The sky over Aetherion was clear the morning they made Doris write a letter.
No storms massed over the hills. No cracks showed in the wards. No Paragon bracelets hummed. The tower breathed in and out, a little tighter than it had before the under-Market fight, but still steady.
The whole thing felt wrong.
Too normal.
Doris watched sunlight edge along the window slit, turning dust into slow, drifting gold. Brian lay in the cradle, awake but still, eyes wide as he tracked a floating mote.
The chalk stars on the ceiling were faint in daylight but not invisible. The crooked one, as always, caught more light than it had any right to.
John lay on his back on the pallet, staring up as if memorising the constellations in case someone took them away.
Flint snored in the chair.
Dorothy sat at the table with a cup of tea cooling at her elbow, staring at a blank sheet of parchment.
The hum in the walls was the same as it had been an hour ago.
And the hour before that.
The quiet settled like a too-heavy blanket.
"Something's wrong," Doris said.
"Nothing's wrong," Dorothy replied.
"Exactly," Doris said.
Flint snorted awake. "What's wrong?" he mumbled.
"Nothing," John said. "And that's the problem."
Flint blinked blearily. "You people are exhausting," he muttered, then rubbed his eyes and squinted at the parchment on the table. "What's that?"
Dorothy tapped it. "This," she said, "is cowardice."
Flint perked up. "Ours or someone else's?"
"Yours," she said to Doris.
Doris frowned. "I haven't done anything today," she said.
"Exactly," Dorothy said.
John rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow. "What is she talking about?" he asked.
"The caravan," Dorothy said. "Your family. The people who think you all died in the storm or vanished into a Paragon pit. How long has it
been since you wrote to them?"
Doris's throat tightened. "We can't send letters," she said. "It's too dangerous. If the Paragons intercept—"
"I didn't say 'send,'" Dorothy said. "I said 'write.' It's one thing to be cut off by necessity. It's another to let fear talk you into pretending your old life doesn't exist."
Doris stared at the parchment.
Her hand ached just looking at it, phantom memories of long nights in the caravan ledger tent, ink-stained fingers, Bridget's terrible
spelling spilling into the margins in jokes and corrections.
"I don't have time to indulge in sentimental exercises," she said.
"You have an hour," Dorothy replied. "Halvar's not dragging you into drills today. Lyr's lost in dust and scribbles. Serais is up to his neck in priests. You're pacing. He's brooding." She nodded at John. "And the hum is quiet enough I'm bored. So. Write."
"To what purpose?" Doris demanded.
"To remember," Dorothy said. "You're about to walk into sanctums and shrines and tunnels with old ghosts. I'd prefer you go in with
something other than guilt and Paragon spite rattling in your head."
Flint nodded slowly. "She has a point," he said. "You can't spend all your time thinking about cracks and cultists. You'll go mad. You need something… else. People who knew you before you were 'Doriane the Voidborn Problem.'"
"Bridget would absolutely call you that," John said.
"Bridget doesn't know I'm Doriane the Voidborn anything," Doris said, stung.
"Not yet," Dorothy murmured.
That hurt more.
Doris looked at the parchment.
Blank.
Waiting.
Like the ledger had been, once.
She swallowed.
"Fine," she said, more harshly than she intended. "I'll write. You're cleaning the ink off his hands if he smears it."
Brian gurgled as if accepting the challenge.
She sat at the table.
The chair felt wrong.
The height was off.
In the caravan, the ledger table had been a battered plank balanced on crates, pitched slightly to the left so ink pots had to be wedged in place. Here, the surface was smooth, sturdy, level. The parchment lay on it
like a stranger.
Doris dipped the quill.
Her hand hovered.
Words refused to arrange themselves.
"Dear Bridget," she wrote finally.
The letters looked too neat.
She forced herself not to scratch them out.
You don't know if she'll ever see it, she told herself. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be honest.
Her hand moved.
Bridget,
I am not dead.
She stared at that.
Ink glistened, slow to dry.
"I dislike this exercise," she muttered.
"Keep going," Dorothy said.
Doris did.
I am writing this from someplace I never intended to come back to. We made it through the storm. We made it through the ridgeclaws. We made it past too many cloaks on too many ridges. We made it through the tower's first scream. We are whole.
Mostly.
She glanced at John.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Mostly?" he mouthed.
She mouthed back, "Your shoulder."
He shrugged with the other one.
She kept writing.
The baby's name is Brian. (Yes, I know you said if we named him after that idiot in the red hat you would steal him. Too late. You can
fight me about it later.) He laughs at shadows and chalk and sometimes at nothing I can see. The tower hums when he does. I don't know if that should comfort or terrify me, so I am choosing comfort for now.
Mother and Father are alive. I have not told them as much as I should. This will not surprise you. We are still Aetheris even if we pretend otherwise. We specialise in hiding the most important parts of ourselves until they burst.
Her chest tightened.
She remembered her mother's face when she'd walked back into the quiet village after years on the road pretending to be someone else—shock, anger, grief, love, all fighting behind her eyes.
She wrote anyway.
The tower is a stone with too many layers. There is an old hum under the new one. You would hate it. Or you'd start making jokes about the walls listening. (I can hear you now: "At least someone does, Doris.")
A small sound interrupted her.
Brian.
She looked up.
He'd rolled onto his side in the cradle, reaching for the chalk stars. His hand patted the air, fingers splayed.
The crooked star brightened faintly under his palm, though he couldn't possibly reach it.
"Ledger," John murmured automatically.
"Later," Doris said, though she knew she'd write it down.
She dipped the quill again.
I am afraid. Constantly. The parrots in my head call this cowardice. Dorothy calls it sanity. John calls it "an accurate assessment of our situation." The tower calls it "baseline."
But I am also angry. This will not surprise you either. The Paragons keep using tools we tried to bury. They dig up diagrams and shards and
half-burned notes and wave them around like torches in a dry field. We keep running behind them with buckets, trying not to set ourselves on fire in the process.
She paused, flexing her fingers.
Ink stained the tip of her smallest one.
Flint hovered nearby, pretending to fix a strap on his gauntlet so he could read upside down.
"Parrots?" he whispered.
"Voices," she said. "You're one of them."
He looked oddly pleased.
She bent over the page one more time.
I don't know if this letter will ever find you. The tower's scribes could send it, if Maevra allowed it, if the roads are clear, if the
Paragons don't intercept, if a thousand other things go right. I am writing it anyway because I cannot stand the thought that the last words you heard from me were "I'll be careful."
She could see Bridget's face when she'd said it—wind whipping hair into her eyes, rain needling sideways, the storm wall looming.
I was not careful. I stepped back into a world I swore never to touch again because my son screamed and the sky cracked. You would have done the same, and then scolded me for taking so long.
If this finds you: we are at Aetherion, under more wards than any sane person could require. John is arguing with wardens. I am arguing with archivists. Dorothy is arguing with everyone. The baby is arguing with
shadows and winning.
We are not safe. But we are not surrendering either.
I hope you are still on the road. I hope the wheels still creak and the stewpots still burn and the card games are still rigged. I hope,
when the tower hums too loud, that somewhere out there there is a wagon driving
under a too-bright moon, and you are swearing at a broken axle.
If the world ends, it will not be because we did nothing.
If the world survives, I expect you to make fun of this letter.
— Doris
She finished with her caravan name, not the one Maevra had spoken in council.
Doris.
The one Bridget knew.
Her hand shook a little when she set the quill down.
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Flint let out a low whistle. "She's going to cry reading that," he said.
"If she ever does," Doris said. "Which she won't. Because we're not sending it."
"No," Dorothy said. "We're not. Yet."
Doris scowled. "Don't start," she warned.
"I'm not," Dorothy said. "I'm simply saying: put it somewhere you can see it. So when the Paragons try to tell you your past is a chain, you remember it's also a rope."
Flint blinked. "Those are the same thing."
"Only if you hold them wrong," Dorothy said.
They pinned the letter to the wall.
Not with a nail.
With chalk.
Doris drew a small circle on the stone near the head of the bed, a simple wardless mark, and pressed the folded parchment into it.
The chalk held it as if it had hooks.
"Old trick?" John asked.
"Caravan trick," Doris said. "When ink's still wet and ink-pots still scarce, you keep the words where you can see them."
Brian stared at the new addition, fascinated.
His hand reached toward it.
The hum did not spike.
The crooked star above the cradle brightened just a touch, in what John was beginning to recognise as approval.
He wrote later:
— Letter to Bridget. Not sent. Chalk-pinned above bed. Feels like tying a rope between 'then' and 'now.' Pattern: we are not just Aetherion. We are caravan too.
The quiet day didn't last.
They never did.
In the afternoon, Halvar summoned John alone.
No Orane.
No squad.
Just a warden at the door with a dry, "Rector would like a word. Bring your listening face."
Doris set Brian back into the cradle, fingers brushing his cheek. "If it's a sanctum thing—" she began.
"It won't be," Halvar had said earlier that morning. "Not yet. When it is, you'll be in the room too."
So John went.
The Rector's office was smaller than John expected.
He'd imagined maps, shelves, chalkboards crowded with diagrams.
There were some of those.
But most of the space was taken up by a battered desk and two chairs, one on each side, facing each other like equal combatants.
Halvar sat in one, chain crooked, hair rebellious, quill trapped between his fingers as if he'd been halfway through stabbing a document into submission.
"Sit," he said.
John did.
The hum here was oddly gentle. Not quiet, exactly—he could feel the entire tower threading through this room, lines intersecting, reports flowing—but Halvar had tuned his own space to something like a deep, steady drumbeat.
It was… grounding.
"You look better," Halvar said.
"Better than what?" John asked.
"The last time I saw you, you'd just told a Paragon and an old anchor to get stuffed," Halvar said. "Most people need a day on their back and a bottle after that."
"I had a baby on my chest and a ledger," John said. "Alcohol would have been wasted."
Halvar's mouth twitched. "Fair," he said.
He set the quill down.
"Two things," he said. "One: Echo."
"The gray cloak," John said.
"Yes," Halvar replied. "Lyr and Maevra and I have been trying to decide what to file them under. 'High-risk Paragon handler,' 'sanctum
scholar,' or 'walking calamity.'"
"'Annoying'?" John suggested.
"That's implied," Halvar said. "The important part is: they're new. Or newly bold. Paragon cells have had scholars before, but not ones who walk up to my wardens in my drains and give speeches."
"They like tests," John said. "They said as much."
Halvar nodded. "They'll escalate," he said. "Not always in obvious ways. Not always near the places we expect. Quiet room work will help. But I need you to understand: you're on their list now."
"I already was," John said.
"Not like this," Halvar said. "Before, you were a variable. Now you're a data point. They saw you push back through the lattice. They saw
how far you'll go to stop a slide. They'll start designing for that."
John's mouth went dry. "You're saying they'll aim around me."
"Yes," Halvar said. "They'll use what you've taught the walls against someone who hasn't had time to learn. Or they'll try to make you
anchor the wrong pattern by giving you something you can't bear to lose."
"Brian," John said.
"And," Halvar added quietly, "Doriane."
The word hung in the air.
John's grip tightened on the chair's armrest.
"I know," he said.
Halvar watched him for a long moment.
"You're angry," the Rector said.
"Yes," John replied.
"Good," Halvar said. "Keep it pointed in the right direction."
He picked up a second parchment.
"Second thing," he said. "The Emperor's office sent this."
That got John's full attention.
"Already?" he asked.
"You didn't think word of a Voidborn child and a screaming tower would stay inside these walls forever, did you?" Halvar asked.
"I hoped," John said.
"Hope is not a strategy," Halvar said. "Someone talked. Maybe a noble with a loose tongue, maybe a clerk with an enterprising cousin, maybe a priest who couldn't keep his sermon metaphors vague. Regardless,
whispers reached the palace. The Emperor's secretary writes—very politely—that His Radiance would 'at some point' like to meet the child whose resonance rattled his breakfast."
John closed his eyes briefly.
Images flickered—throne rooms, banners, gold, and at the center, a man who saw their son as… what? A curiosity? A weapon? A threat?
"Maevra?" John asked.
"She stalled," Halvar said. "Beautifully. She sent a reply full of long words about 'stabilisation periods' and 'ongoing security
assessments' and 'the need to protect delicate lattice work.' The secretary will need three readings to parse it."
"How long does that buy us?" John asked.
"A season, maybe," Halvar said. "Less, if someone in the palace decides they're tired of being patient."
"And when that patience runs out?" John said.
"Then Maevra and I will argue," Halvar said. "And Serais will argue. And Lyr will mumble darkly. And Dorothy will threaten to push
someone down a sanctum. And eventually, if the Emperor insists, we will have to negotiate a controlled meeting."
John's mind raced.
"How controlled?" he asked.
"As controlled as we can make it," Halvar said. "Neutral ground. Over wards we command, not palace ones. Time-limited. No one touches the child without your consent and the walls' approval. No Paragons anywhere
within three streets."
"You can't guarantee that," John said.
"No," Halvar said. "But we can make it cost-prohibitive."
He watched John's face.
"I'm telling you now," Halvar said, "because I don't want this to blindside you in a crisis. The Empire will not leave you alone. Not forever. Not when you represent both a threat and a potential bargain chip. Better we plan for that while we're still setting our own lines."
John swallowed.
"You think we should agree," he said.
"I think we should decide on our terms before they present theirs," Halvar said. "That doesn't mean 'yes, Your Radiance, take our
child.' It means: we outline what we will and will not accept. We decide now what you consider non-negotiable. And we make sure Maevra knows, so when she's arguing in rooms you'll never see, she's not guessing."
"What if we say no to everything?" John asked.
Halvar's mouth quirked. "Then I will have the dubious honor of explaining to the Emperor that a caravan guardsman told him to wait," he said. "Part of me would enjoy that. Most of me knows how badly that conversation can go for a tower that still needs funding and troops."
John rubbed a hand over his face.
He thought of Brian's tiny fingers.
Of Doris's letter, chalk-pinned above their bed.
Of Bridget's likely reaction if she heard they'd agreed to parade their son before a throne.
"He doesn't leave our sight," John said finally. "Ever. No hands on him except ours. No 'testing,' no 'demonstrations.' No… displays. If
the Emperor wants to see him, he sees him as a child in his mother's arms. Not as a symbol."
Halvar nodded. "Good," he said. "What else?"
"No Paragon-tainted priests," John said. "No Vela. No one who's written papers about using Voidborn resonance as a 'tool.' I don't care if they're favored at court."
"I'll add it," Halvar said.
"And if the Emperor insists on bringing his own ward-workers?" John asked.
"Then Dorothy will stand behind you," Halvar said. "And I will stand beside you. And between us we will make sure no one touches the lattice without our consent."
John stared.
"Why?" he asked.
Halvar blinked. "Because I'm fond of my tower," he said. "And the people in it. And because if the Emperor breaks his own word in front of a Voidborn child, the walls will remember."
He leaned back.
"Think on it," he said. "Talk to Doriane. Write down what you refuse to allow. Bring it to me. We'll build a plan before they force us into a reaction."
John rose.
At the door, Halvar said, "And John?"
He looked back.
"You did well in the tunnel," Halvar said. "Not just with your hand on the wall. With your refusal to let Echo make the choice for you.
Remember that. They thrive on people who think they have none."
John nodded once.
Then he went back to the suite.
He found Doris standing under the letter.
Not reading, exactly.
Just… looking.
Brian was in the cradle, kicking at the air.
Flint was trying to entertain him with a spoon, making faces that should have made any child laugh; Brian simply stared in deep, offended study, as if cataloguing them for later judgment.
"What did he want?" Doris asked without turning.
"Two things," John said. "Paragons. And the Emperor."
She closed her eyes briefly. "Of course."
He told her.
Echo.
Lists.
The palace.
The politely worded request to meet their son.
When he finished, she was very still.
"If we say no," she said slowly, "they'll come anyway. One day. With orders and sigils and a hundred years of law behind them."
"Yes," John said.
"And if we say yes without limits," she said, "they'll take more than we give, and we won't know what we've lost until something cracks."
"Yes," he said again.
She opened her eyes and looked at the letter.
"I wrote to Bridget," she said. "About us. About him. About the tower. I didn't tell her about the Emperor. I didn't think I'd have to."
"You still don't," he said. "We haven't agreed to anything."
"But we will," she said. "In some shape. We'll have to. We're already on their board. Pretending we're not doesn't change the game."
"We can still set some rules," he said.
She nodded slowly.
"Then write them," she said. "In the ledger first. For us. So when they come with their parchment and seals and polite threats, we aren't deciding with our backs to the wall."
He sat at the table and opened the book.
The pages smelled faintly of ink and chalk dust.
He wrote:
— Halvar reports: Emperor aware of Brian. Palace requests eventual audience "at suitable time." Maevra has stalled. Need to decide our own lines before theirs arrive.
Beneath, in darker strokes:
— Non-negotiables (for us):
• Brian never out of our sight.
• No touching, no "testing," no demonstrations.
• Neutral ground under tower wards, not palace.
• No Paragon-adjacent scholars, no Vela.
• Dorothy + Halvar present.
• Meeting framed as with family, not asset.
Doris came beside him, reading.
Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for the quill.
She added:
If any of this is broken, we walk. Immediately. No matter who is watching.
Flint peered over their shoulders. "You know they're going to hate this list," he said.
"Yes," Doris said. "That's how we'll know it's good."
Brian squealed suddenly.
They looked up.
He'd managed, for the first time, to roll fully onto his stomach.
His eyes went wide with surprise at the new angle.
Then he pushed, wobbled, and flopped back.
The chalk stars flickered in amused sympathy.
John felt laughter bubble up unexpectedly.
"Ledger," he murmured.
Doris smiled, small but real.
"Ledger," she agreed.
Outside, the city shifted, unaware that a list of demands and a baby's first awkward roll had just put new lines into the world.
In the palace, a secretary frowned over Maevra's elegantly obstructive reply.
In some hidden corner under the streets, Echo tapped a finger against stone, feeling the lingering resistance in the Old Market
anchor, recalibrating.
In the chapel crypts, salt glimmered faintly where Serais had laid it, humming softly in the lattice like a mundane hymn.
And in the tower, under a letter never sent and stars drawn in chalk, a family wrote rules no Emperor, Paragon, or saint would like—and
trusted the walls to remember them.
The quiet would not last.
It never did.
But for this day, they had ink, laughter, and a little boy rolling toward his next trouble.
For now, that was enough.