Rain lingered for two more days, then left the world raw and bright.
The tower's slit window framed a strip of washed-clean sky. Roof tiles across the city glittered wet. The streets below steamed faintly where morning sun hit cobbles that hadn't had time to forget the downpour.
Brian pressed his face to the pallet's edge, legs kicking as he tried very hard to reach the window with hands that were several years too short.
"You're not getting there," John told him.
Brian responded by grabbing John's thumb and shoving it triumphantly into his own mouth.
"Ledger," Doris said absently from the table.
"We are not recording every time he eats my knuckles," John said.
"Not that," Doris replied. "The fact he's trying to go toward the light, not the hum."
He glanced back.
She was bent over a stack of Lyr's copied diagrams, red ink already bleeding into the margins. The ledger lay open beside them, half a line written:
— River anchor held. Orane's boots still squelch. Lyr smug.
She added:
— Brian reaching for windows, not walls. Good. He knows there's a world outside the hum.
John snorted. "For now," he said. "Wait until he discovers lines in the plaster."
"Don't rush that," she murmured.
The room felt… suspended.
Not safe—he didn't think he'd ever use that word again without qualifiers—but between blows. The river anchor had been soothed and nearly sabotaged in the same breath. The chapel scar had been poked and salted. The Old Market wall still sulked.
Everyone in the tower knew another move was coming.
No one knew from where.
In the meantime, life went on.
Badly, messily, persistently.
The first change came with the bells.
They rang the second hour later than usual—a subtle shift most people wouldn't notice.
John had learned, now, to notice.
The delay rolled through the city in small adjustments: vendors opening shutters a little slower, students stumbling into hallways
half-dressed, late prayers muttered as people realised they'd overslept.
"What now?" Flint asked as the last bell tone faded.
"Maevra," Dorothy said from her seat, eyes half-closed, head tilted like she was listening to something no one else heard. "She called a meeting at dawn. It ran long."
"How do you know?" John asked.
Dorothy tapped her staff lightly against the floor.
The hum under the suite shivered, just once.
"Because they argued about which room to use," she said. "New wards always complain."
The meeting Maevra held wasn't in the familiar council chamber.
It was in a room John had never seen—high in the Spire, with long, narrow windows that looked out over the city.
"Too much sky," Lyr muttered when she entered. "Too much temptation for people to imagine dropping each other."
Maevra had chosen it for a reason.
The table was smaller here.
Fewer chairs.
Halvar, Lyr, Orane, Serais, Ren Kaltan.
Dorothy leaned in the corner like an accusation.
Vela was absent.
Her absence was the first sign this was serious.
"The river is awake again," Maevra said without preamble. "But it's ours. For now. The Market scar is ours. For now. The chapel scar is… aware." Her mouth twisted. "And still ours. For now. That's three anchors tugging against a lattice that was not designed to be stressed like this, in an empire that thinks the worst it has to fear is tariffs and succession."
Ren steepled his fingers. "You're saying we are running out of 'for nows,'" he said.
"Yes," Maevra said.
Halvar dropped a damp report onto the table.
"Paragons tested a remote trigger under the river," he said. "They tried to teach the fracture to travel with the flow. We smudged it. They'll adjust. They're watching how fast we respond. How far we can stretch."
"Echo," Orane added, leaning forward. "The gray cloak from the drains. They're not just leading rituals. They're studying us. John,
Kael, the way the tower itself moves. They'll have a new game ready before we've finished patching the last one."
Serais frowned. "So what do you want?" he asked. "More wardens? More listeners? More priests?"
"Yes," Halvar said. "And more time. We're not getting the second."
Maevra turned her gaze to the windows.
From this height, the city looked almost peaceful. Roofs and streets and tiny moving figures, the river a dull silver line.
"The Emperor will not wait much longer," she said quietly. "Halvar received his letter. I received my own. Polite. Curious. Impatient
under the ink."
"So we have Paragons underneath and a monarch above," Lyr said. "Excellent. If we can get a few bored gods peering in through the clouds, we'll have the whole set."
Ren's mouth twitched. "You say that as if they're not listening already," he said.
Dorothy's staff clicked once on stone.
"Stop dramatising," she said. "You'll frighten the children."
"We don't have any in the room," Orane pointed out.
"You're all children," Dorothy said. "The river is older than your empire. The anchors are older than your Church. The Paragons are
children playing with old knives. The question is whether you plan to keep being a city that reacts every time someone picks one up, or whether you're going to start hiding the blades."
"We're trying," Halvar said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Every shard we confiscate, every knot we cut, every half-baked ritual we smear—"
"Is necessary," Dorothy said. "But not enough."
Serais folded his hands. "What are you suggesting?" he asked. "That we start collapsing sanctums wholesale? The Church has opposed that for generations. Disturbing the foundations has… consequences."
"I'm suggesting," Dorothy said, "that you accept you can't do this without the people the anchors were built to answer to. And that you stop arguing about whether Doriane belongs here and start listening to her before the Paragons finish reading the notes she didn't burn."
"None of us said she doesn't belong here," Maevra said.
"Not to her face," Dorothy replied. "To each other? Constantly."
Silence.
Ren coughed. "She's right," he said mildly. "We dance around it. We tell ourselves we're protecting her, or the city, or some ideal of
control. But the truth is, we don't want to admit how much of this we don't understand without her."
Serais inclined his head. "She's also a mother," he said. "Which complicates things. The Church is not blind to duty. We are wary of
asking a parent to walk into places that might never let her walk back out."
Orane gave a humorless smile. "You send soldiers out to die all the time," she said.
"We send soldiers," Serais said. "Not mothers of Aetherbound children who scream so loud the wardstones crack."
Lyr sighed. "If she doesn't go," she said, "we'll mishandle the chapel anchor. I can read the structures. Halvar can hear the strain. You
can bless the cracks. But none of us knows how those sanctums felt while they still worked. She does. Even if she hates that knowledge. Especially because she hates it."
Maevra watched them all.
"You want my decision," she said.
"Yes," Halvar said simply.
"Fine," she said. "Here it is."
She looked at the small map spread in front of her, the three anchors marked in ink, the tower circled, the palace noted with a few scant strokes.
"We don't have enough people," she said. "We don't have enough time. We have three partially awake anchors, one Voidborn bloodline that wants absolutely nothing to do with this, and an Emperor who thinks he has the right to see every miracle his empire contains."
Her mouth thinned.
"We can't fight on those terms," she said. "So we change them."
Ren raised an eyebrow. "How?" he asked. "We can't wish away the Emperor."
"No," Maevra said. "But we can make him a stakeholder instead of a spectator. And we can make it very clear that if he wants his city
to stay standing, he needs to stop thinking of Brian as a toy and start thinking of him as a fault line."
Orane blinked. "You want to… threaten the Emperor," she said slowly.
"Not openly," Maevra said. "Politely. With data."
Halvar looked pained. "You know how he reacts to anything that sounds like a warning," he said. "He hears 'your Majesty, the city may
crack' as 'your Majesty, someone is challenging your authority.'"
"Then we stop talking about authority," Maevra said. "We talk about stability. We give him numbers. We show him what happens to
tax flows when a district collapses. We show him how much it costs to rebuild a ward net from scratch. We frame every refusal we make as 'protecting his investment.'"
Ren smiled faintly. "You plan to accountancy him into cooperation," he said.
"If it works," Maevra said, "I'll let you write a hymn about ledgers."
Serais shuddered. "Please don't," he said.
"And Doriane?" Lyr asked.
Maevra's gaze went to the city again.
"We bring her in," she said. "Fully. No more half-measures. No more 'we'll call you when convenient.' Quiet rooms weren't just for John. They were for her. When we go into the chapel sanctum, she goes."
Orane opened her mouth.
Maevra held up a hand.
"And we do everything we can to make sure she comes back out," Maevra said. "Including letting her and John decide the shape of their
own risk. We stop making decisions for them in rooms like this and start making them with them."
Dorothy tapped her staff once in approval.
"About time," she said.
They told John and Doris that afternoon.
It was almost anticlimactic.
No summons to the Spire, no formal council table.
Just Halvar, Maevra, and Dorothy standing in the doorway of the suite while Brian gnawed on a cloth and the chalk stars looked on.
"We've decided," Maevra said, "that when we go into the chapel sanctum, we want you there, Doriane."
Doris's jaw clenched. "I thought you already decided that," she said.
"We decided it about you," Maevra said. "Now we're deciding it with you."
John's shoulder tightened under her hand.
"What changed?" he asked.
Maevra gave a humorless smile. "The river tried to redecorate half the city," she said. "We realized we don't have the luxury of pretending you're not already standing in the fault line."
Halvar cleared his throat. "We're not dragging you," he said. "We're asking. With as much honesty as we can manage. It'll be dangerous. We'll plan. We'll train. We'll take a team you trust. But if you say no—really no, not 'maybe later, ask me again'—we will listen."
John studied them.
Then looked at Doris.
Her eyes were dark, steady, tired.
"I don't want to go," she said.
"I know," Maevra replied.
"I am going anyway," Doris said.
John's breath left him in a slow, painful exhale.
"We go," he said. "Both of us. Or neither."
Halvar nodded, as if he'd expected nothing else.
Maevra inclined her head. "Then we start preparing. Slowly. No rushing into crypts because the hum twitched twice. When we go, it's because we choose the moment, not the Paragons."
Dorothy's gaze flicked to Brian, then to the crooked star, then back to Doris.
"I'll stay with him," she said. "On the day. I'll have my staff. And every quiet room line we've taught the tower."
"And if the Paragons come for him while we're below?" John asked.
Dorothy smiled, a small, sharp baring of teeth.
"Then they'll meet someone older than their god," she said.
Maevra actually looked comforted by that.
Rumors took longer to notice.
It started with looks.
More students lingered near the family suite corridor.
The wardens on that floor began turning away curious pairs and trios of teenagers with more frequency, sending them scurrying back to
classes they'd pretended to forget.
"Do they not have enough homework?" Flint asked one morning as yet another cluster was dispersed.
"They've heard something," Dorothy said. "Something more interesting than elemental theory lectures."
"What?" John asked.
"That there is a baby in the tower," she said. "And that he screamed so loud he cracked the Deep Weave."
"That's not remotely accurate," Doris said.
"No," Dorothy agreed. "But it's catchy."
Kael confirmed it later over bread that had seen better days.
"They're calling him the Wail," he said.
John choked. "They're what?"
"The Wail," Kael repeated, trying not to smile and failing. "As in, 'did you hear the Wail shook the Spire?' Or 'if you flub your exams, they'll send you to hold the Wail while the wards hum.'"
Flint cackled. "I love students," he said. "They're idiots."
Doris pinched the bridge of her nose. "He is not a tower ghost story," she said.
"Too late," Kael said. "You can either fight the rumor or lean into it."
"We're not leaning into it," John said flatly.
Dorothy sipped her tea. "Imagine the recruitment benefits," she said dryly. "Come study at Aetherion. Try not to wake the Wail."
Doris threw a cloth at her.
Brian, picking up on the surge of energy, squealed and flailed his arms.
The hum shivered, just barely.
Kael went quiet, eyes unfocused for a moment.
"What?" John asked.
"Nothing bad," Kael said. "Just… the walls noticed. They like him."
"That's one of us," Flint said.
Kael sobered. "The rumors do matter," he said. "Not because students have nothing better to whisper about, but because whispers reach servants. Servants reach quartermasters. Quartermasters talk to guards. Guards gossip with palace messengers. By the time it gets to the Emperor, Brian will have teeth and wings."
"He will not have wings," Doris said.
"He might," Dorothy said. "Metaphorically."
John sighed.
"We can't control every story," he said. "But we can make sure the people who matter know the truth. Or enough of it."
Doris looked at the chalk-pinned letter above their bed.
"At some point," she said, "the caravan will hear something too. A guard's cousin's friend will swear they saw us in the capital. Someone will swear they saw John yelling at a noble outside the tower gates. Bridget
will piece it together."
"Maybe we should send another letter," Flint said.
"We haven't sent the first," Doris reminded him.
He shrugged. "Then we're overdue."
The city above changed shape, in small, subtle ways.
John noticed them on trips to the quiet room and back, in glimpses through narrow windows, in snippets of overheard conversation.
More wardens in temple districts.
Extra patrols near the Old Market and river grates.
New chalk marks on certain corners—Orane's code, Flint said, for "searched" and "checked" and "tell Halvar if this twitches."
Vendors started keeping jars of salt at stalls, nodding to priests as they passed.
There were more candles in chapel windows at dusk.
More people pausing under arches to touch the stone once for luck.
"We're making them nervous," Serais said one evening, leaning in the doorway with his hands tucked into his sleeves. "The city
doesn't know why it's nervous, but it feels the shift. It remembers."
"Good," John said.
Serais gave him a wry look. "Careful," he said. "A city that remembers too sharply starts seeing monsters in every shadow."
"Better than not seeing the one under its feet," John replied.
Serais inclined his head. "Spoken like someone who's seen both," he said.
When night fell, the tower returned to its new ritual.
Chalk stars.
Humming.
Check the hum.
Check the child.
Check the ledger.
Doris stood at the cradle, Brian heavy and warm against her shoulder, his breath damp on her neck.
John sat at the table, quill in hand, the ledger open.
He wrote:
— River anchor: held. Chapel scar: watching. Market scar: sulking. Empire: sniffing.
Beneath it:
— Maevra asked us this time. We said yes. Sanctum team prep begins. Fear loud. So is resolve.
Doris came to stand behind him, reading over his shoulder.
"You sound almost poetic," she said.
"Don't tell anyone," he replied. "I have a reputation."
Flint, half-asleep in the chair, mumbled, "Of what?"
"Refusal," John said.
Doris smiled faintly.
She took the quill and added:
— Students calling him "the Wail." He is chewing on a cloth and trying to roll. If he ever reads this: you were small and loud and loved,
not legend.
She underlined "loved."
Brian, as if sensing his name in ink, made a soft noise.
Doris carried him to the bed, lay down on her side, and settled him between her and the wall, her hand resting over his chest.
John blew out the lantern.
Darkness settled.
The chalk stars glowed.
Outside, the city above shifted its weight.
Under the streets, the anchors muttered in their sleep.
In the palace, an impatient secretary drafted another politely worded query.
In a hidden room, Echo traced a new diagram and wondered how far they could push before the Wail woke the world again.
Inside the suite, the hum wrapped around chalk, song, ink, and a baby's breathing.
The world was full of cracks and crowns and rivers with teeth.
It was also full of small, stubborn rooms where people chose, every day, to say no.
For now, the walls listened.
For now, the line held.