The walk back from the council chamber was shorter than John remembered.
Maybe the corridors had shrunk.
Maybe his world had.
Doris carried Brian, cloak wrapped snug around him so only a wedge of cheek and one small ear were visible. Flint walked at their rear, one hand hovering near his knife. Dorothy moved at their side, staff tapping in a lazy rhythm that didn't fool John at all.
The tower hummed.
Still tense.
Less frantic.
Like a muscle that had accepted it couldn't unclench yet but was no longer on the verge of tearing.
They reached the family suite without incident. The ward-sigil glowed as they approached, flaring faintly in recognition as Dorothy brushed it with her fingers.
"Still ours," she murmured.
The door closed behind them with a solid, blessed thud.
Doris stood for a long moment in the middle of the room, just… standing.
Brian slept on her shoulder, heavy and warm.
Her eyes shone.
Not with fresh tears.
With exhaustion so deep it felt like someone had carved it into her bones.
John stepped closer. "Sit," he said gently.
She blinked as if remembering how.
"Right," she whispered. "Sitting. That's still a thing."
He guided her to the bed.
She sank down, finally easing Brian into the cradle. The instant his small body left her arms, her fingers twitched, wanting him back.
He squirmed, made a soft, protesting sound.
Then he saw the chalk stars.
His fist relaxed.
His gaze fixed upward, tracking familiar lines.
Doris let out a shaky breath. "He remembers," she murmured.
"Good," John said. "Let him remember this more than the council."
Flint flopped into his chair with a groan. "I hate rooms with that many important people," he muttered. "Too many different kinds of
humming. Half of them sound like guilt."
Dorothy sank into her own chair more carefully, leaning the staff against her shoulder.
"That was the quietest council we've had in years," she said. "You should hear the ones where no infant's soul is on the agenda. People shout more when the topic is funding."
"Funding," Flint repeated. "Somehow that's worse."
John shrugged off his cloak and hung it on the peg.
His hand brushed the wall.
The lattice felt… thicker around this room now, as if the arguments and oaths in the council chamber had reinforced the threads reaching
here.
"Maevra meant it," he said quietly. "About not signing anything that treats him as a tool."
"Yes," Dorothy said.
Doris made a small, disbelieving sound. "You can tell?" she asked.
Dorothy nodded toward her staff. "Her hum's the same as when she told the Emperor 'no' in front of three cardinals," she said.
Flint raised a brow. "You saw that?"
"I was there," Dorothy said. "The Spire still gossips about it."
John sat beside Doris and studied her face.
"How much of that do you believe?" he asked.
She watched Brian's fists flex toward the stars.
"Enough to stay," she said. "Not enough to sleep."
They ate late and badly.
Cold bread from a basket Serais had sent. Fruit slices gone a little soft. Tea that tasted of stone and stubbornness.
No one complained.
After, John did something he'd been thinking about since the first hook on the wardline.
He pulled one of the blank ledgers Dorothy had insisted they accept from the Stacks, set it on the table, and opened it.
Flint eyed it suspiciously. "You're starting a diary?" he asked.
"A ledger," John said. "You track knives. I'm tracking lines."
Dorothy's eyes glimmered with interest. "About time," she said.
"What are you going to put in it?" Doris asked, tired but curious.
"Everything we don't want to forget," John said. "Who touched the wards. When. How it felt. What the tower did. What he did." He nodded toward the cradle. "Names. Symbols. Weird humming. Anything that seemed small at the time and turned out not to be."
Flint leaned back. "A paranoia book," he said. "I approve."
Doris shifted to the edge of the bed, watching.
John dipped a quill and, in his careful soldier's hand, wrote on the first page:
Ledger of Lines — Family Aetheris
Ward Events, Hooks, and Odd Hums
He paused, then added, in smaller script beneath:
Because if the world is going to draw lines through us, we might as well keep our own score.
Dorothy snorted softly. "Poetic," she said.
"I'm tired," John replied.
He dated the first entry with the tower's reckoning—season, day, bell approximations—and wrote:
— Initial arrival. Wards scream in Deep Weave. Unknown attacker (Paragons). Infant cry triggers full-tower resonance. Result: inlaid orb cracked, Doris fainted, Halvar aged another decade.
He flipped to the next line.
— Voidborn wardstation hum on road. Caravan feels pull. Infant reacts before wards. Paragons on ridge. Result: line cut by fleeing.
He started sketching in short, sharp strokes, each event like a mark on a battlefield map.
Hooks at canyon.
Bracelet's whisper.
Garden knot by the wall.
Leaf turning.
Doris rose and came to his side, heat from her body a small comfort against his shoulder.
"Add the chalk," she murmured. "The stars."
He glanced up at her.
"The first night he stopped screaming after they appeared," she said. "That matters."
He nodded and wrote:
— Chalk constellations over cradle. Infant calms when looking up. Possible self-created 'safe pattern.' Tower lattice around cradle
adjusts accordingly (softer hum).
Flint wandered over, peering.
"You're better with words than I thought," he said.
"Keeping troop records for a decade will do that to a man," John said dryly.
Dorothy's gaze slid to the ledger.
"Leave space," she said. "You'll want to add details later when you remember things you thought were nothing."
John obliged, skipping lines between entries.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because patterns change when you look at them from farther away," Dorothy said. "What looks like a single dot now might be the start of a constellation later."
Doris smiled faintly. "You and your stars."
"You and yours," Dorothy countered, nodding at the cradle.
Brian had managed to get one fist free of his blanket.
It pawed the air, fingers splayed, as if trying to catch light.
One of the chalk stars—his favorite crooked one—glimmered again, just faintly.
John added:
— Repeated: crooked star responds more often than others. Infant shows preference. Track.
Flint folded his arms. "If someone steals that ledger," he said, "they'll have a script for every trick we've used."
John shut the book with a decisive thump.
"That's why it doesn't leave this room," he said. "And why we don't write down everything. Just enough to catch our own mistakes before they catch us."
Doris laced her fingers with his. "We're making our own archive," she said.
"Better than letting Vela write the only version," Dorothy said.
The day stretched longer than it had any right to.
The tower, thrown off its usual rhythm, moved slower. Some lectures were postponed. Others were combined. Wardens prowled more visibly. Students whispered louder.
Kael arrived midafternoon, knocking their pattern on the door.
He looked tired and wired at once.
"Am I allowed in?" he asked.
"As long as you're not wearing twine," Flint said.
Kael raised both hands, wrists bare. "I only collect paper cuts," he said. "And suspicious glances."
Doris nodded him in.
He hovered just inside the wardline, always careful not to assume.
"How bad was it?" he asked.
"You saw most of it," John said. "Council filled in the rest."
Kael grimaced. "Teren is furious. Myla's shaken enough she might actually learn something. Jen is… terrified of Master Lyr." He paused. "That last one's rational."
"What about Vela?" Dorothy asked.
Kael hesitated. "She's… quieter," he said. "For now. The seminar suspension hit her pride hard. She'll pretend to comply while she finds
a new angle." His mouth twisted. "She gave me a look that said, 'I know you spoke.'"
"You did," John said. "And you should again."
"I intend to," Kael said. "That's why I'm here. Two things you should know." He ticked them off on his fingers. "One: the 'visiting scholar' Teren described? No record at the gate. Either they came in with a delegation under a false name, or they were already inside and switched coats."
"Orane's going to love that," Flint said.
"Orane already loves nothing," Kael said. "Now she'll just love it louder."
"Second thing?" Dorothy prodded.
Kael's gaze flicked to Brian.
Then to the cradle's chalk sky.
"The bracelets," he said quietly. "I heard two third-years in Blue Wing arguing about 'losing theirs to a pointless purge.' They were talking about jewelry, but the way the lattice around them prickled, I'd bet a week's pay they meant knots."
Doris's nails dug into her palm. "So it's not just Teren."
"No," Kael said. "He's just the first one stupid enough to activate his in the middle of the tower."
"Do you know who the others are?" John asked.
"Not yet," Kael said. "But I will." There was a flinty edge under the words John hadn't heard from him before. "Bracelets are easier to hide than chalk marks on desks, but they hum. I've started listening for that particular itch."
"You're going to paint a target on your back," Flint said.
"I already have one," Kael said. "At least this way, I pick where the arrows land."
Dorothy's eyes softened. "You're allowed to be young a little longer, you know," she said.
Kael shrugged. "The Paragons didn't get that memo," he said. "Neither did the walls. I don't see why I should pretend."
He looked again at Brian.
"You should know," he added, "some of the students aren't buying Vela's 'for the greater good' line anymore." His mouth quirked.
"Watching her get told 'no' in public loosened a few tongues."
Doris's eyebrow rose. "And what are those tongues saying?"
"Some think she's reckless," Kael said. "Some think the council's cowardly. Some just think the whole situation is above their pay
grade and want to go back to failing elemental drills in peace."
Flint snorted. "I like that last group."
"They're the least dangerous," Dorothy said.
Kael shifted weight from foot to foot. "I should go," he said reluctantly. "If I'm seen spending too much time in here, the rumor will shift from 'Kael's Rector's pet' to 'Kael is part of the Voidborn conspiracy.'"
"There is no Voidborn conspiracy," Doris said.
Kael smiled, tired and crooked. "That's not how rumors work."
He stepped back over the threshold.
"If anything else hums wrong," he added, "I'll send a feather."
"Bench," John said. "Second hour."
Kael nodded.
Then he was gone, footsteps blending with the tower's muted beat.
Afternoon bled into evening.
Brain-tired, hand-itchy, John drifted toward motion.
He cleared a space near the wall and worked through slow sequences of forms—unarmed first, then with a practice stick Dorothy grudgingly conceded would leave fewer marks in the walls than steel.
Left step. Right pivot. Guard. Strike. Breathe.
Flint joined him after a while, turning it into a spar that was more conversation than fight.
"You thinking of anything in particular?" Flint asked, dodging a slow swing.
"Bracelets," John said. "Knots. Scholars with compliments. Old cracks."
"Cheerful," Flint said, parrying.
"You?" John asked.
"Same," Flint said. "Plus how I'm supposed to stab a problem that lives in walls."
"You can't," John said. "But you can stab the hands tying knots."
Flint grinned. "Now you're speaking my language."
By the time they stopped, sweat glued John's shirt to his back and the hum in his head had mixed with the thud of his own pulse enough
that the two almost sounded the same.
He liked that.
It made the tower feel less like an enemy and more like a reluctant ally.
Doris had been watching from the bed, Brian propped against her knees. His head bobbed sleepily with each sway of her leg, eyelashes
fluttering.
"You look less like you're about to explode," she said when John sat beside her again.
"That's the idea," he said.
She looked down at Brian.
"Do you think he'll want to do this?" she asked softly. "Train. Fight. Bend walls."
"He won't have much choice about the walls," John said. "But the rest?" He brushed a fingertip along Brian's wrist. "I want him to have choices. More than we did."
Brian caught his father's finger and squeezed.
His grip was stronger than it had any right to be.
"When he's older," Doris murmured, "how do we tell him about this? The hooks. The knots. The bracelets. That they tried to make him a… a research subject before he could even hold his own head up."
"Slowly," John said. "Honestly. After we've taught him how to say 'no' in five different ways."
"And to whom," Flint added from his chair.
Dorothy's voice floated lazily from her corner. "And how to listen to his own hum before anyone else's."
Doris smiled faintly. "That too."
Night fell.
This time, the dark came without hooks.
The wards hummed, steady and low.
The tower, tired, finally allowed itself to relax a
fraction.
John lay on his pallet, eyes half-open, listening.
Beside the bed, Doris slept curled toward the cradle, one hand resting on its edge even in dreams. Brian lay on his back, one arm flung
up as if reaching for invisible lines, breath soft and even.
The chalk stars above him glowed faintly where the day's touches had refreshed them.
The crooked one shone a little brighter, then faded.
John's chest hurt in a way that wasn't entirely fear.
"Ledger," he murmured to himself.
He sat up quietly, reached for the book.
By lantern light, he added one more entry:
— Council of Cracks. Student Teren, bracelet. Maevra vow. Vela anger. Unnamed 'scholar' from east. Paragon archive suspected. Result: internal link cut before anchor formed. Infant affected but unhooked. Note: Kael increasingly valuable. Risk: bracelets in wider circulation.
He hesitated, then wrote, in smaller script:
— Pattern: every attempt leaves us a little more prepared. Their lines teach ours.
He stared at the words.
They unsettled him.
They were also true.
He shut the ledger and sat for a long moment, quill still between his fingers.
The door sigil pulsed gently.
Outside, beyond the tower walls, the city exhaled—markets closing, fires banked, priests muttering final prayers.
Somewhere, under the western wards, someone in a gray cloak nursed bruised pride, planning the next approach.
Somewhere else, a Paragon cell argued about tactics and purity and how best to retrieve a lost line.
In the Stacks, Lyr muttered over residue and records, cross-referencing patterns.
Halvar's crooked chain lay on a table while he stared at a map of the city, eyes burning.
Serais drafted a sermon that would sound like comfort and work like a warning.
Maevra stood alone in the council chamber, hand on stone, listening to the cracks only she could hear from the Spire.
And in a small, over-defended suite, a baby dreamed under chalk stars.
John watched him, feeling the hum in the walls, the pulse in his own chest, the thickness of the extra lattice Dorothy had woven.
Lines everywhere.
Some hostile.
Some protective.
Some still undecided.
"We see you," John murmured into the quiet—not to the Paragons, not to the professors, but to the invisible threads themselves. "We're watching too."
Brian shifted, as if in answer.
His fingers opened.
For a heartbeat, the crooked star above him flared brighter.
Then the light died back, and night settled.
The world beyond the walls plotted.
The ledger waited.
The hum went on.
For now, that was enough.
They had survived another hook.
They had seen another face behind the hum.
They had drawn more lines of their own.
Tomorrow, the tower would wake to new rumors, new drills, new lectures.
Tomorrow, they'd add another page.
Tonight, they listened.
And, as sleep finally dragged him under, John realized that somewhere between caravan roads and council chambers, between monsters in canyons and bracelets on wrists, watching the hum had become as much a part of him as the sword at his side.
The world wanted to write its story across his son.
Fine.
They'd answer with ink of their own.