.
The beads exploded in a shower of pale dust, scoring Teren's wrist with fine, bloody scratches.
The circle on the floor shuddered.
One of the altered sigils spontaneously corrected itself, lines straightening, reconnecting with the old Aetherion pattern.
The whine cut off.
Kael staggered.
Teren screamed—not in pain, but in anger. "You— you broke it!"
"Yes," Kael said, panting, ears ringing. "That was the point."
Myla backed away, hands shaking. "This wasn't supposed to— I —I thought—we were just—"
The door banged open.
Halvar strode in.
He wasn't wearing formal robes.
He was in plain, dark cloth, chain thrown on crooked—pulled from sleep like everyone else—but he carried more weight than any ornament.
The wards bent around him.
"Step away from the circle," he said.
His voice wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
Myla bolted.
Jen stumbled after her.
Teren stood where he was, chest heaving, jaw clenched, eyes wild.
"This was sanctioned," he spat. "Vela—"
"I haven't heard a single sanctioned experiment start with 'don't tell anyone we're doing this at night,'" Halvar said. "Step. Away. From the circle."
Teren's fingers twitched.
For a moment, Kael thought he might be foolish enough to try something.
Then he saw the look in Halvar's eyes.
Teren stepped.
Just.
The circle's dimming glow hissed as he crossed its boundary.
Halvar walked in its wake like it was nothing.
He toed one of the altered symbols with his boot.
His mouth tightened.
Then he looked at Teren's wrist.
Blood welled from tiny cuts.
Halvar caught his forearm, not gently.
Teren flinched. "You're hurting me."
"I could do worse," Halvar said. He turned the arm, examining the damaged bracelet—what was left of it.
Bone dust clung to Teren's skin, tracing faint, crooked patterns.
Halvar brushed some off with his thumb.
The dust twinged, then disintegrated into nothing.
"Paragon-linked material," the Rector said quietly. "In my tower. On your wrist. Touching my wards. Either you're stupider than I thought, or you're braver. I'm not sure which is worse."
Teren's face went blotchy. "It was research," he said. "Vela said—"
"Leave Professor Vela's name out of your mouth for the moment," Halvar said, voice suddenly icy. "You're not going to smear her with your stupidity until I've spoken to her myself."
Kael almost laughed.
Almost.
Halvar's eyes flicked to him.
"Kael."
"Yes, Rector," Kael croaked.
"What are you doing here?" Halvar asked.
"Following the hum," Kael said. "And trying to keep these idiots from poking the tower hard enough to wake the dead."
"And how did that work out for you?" Halvar asked.
"I'm not dead," Kael said. "Yet."
Halvar's mouth twitched. "We'll log that under 'conditional success.' You're coming to the council with me after I've put them somewhere they can't scratch on my floors."
Teren bristled. "You can't—"
"I can," Halvar said. "And I will. You will not be leaving this hall without a warden on either side. Then you're going to spend some quality time with Master Lyr learning how long these wardlines have been here and how many better men than you bled building them."
Teren's mouth snapped shut at Lyr's name.
Kael didn't blame him.
Halvar let go of Teren's arm, then drove the butt of his staff—no, not a staff, Kael realised; just a walking stick with more history than it showed—into the heart of the circle.
The floor hummed.
Sigils corrected.
The last of the Paragon-twisted pattern burned away in a flash of light that left afterimages floating in Kael's vision.
He heard, faintly, Dorothy's weary voice in the back of his mind.
Cut the line.
The whine vanished.
The tower's hum rolled back in, heavy and blessed and ordinary.
Brian panted like he'd just run.
Sweat beaded at his hairline.
His fists clenched and unclenched, reaching for the chalk stars.
Doris scooped him up, heart stuttering.
"It's over," she whispered. "Hear me? It's over."
John's hand stayed on the wall.
He felt the line snap—a thin, bright filament cutting clean.
The extra blanket of wards around the suite rippled, then settled.
Dorothy sagged back into her chair, staff across her knees.
"Inside this time," John said.
"Yes," Dorothy said hoarsely. "And they got a little closer. But they still didn't taste him. Not properly."
Doris rocked Brian, humming the road-song under her breath.
His breathing eased, little by little.
His eyes, still wide, tracked nothing anyone else could see.
"They made him see something," she whispered. "Didn't they?"
Dorothy's mouth became a thin line.
"Yes," she said. "Echoes. Old failures. The town your ancestors tore when they misused that mark. The Paragons love that story. They
want to make it happen again. He picked up the edges when their toy brushed the network."
John's stomach turned.
"At least we cut it fast," he said.
"Yes," Dorothy said. "Fast enough that he got impressions, not anchors. He'll dream about cracks for a while. That's… tolerable. Compared to what it could have been."
Flint swore quietly. "They're inside the tower now," he said. "With their knots and their stupid bracelets and their half-baked spells.
We haven't even dealt with the ones outside and we already have rot in the beams."
"This was always going to be a two-front war," Dorothy said. "We just got our first clean shot at one of the fronts."
"Clean?" Doris echoed, incredulous.
"Identifiable," Dorothy said. "Halvar knows who was standing in that circle. He'll drag the rest of the line up behind them."
Brian whimpered once, then burrowed into Doris's shoulder, finally beginning to cry like a normal baby: red-faced, outraged, demanding
comfort from the nearest heart.
Doris held him tighter, tears burning her own eyes.
"You're all right," she whispered. "You're here. We're here. They don't get to keep their hooks in you. Not while we can still move."
John listened to the hum.
It had a new thread in it.
Tired anger.
Halvar's signature, moving quickly through corridors, pulling wardens behind him like a wake.
Good.
Let him drag students and bracelets and professors into harsh light.
Let them shout about ethics and research and risk.
As long as the circle hadn't been completed, as long as Brian hadn't been turned into someone's experiment, John could live with a
little screaming.
Flint sank down on his pallet again, rubbing his eyes. "Fast enough," he muttered. "This time."
Doris kissed Brian's damp hair.
"We make it faster next time," she said.
Dorothy's eyes flicked to the chalk stars.
Several of them were still flickering.
But not in the jagged, broken pattern from the hook.
They were… correcting themselves.
Lines smoothing.
Cracks refusing to hold.
"Maybe," Dorothy said softly, so only the walls could hear, "he's already learning to cut lines too."
Brian's cries settled into hiccups.
The tower hummed.
In a lecture hall beneath far too much stone, Teren clutched his bleeding wrist and glared at Halvar with the open resentment of someone who understood nothing and blamed everyone.
In an archive, Lyr sharpened her quills.
In a professor's office, Vela woke with a prickle at the back of her neck and no idea yet which of her seedlings had just been yanked up
by the root.
And in a small suite wrapped in two blankets of wards and stubbornness, a baby with crooked nose and dangerous blood pressed his damp face into his mother's shoulder, learning, without words, that when the hum
turned ugly, the people holding him would not let it stay that way.
He had seen cracks.
He would see more.
But he had also seen something else:
A line cut before it became a door.