Brian learned to laugh before the tower learned to relax.
It wasn't much of a laugh at first. More like a surprised cough that happened to be happy. A hiccup that forgot to despair. But it was
unmistakable, and it hit Doris like a spell.
She was changing his cloth when it happened.
He'd grabbed her finger with both hands, made a face, and then, for no reason she could see, let out a tiny, breathy sound that was somehow brighter than his usual babble.
She froze.
He stared at her, eyes wide, as if surprised by his own noise.
Then he did it again.
This time it bubbled, just a little, up from his chest.
"John," Doris called, voice tight.
The door to the narrow washing alcove scraped. John leaned in, drying his hair with a threadbare towel, ward-glow outlining the tired lines on his face.
"What is it? Did the hum—"
Brian laughed.
The sound cut him off.
John blinked.
His expression did something Doris hadn't seen in weeks: it unknotted.
"That," he said softly, "is illegal."
Brian tried to shove her finger into his mouth. It didn't fit. He made a frustrated noise.
"Again," Doris whispered. "Come on. Do it again."
"You're going to terrify him," John said.
"He terrifies me constantly," Doris replied. "He can cope with one request."
She tickled his ribs gently, careful not to jostle him too much.
He squirmed, eyes scrunching.
The laugh came back—longer this time, a string of little sounds that made something in her chest ache and mend at the same time.
John leaned against the doorframe, towel forgotten.
The tower hummed.
The chalk stars waited.
For a moment, the world was just this: a child laughing because the cloth was cold and his mother's hands were warm and nothing hurt
right then.
Doris swallowed hard.
"Ledger," she said thickly. "We're putting that in the ledger."
They did.
That evening, John wrote it on a fresh line between "drain surveys" and "bracelet residue":
— First laugh. No ward reaction. No hum spike. Just sound. Small, but important. Reminder: the ledger is about him, not just them.
He underlined "him" twice.
Dorothy read it, smirked, and said, "If you start recording every bodily function, I'm moving out," but she didn't really mean it.
Flint pretended to gag when Brian laughed again the next day, then secretly tried to coax more of the noise out of him when Doris wasn't looking.
Kael, when told, just smiled in that quiet way he had now, like joy was a fragile thing you didn't jostle.
The tower remained grumpy.
Students still whispered.
Bracelets hadn't vanished; if anything, the rumors about them had grown more elaborate. But nothing else tried to hook the suite. No more bone knots in the garden. No more clandestine circles lighting up lecture
halls.
Halvar grumbled that this only meant the Paragons were "changing tools, not intent."
Dorothy agreed.
Doris tried not to borrow trouble.
Most days, she failed.
The first dream came a week later, on a night so ordinary she should have known better.
Rain rattled soft against the high slit of the window.
A warden's boots scuffed past the door at regular intervals.
The ward-sigil pulsed slow and steady, reflecting the tower's settling heartbeat.
Brian had been fretful earlier—too many visitors, too much motion—but he'd finally fallen into a deep sleep in the cradle, one fist still half-open as if clutching invisible chalk.
Doris lay on the bed, facing him, one arm stretched out so her fingertips just brushed the cradle's edge. John was a solid warmth at her back, breathing slow, the weight of his hand resting over her hip.
She drifted.
Not into the exhausted plunge of the last few weeks, where sleep hit like a brick and she woke disoriented, but into something gentler. A murky shallows.
Her mind wandered.
She was on the road again, wagon wheels creaking, sky too wide. Brian was smaller, impossibly small, a weight under her ribs instead of in her arms. Dorothy walked ahead, humming to herself. The world smelled of
dust and fig paste and cheap wine.
The hum threaded through everything—stone, sky, wheel, bone.
Familiar.
Then it bent.
Just a little.
Like a note slightly off-key.
Doris frowned in the dream.
The landscape shifted.
The wagon blurred, softened at the edges, like chalk wiped with a damp cloth.
The sky cracked.
Not in a dramatic, jagged way.
In hairlines.
Thin, spiderweb fissures raced across the blue, barely visible, like frost on glass.
Through them, light pushed.
Too bright.
Too hot.
Her heartbeat picked up.
"John?" she said.
Her voice made no sound.
Dorothy kept walking, oblivious.
The cracks widened.
Someone whispered.
She couldn't hear words.
Just rhythm.
Caaaareful…
No.
Not careful.
Countless.
Counting.
Her breath hitched.
Her fingers, in the waking world, tightened on the cradle.
Under her hand, the wood vibrated.
The hum in the room shifted—a subtle, higher note threading into the usual bass.
Not much.
If she hadn't spent weeks pressing her senses against stone, she would have missed it.
But she had.
Even half-asleep, her body knew wrong when it felt it.
Doris's eyes snapped open.
The dream-sky shattered.
She looked straight up into the very real ceiling of the suite, chalk stars glowing faintly in the dim.
Her heart raced.
Her skin prickled.
The room looked the same.
Bed.
Table.
Chair.
Door.
Cradle.
Brian.
He lay on his back, eyes closed.
But his face—
His face was wrong.
Not twisted in a cry.
Not straining against invisible hooks.
His expression was… intent.
Frowned brows.
Lips parted.
Breath fast and shallow.
His fingers flexed, grasping at something above him that wasn't there.
The crooked chalk star overhead flared bright without her touch.
It flickered in an irregular rhythm that made her teeth ache.
"John," she whispered, voice dry.
He didn't stir.
He slept like the dead these days when he could—hard and deep, body making up for all the nights it hadn't had the chance.
"John," she said again, louder.
The ward-sigil above the door pulsed.
Not in alarm.
In question.
Her stomach twisted.
Doris pushed herself upright.
A hand clamped lightly around her wrist.
Dorothy's.
She hadn't even heard the older woman move.
Dorothy's eyes were shadowed but sharp in the dim.
"Don't shout," Dorothy murmured. "Not yet. Look."
"I am looking," Doris hissed. "He's—"
"Look with your other sense," Dorothy said. "The one we've been beating into you against your will."
Doris wanted to shove her away.
Wanted to scoop Brian up, hold him so close nothing could reach him, rip the chalk from the ceiling, scream until the tower shook.
Instead, she forced her hand to stay on the cradle's edge.
She reached out.
Not with fingers.
With everything she'd learned to notice.
Hum.
Pause.
Hum.
The room's lattice was steady.
No spike.
No hook forcing its way through the blanket.
The extra dampening layer Dorothy had woven hummed like two blankets pressed together.
But under that—
Something thin.
Something light.
Not sliding along the walls.
Drifting above them.
Like mist.
Like breath.
"Dream-front," Dorothy said quietly. "Not a line. A whisper."
Doris's mouth went dry. "You said that would take time," she whispered. "You said they'd try other things first."
"They did," Dorothy said. "They like to stack methods. External probes first. Link circles. Now they're trying the edges."
"The edges of what?" Doris demanded, even though she already knew.
"Sleep," Dorothy said. "They're testing whether they can lean on what's already inside him instead of hammering from outside."
Doris stared at Brian.
His tiny chest rose and fell too quickly.
His fingers curled, then spread, as if reaching through something thick.
She swallowed bile.
"Can they get in?" she asked.
"Not fully," Dorothy said. "Not like the forbidden stories. The mind is the one place the old laws still hold tight. They can't walk into his head like a room. But they can try to paint over his dreams. Drop images on the surface. An echo of their crack. A hint of their god."
"That's worse," Doris choked. "At least with hooks I can see you cut them. This—this is—"
Dorothy's grip tightened just enough to ground her.
"They're not there yet," she said. "Right now it's more like someone pressing their face against a window and fogging the glass. Unpleasant. Not irreversible." She nodded toward the chalk ceiling. "He has his own patterns in there. That matters."
Brian's eyes flickered beneath his lids.
Tiny tremors rippled through his limbs.
Doris recognized the signs.
She'd had enough bad dreams herself.
"How do we stop it?" she whispered. "If we wake him, does it cut the… the fog?"
"Yes," Dorothy said. "But it also teaches him that every time the world feels wrong, he has to snap awake. He'll never rest. And they'll
just try again next time he falls."
Doris's nails dug into the cradle edge.
"What's the alternative?" she asked.
"We stand watch," Dorothy said. "From this side. We press back. We show the lattice that his dreams are part of its pattern, not something for it to open to strangers."
"That's words," Doris said. "How?"
"Song," Dorothy said simply.
Doris stared at her. "You think I can sing away Paragons?"
"Not Paragons," Dorothy said. "Patterns. You've been humming in this room longer than they have. The walls know your voice. So does he. The first time the wards screamed, it was your song that kept him from tearing the
orb apart. Do you remember?"
Doris did.
She remembered almost blacking out on the Stacks floor, throat raw, while the Deep Weave shook and Brian screamed and the wardstone
cracked.
"Sing now," Dorothy said. "Not loud. Not for them. For him. For the lattice. Tell it which pattern is 'safe' and which is 'intruder.'"
Doris wanted to argue that it couldn't possibly be that simple.
That this was Voidborn blood and Paragon spite and old mistakes grinding against each other in the dark.
But Brian's face twitched again.
A tiny line appeared between his brows.
His fists clenched, then snapped open, as if trying to grab something falling.
She didn't have time for theory.
She had a child.
She opened her mouth.
And hummed.
Not the road-song, this time.
That one had soothed storms and wagon jolts and long watches, but it was tied to a thousand memories, many of them sharp.
Instead, she chose something smaller.
A tune her mother had used when Doris had been a child and the caravans had stopped by quiet rivers. No words. Just a rising and falling
line, simple as breath:
Mmm-hmm… mmm-hmm… mmm-hmm…
She let it loop, unhurried.
Brian's fingers twitched.
The crooked star overhead flickered in time.
The hum in the room shifted—
Just a fraction.
The mist-like pressure above the lattice thinned where the sound brushed it.
Not because the Paragons heard it.
They didn't.
Because the wards did.
Dorothy tapped the staff lightly on the floor, once, twice, then rested its tip against the cradle's leg.
The vibration joined the song—low, steady, like a second voice.
Mmm-hmm… mmm-hmm… thum… mmm-hmm…
The chalk stars glowed a little brighter.
The mist recoiled.
Doris could feel it, the way a person felt when someone stepped back from just too close. The pressure didn't vanish; it retreated to the edges.
"Good," Dorothy murmured. "Again."
Doris kept humming.
Her throat burned.
Her eyes stung.
She didn't care.
Brian's breathing slowed, tiny chest rising and falling in a more even rhythm.
His brow smoothed.
His fists relaxed.
The crooked star steadied.
"Is it working?" Doris whispered between notes.
"Yes," Dorothy said. "They hadn't anchored enough of their pattern yet. They were… testing. We've just told the lattice, 'this is ours,
not yours.' Next time they try this way, it'll push back harder on its own."
Doris wanted to sag.
She didn't.
She hummed.
The mist thinned further, unraveling.
For a heartbeat, she thought she heard something very far away—an irritated hiss, like air escaping a cracked pipe.
Then it faded.
The room's hum settled back into its usual layered rhythm.
Outer lattice.
Inner blanket.
Cradle-soft echo.
Dorothy's staff stilled.
She let out a long breath.
"There," she said. "Edge-front repelled. For tonight."
Doris stopped humming, throat raw, ears ringing with the absence of her own sound.
Brian sighed in his sleep.
One hand drifted toward the crooked star, relaxed, and fell back.
Her knees shook.
Dorothy caught her elbow before she collapsed fully, easing her onto the side of the bed.
For a moment they sat in silence, the only sound John's slow breathing and Brian's softer one.
Then Doris whispered, "Why didn't the wards wake Halvar? Or Maevra? Or—"
"They barely felt it," Dorothy said. "By design. The wards are tuned to scream at lines and cracks and hooks. This was a breath on glass.
If they overreacted every time someone's dream brushed the lattice, the tower would never sleep."
"Then how did you know?" Doris asked.
Dorothy tapped her temple. "I sleep light," she said. "And I've been expecting this. They tried the walls. They tried the drains. Next step is the places between waking and not. They're predictable in their impatience."
"And if we hadn't woken?" Doris asked.
The answer tasted like rust in her mouth.
Dorothy didn't soften it.
"Then he'd have seen more," she said. "Not hooks. Not control. Just… impressions. Cracks. Fire. Hands reaching. The kind of dreams that leave invisible bruises."
Doris's nails dug into her palms. "He's a baby," she hissed.
"Yes," Dorothy said. "Which is why they're pushing now. They want to lay down their story early. Before he knows whose voice is whose."
Doris shuddered.
The idea of Paragon whispers painting themselves over her son's first memories made her viciously, helplessly angry.
"Then we lay ours down louder," she said hoarsely. "We give him our stories first."
"Exactly," Dorothy said.
Behind them, John made a small sound and rolled onto his back, muttering something about idiots in armor.
He was still asleep.
He hadn't felt the mist.
Doris watched his face for a moment, then looked back at Brian.
"He shouldn't miss this," she said, half to herself.
"No," Dorothy said. "But he doesn't have to see all of it. You tell him in the morning. With the ledger."
Doris nodded slowly.
"I hate this," she whispered.
Dorothy's laugh was quiet and rough.
"Good," she said. "If you ever start enjoying it, I'll smack you with my staff."
In the morning, John knew something was off before his eyes opened.
The room felt… used.
Like a training yard after drills: nothing broken, but the air still holding echoes of exertion.
He blinked up at the chalk stars.
They seemed… sharper.
Less like hurried drawings, more like a pattern that had decided it belonged.
Doris sat at the table, the ledger open in front of her.
She had a cup of tea in her hands she wasn't drinking and bruises under her eyes that hadn't been there the night before.
Brian slept in the cradle, soft snores audible.
Dorothy dozed in her chair, staff resting against her shoulder at an angle that guaranteed her neck would hurt later.
Flint was nowhere in sight.
Probably on a pre-dawn errand for Halvar or Orane.
John pushed himself up slowly.
"Tell me," he said.
Doris looked at him.
Part of him wanted her to say "nothing."
She didn't.
"Dream-front," she said. "They tried the edges."
She told him.
The dream-sky.
The cracks.
The mist.
The humming.
Her song.
Dorothy's counter-vibration.
How Brian's breathing had slowed only when the chalk stars had steadied.
John listened.
Jaw tight.
Hands clenched in the blanket.
"They touched his dreams," he said.
"Brushed," Dorothy corrected without opening her eyes. "There's a difference."
"It's close enough," he snapped.
"Yes," she said. "Which is why you're going to write it down, and then we're going to teach you how to stand watch with your own head
next time, instead of sleeping like a rock."
He glared.
She cracked one eye open and glared back.
"Don't waste it," she said. "We caught them mid-test. Before they built a habit. That's a win. A small one. Use it."
Doris slid the ledger toward him.
A fresh line waited.
Her handwriting already filled part of it:
— First dream-front probe. Night rain. Mist-pressure over lattice. Infant's sleep disturbed (brow tight, breath fast). No external hook. Pattern felt like wrong note riding hum. Repelled by song + Dorothy's staff resonance. Chalk stars steadied. No residual foreign feel in morning. Result: ward now more alert to dream-edge patterns.
She left space beneath.
John picked up the quill.
He added:
— Risk: repeated attempts may scar his sleep. Counter: build strong "home" pattern (song, stars, voices) so lattice treats that as default. Teach ourselves to wake to mist as we do to hooks.
He paused.
Then, in smaller script:
— They're not just pulling on walls. They're trying to write in him. We write first.
He set the quill down carefully.
Doris's hand closed over his.
Silence settled.
Not empty.
Full.
The tower hummed.
Brian sighed in his sleep and rolled his head toward the sound of their voices.
The crooked star glowed faintly.
"I want him to have dreams that are his," Doris whispered. "Not theirs. Not mine. His."
"He will," John said.
"You don't know that," she said.
"No," he said. "But I can act like I do until it's true."
Dorothy snorted. "That," she said, "is parenting."
Later, Halvar appeared with dark circles under his eyes and a list of new ward adjustments that made the ledger look simple.
"We can't lock down dreams," he said, rubbing his temples. "If we try, half the tower goes mad in a week. But we can teach the lattice to treat certain patterns as 'home' and be suspicious of strangers."
"Just like us," Flint said from the doorway, having returned smelling of rain and metal.
"Exactly like you," Halvar agreed. "Annoying, paranoid, and harder to fool each day."
He looked at Brian.
"At some point," he said, "you're going to have to let him dream without hovering."
"Not today," Doris said.
"Not today," Halvar agreed.
He left more instructions with Dorothy, traded a few low-voiced jabs with her about who owed whom more sleep, and then vanished
again, trailed by paperwork and a sense of overtaxed competence.
The day passed.
Brian woke cheerful, as far as Doris could tell.
He laughed again when Flint made a face.
He grabbed for John's nose and missed.
He stared at the chalk stars with the serious intensity of a small person convinced that light was the most important thing in the world.
If there were cracks in his dreams, he didn't carry them on his face.
Doris clung to that.
They didn't tell him, of course.
Not yet.
They told the ledger.
They told Halvar and Maevra and Lyr.
They told the walls, every time they hummed the river-song near his cradle.
The Paragons had pressed their metaphorical faces to the window and fogged the glass.
They'd been pushed back.
They would try again.
They always did.
But tonight, when the rain came and Brian's eyelids drooped and the chalk stars flickered faintly in the dark, there was more ink on the side of "ours" than there had been the night before.
In the quiet that followed, as the tower drifted toward uneasy rest, Doris lay on her side facing the cradle, hand on its edge, and
whispered into the hum, "Your dreams are yours."
She didn't know if the wards heard.
She knew Brian did.
His fingers twitched.
The crooked star brightened.
Not in alarm.
In answer.