The word "sanctum" changed the air in the suite.
No one said it loudly.
No one carved it into the walls.
But once Maevra spoke it to them instead of about them, it sat in the corners like a patient animal, waiting.
Sanctum.
Chapel.
Below.
Doris woke with the taste of old stone in her mouth.
For a moment she thought she was still in one of the Voidborn vaults of her youth—low ceilings, humming walls, the metallic tang of
stabiliser dust.
Then Brian snorted in his sleep and shoved a heel into her ribs.
The tower hum threaded gently through the floor beneath the pallet, layered now with days of quiet room discipline. Chalk stars glowed faintly overhead. The letter to Bridget lay folded above the bed, chalk-pinned to the stone.
Not a vault.
A room.
Theirs.
For now.
She ran a hand down Brian's back.
His breath was even.
No mist on the edges of his sleep.
No tightening of the lattice like the nights the Paragons had tried to breathe through his dreams.
Just the ordinary restlessness of a baby who had discovered rolling and refused to stop.
John stirred beside her.
"Dreams?" he murmured.
"Old ones," she said. "Nothing we don't already know."
His hand found hers under the blanket and squeezed.
"Today?" he asked.
"Today they'll start turning us into a list," she said. "Sanctum team. Names, strengths, acceptable losses."
He made a face. "You're in a mood," he said.
"I'm in a sanctum," she said. "Even when I'm not there yet."
She wasn't wrong about the list.
Half the tower woke to the smell of new ink.
Lyr's scribes copied and recopied maps of the chapel district.
Halvar spread ward-diagrams across three tables, shoving aside older crises to make room for the new one.
Orane stood in front of the largest map of the undercity and marked routes with the blunt certainty of someone who intended to walk all of them.
"It's not a proper sanctum yet," Lyr said, standing on a stool to see over Ren's shoulder. "More of a crippled access hall that forgot its corridor. But the anchor beyond it is a real one. Old. Big. If the Paragons get full access…"
"Then the chapel becomes a chimney," Ren finished quietly. "For whatever they want to drag up."
Serais traced the temple district with one finger, lips moving silently.
Orane noticed.
"Praying?" she asked.
"Counting," he said. "How many people stand on that stone every day. How many births, deaths, oaths, confessions. How much memory sits on top of that anchor. I'm deciding how angry I am willing to be if you crack it."
"Angry enough to stop us?" Halvar asked.
Serais looked up, expression mild.
"Angry enough to be very precise about how you go in," he said. "And to stand in the doorway with a hymn ready in case the stone decides it's had enough of our rearranging."
Dorothy's staff tapped once on the floor near the wall.
"Good," she said. "You're all properly afraid. That means there's a chance you'll live."
"Who else?" Orane asked.
Halvar shuffled his parchment stack.
"Sanctum draft," he said, reading from his neat column. "Myself. Maevra. Lyr. Orane. One scribe for emergency lines. Two wardens. One priest. One listener who isn't already overcommitted. Doriane. John." He
paused. "Possibly Dorothy, if we can bribe her."
Dorothy sniffed. "I don't take bribes," she said. "Only decent tea and the occasional honest question."
Maevra, standing by the window with her hands behind her back, spoke without turning.
"This is only a first sketch," she said. "We won't walk into the sanctum for weeks, perhaps longer. Training first. Reconnaissance. Quiet rooms. Prep. But I want names on paper. It makes the fear… clearer."
"Easier to stab," Orane said.
"Exactly," Maevra said.
In the family suite, the word came as a soft knock and Halvar's voice.
"Draft lists," he said when John opened the door. "May I come in and ruin your morning?"
"You do that most days," John said, stepping aside.
Halvar entered with two sheets of parchment and a look that said he hadn't slept enough but had made his peace with that a long time ago.
Doris sat at the table, Brian on her lap, one small fist wrapped around the end of her braid. She watched Halvar as if expecting him to tell her they'd moved the chapel to a different city overnight.
Dorothy was in her usual chair, one leg stretched out, staff across her knees.
"What did you decide?" Doris asked.
"That we needed to decide with you," Halvar said. "Not just about you."
He set the parchments down.
One held a map of the chapel district undercity: tunnels, access shafts, a shaded area labeled suspected sanctum shell.
The other held a list of names.
He pushed the second sheet toward them.
At the top, in Maevra's hand:
Chapel Sanctum – Preliminary Team
• Maevra Serren (Tower Head)
• Halvar Ien (Rector of Wards)
• Lyr Havan (Archivist)
• Orane Devril (Warden-Captain)
• Serais Tolan (High Curate)
• Ren Kaltan (Councilor – Logistics/Records)
• Doriane Aetheris (Voidborn Engineer)
• John Aetheris (Line Listener / Combat)
• Elian (Junior Priest Listener)
• Two wardens (Tessa, Merrit?) – to confirm
• One scribe (under Lyr) – to confirm
John's name looked strange there.
Not as "guard."
Not as "sword."
As listener.
It made some part of his spine straighten and another part want to find a dark room and stay there.
Doris read the list twice.
"You're taking Ren," she said.
"We'll need someone who can write fast and argue faster," Halvar said. "He also knows where every emergency exit in the city is. And how much stone is above each."
"And Serais," she said.
"Would you rather we left the priest behind?" Halvar asked. "You saw what salt and hymn resonance did under Third Chapel."
She had.
It had soothed the scar.
It had also reminded her that some of the Voidborn's best work had involved borrowing other people's faith and turning it into structure.
Her skin crawled.
But she nodded.
"Fine," she said. "Bring the man with the salt."
Halvar looked at John. "And you?" he asked. "Your name can come off. It won't offend me. I'd rather know now than drag you down there with a 'maybe' in your teeth."
John looked at the map.
Chalk lines. Ink arcs. A greyed area under the chapel square.
He imagined Doris walking into that without him.
Imagined Brian sleeping under chalk stars while two anchors and an emperor and a cult all tugged on the world at once.
"No," he said. "My name stays. If we're doing this, we're doing it together."
Halvar let out the kind of breath that meant he'd expected exactly that but had needed to hear it anyway.
"Good," he said. "Then we start where we always start."
Doris arched a brow. "In a tunnel?" she asked.
"In a quiet room," Halvar said. "Tunnels later. Sanctums last. Today we teach you both what 'chapel' feels like without Paragon fingers on it. Then when you touch the sanctum, you'll know exactly how wrong it is."
The quiet room smelled different that day.
Someone—Serais, judging by the faint incense—had burned a thin stick of chapel resin in one corner before they arrived. The scent clung to the stone: not thick enough to be choking, just enough to trigger memories
of high ceilings, candle smoke, old wood.
Brian came too.
Doris refused to leave him with anyone else while she was still learning the shapes of the chapel hum; if something twisted under her
feet, she wanted him in the same pattern, not in a room tuned differently.
Dorothy carried him for the first part of the session, swaying gently at the wall, staff braced beside her, humming under her breath.
Halvar stood in the center with Serais and Lyr.
"Today we stack patterns," he said. "Baseline. Chapel. Then, later, sanctum. You need to be able to tell them apart with your eyes closed
and your heart racing."
"Mine already is," John muttered.
"Good," Halvar said. "We'll use it."
Serais stepped forward, palms open.
He touched the wall lightly and began to sing.
Not loudly.
Not the full-throated chant of the public liturgy.
A smaller thing, half-hummed, half spoken, in the lilting minor mode of old river shrines.
The hum in the room responded.
John felt it plain as breath.
The baseline they'd learned—the quiet, steady note that made the room a refuge—didn't vanish.
But a thread of something else braided into it: a gently rising and falling resonance that made his chest ache and his eyes sting for no
good reason.
He'd prayed, a few times, on the road.
Mostly out of desperation.
He'd never liked the feeling of talking into silence.
This wasn't silence.
This was stone listening.
"Chapel hum," Serais said softly when he finished the phrase. "No Paragons. No sanctum. Just a house of words and songs and people trying not to be terrible."
Ren, sitting in a corner with a slate, scribbled: "House of people trying not to be terrible" – maybe not for official sermon.
Lyr rolled her eyes.
Doris stepped forward.
She set her hand on the wall, above Serais's.
Closed her eyes.
The pattern unfolded under her fingers.
Not as numbers.
Not as lines on a diagram.
As memory.
Her parents had taken her to chapels sometimes, before everything. Before sanctums and theories and war.
She remembered the way sound had gathered under arches. The way candles had flickered when someone had cried. The way floor tiles had worn under centuries of feet.
The wall under her palm felt… like that.
"Soft," she murmured. "Layered. Used. No sharp edges. The anchor below is far enough away it can't taste the incense."
Serais smiled. "Good," he said. "You hear the difference."
"Wait," John said. "The anchor can… taste incense?"
"Everything that vibrates carries pattern," Serais said. "Smoke. Song. Footsteps. The anchor doesn't know what incense is. It knows that when people sing, the stone hums differently. When they cry, it hums differently. When they carve crack sigils under tombs…" His mouth thinned. "It notices that too."
Halvar nodded. "Today we teach you two this version," he said. "Then we'll overlay what Lyr remembers of sanctum fields on top. That way, when we go below, you'll feel when chapel ends and something older begins."
Doris's stomach tightened.
She remembered exactly when that used to happen.
The shift from ordinary stone to sanctum air.
The taste of structured power.
The moment the anchors woke and listened.
"I know that feeling," she said, voice rough.
"I know," Halvar said. "Which is why I'm hoping you'll help the rest of us avoid stepping on the wrong parts of it."
They worked.
Serais laced the baseline hum with gentle chapel resonances: the echo of a psalm in an empty nave, the mutter of shared prayers, the low, steady thrum of a crowd breathing in unison.
Halvar and Lyr, in turn, introduced tiny disturbances from below—mock sanctum pulses, shaped in miniature from Lyr's old schematics.
The difference was stark.
Chapel resonance rose and sank like tide.
Sanctum pulses struck like hammers.
Doris flinched every time Lyr snapped one into the wall.
"Too sharp," she said. "That's the activation ring. The inner shell. Pull it back."
"We're in miniature," Lyr said. "Think of it like…
scratching the surface of a drum instead of hitting it."
She refined the sigil.
The next pulse came softer, more like a deep intake of breath than a blow.
Still wrong.
But wrong in the way Doris remembered.
"That," she said quietly. "That's the edge. Where chapel ends."
John learned the difference by feel.
Chapel threaded through him like an old song his mother might have hummed.
Sanctum brushed his bones like a storm front.
He stood at the wall, hand flattened, eyes closed, Halvar calling cues.
"Tell me which," the Rector said. "No thinking. Just name."
A low, warm swell: "Chapel."
A sharp, staccato tap: "Sanctum."
A minor, wavering moan: "Chapel scar. Like under Third."
A deep, held vibration that made his teeth buzz: "Anchor. Awake. Don't like that one."
Serais nodded each time.
"You're better than half my junior priests," he said.
"I don't want to be a priest," John muttered.
"No danger of that," Dorothy said.
Brian added his own commentary throughout—small squeaks, occasional giggles. Each time he laughed, the chapel resonance in the room responded, a lighter thread weaving through the heavier chords.
"See?" Serais murmured once. "Even the saints think he's funny."
"They haven't seen what he does to porridge," Flint said.
After the session, once Serais had gone back to his endless string of devotions and Ren to his ledgers, Halvar lingered with Lyr and
Dorothy.
Doris stood by the window slit, Brian against her chest, looking out at the city.
John watched them over his shoulder while pretending to stretch his shoulder.
"We're asking too much of them," Lyr said under her breath.
"Yes," Halvar said. "What's your alternative?"
"Find ten more Voidborn engineers," she said.
"Where?" he asked.
She had no answer.
Dorothy tapped her staff once.
"The sanctum won't care that you feel guilty," she said. "It will care that you step correctly. Make sure they can."
"We're trying," Halvar said.
"Try harder," she replied.
He didn't argue.
That evening, they practiced something new in the suite.
Not humming.
Not stars.
Not ledger lines.
Names.
"Say it," Doris said, sitting cross-legged on the pallet with Brian in her lap. "Properly. The way we used to. If you're going to stand in a sanctum with me, you should know all of me."
John leaned back against the wall, one knee drawn up.
"You're Doris," he said. "Trader, cook, liar, terrible singer, good mother."
She smiled despite herself.
"And?" she prompted.
He hesitated.
The tower hummed.
"Doriane Aetheris," he said finally. "Voidborn engineer. Sanctum brat. Anchor-talker. Person I married before I knew all of that, and
would marry again knowing worse."
Brian burbled and slapped at her sleeve.
"Ledger," she whispered.
"We're not writing that," John said quickly.
"Oh, we are," she said. "If I'm going to walk under a chapel with ghosts of my family for company, I want it written somewhere that you knew my name properly and didn't run."
He opened the book.
She dictated.
— Today we practiced names. Not just 'Doris.' Doriane Aetheris. John said it without flinching. This matters more than anchors.
He added, beneath:
— I'd say it under a sanctum too. Even if the walls listened.
He closed the book, throat tight.
"Your turn," she said, after a moment.
He blinked. "My what?"
"Full name," she said. "Not 'John who hits things.'"
His face twisted. "There's nothing special in it," he said. "No old line. No lost house. Just… John of the Lower Road. Son of nobody
important. Father of too many worries."
She reached for his hand.
"John Aetheris," she said softly. "Listener. Refusal. Crack-stopper. Anchor by choice, not birth. That's rarer than any bloodline."
The tower hum seemed to approve.
The crooked star brightened.
Brian stuffed a fist in his mouth and gurgled.
Flint, from the chair, made a gagging noise. "You're going to make me vomit feelings," he said.
"Ledger?" Doris asked sweetly.
"I swear to every saint—" Flint began.
Dorothy snorted.
"Write the names," she said softly. "Sanctums remember titles. Give them better ones than the Paragons do."
So they did.
In the back pages, where they kept the things that weren't strictly events or threats:
— Names:
• Doriane Aetheris — Doris — Voidborn, mother, trader, architect of better patterns.
• John Aetheris — John of the Lower Road — listener, guard, refusal, father.
• Brian Aetheris — "the Wail" to idiots — child, hum, crack in their expectations.
Doris added one more, smaller:
• Bridget — not here, but still a line we're holding.
She looked at the pinned letter.
At the map of the chapel district Halvar had left.
At Brian's open, curious eyes.
"We talk about anchors like they're just stone," she murmured. "But they were built to hold more than that. Memory. Promises. Names.
If we go in treating them as enemies, they'll remember us that way. I'd rather they remember us as… complicated."
"Complicated is accurate," John said.
She smiled.
The night before the first formal sanctum drill, the tower had one of its rare truly quiet hours.
No alarms.
No shouted messengers.
No emergency knocks.
Just rain drying from the rooftops, the low murmur of late study, the occasional clink of plates in the kitchens.
In the suite, chalk stars dimmed and brightened in an almost conversational rhythm as Dorothy added one more small cluster near the window—"for luck," she claimed, though everyone knew she didn't believe in that word.
Brian fought sleep like it had personally offended him.
He wriggled, squirmed, rolled, kicked, babbled.
Doris hummed.
John lay on his back, listening to the hum.
Sanctum draft lists.
Anchor maps.
Emperor letters.
Rumors of the Wail.
It all blended into a single sense of leaning on the edge of something.
"Cold?" Doris asked quietly.
"A little," he said.
She shifted Brian so the baby lay between them, a small, warm barrier.
"Better?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Liar," Dorothy muttered from her chair.
He smiled into the dark.
"Tomorrow you start teaching the tower what a chapel sanctum should feel like," she said. "On your terms. Not theirs. That's big work. It
will go badly."
"Comforting," John said.
"You'll learn more when it does," she replied.
Brian finally surrendered, breath evening.
The hum in the walls matched his rhythm.
Above them, beyond stone and ward and cloud, stars the chalk couldn't copy burned unseen.
Under them, beneath chapels and markets and river, anchors dreamed old dreams of holding.
Between those layers, in one over-warded room, a family lay awake longer than they should, drafting the descent into a place that had defined Doriane's youth and would shape Brian's future.
Stones would remember what they did next.
So would the people.
So would the child between them, even if he didn't have words for it yet.
John closed his eyes.
"Tomorrow," he whispered into the hum, to the tower, to the sanctum, to the Paragons who might be listening, to the Emperor who certainly wasn't.
"You don't get to decide how this goes. We do."
The walls didn't answer.
They didn't need to.
He felt their attention.
For now, that was enough.
The line held.