The first sanctum drill did not happen under a chapel.
It happened under a cellar.
Doris knew the place the moment Lyr led them down: an old training hall from before Aetherion had settled fully into its current shape. The corridor stone was thicker here, the wardlines simpler, the air cooler in a way that had nothing to do with drafts.
"This used to be a minor sanctum," Doris murmured.
Lyr glanced back, eyebrows up. "You remember it?"
"Not this exact room," Doris said. "But the type. Pre-war, low-capacity, shallow depth. Built to test localised anchors before they carved the big ones under shrines. They decommissioned most of them when people
decided living on shifting faultlines was 'bad for morale.'"
"Some of us argued," Dorothy said from behind, staff tapping a steady rhythm on the steps. "We lost. Spectacularly."
John, bringing up the rear, shifted Brian's weight on his shoulder. The baby was bundled in a sling across his chest, eyes wide, fingers
clenching and unclenching in slow, curious fists.
"We're not leaving him upstairs while we poke a pretend sanctum," Doris had said that morning, jaw set. "If something goes wrong in the pattern, I want him in the same one, not in a room tuned differently."
Halvar had grimaced but agreed.
"We'll keep it light," he'd said. "And if anything so much as twitches wrong, we stop."
Now, as they stepped into the old hall, John wondered how anyone could call this "light."
The chamber was round and low, with a slightly domed ceiling and walls etched in faded sigils. The floor sloped gently toward a central circle of darker stone.
Wards glowed faintly in the lines, not bright enough to dazzle, just enough to remind everyone they were still live.
"Welcome to the fake teeth," Orane said dryly. She stood near the entrance, two wardens flanking her—Merrit and Tessa, both looking like they would rather be fighting something they could punch.
Elian, robe hems damp from another morning in the chapel crypts, hovered closer to Serais, who had insisted on attending. The priest's
expression was calm; his knuckles were white where his hands were folded.
Maevra stood at the edge of the central circle, hands clasped behind her back, eyes reflecting wardlight.
"This is not a sanctum," she said. "Not fully. The anchor below was dismantled a century ago. We've re-tuned what's left to mimic the
chapel field as closely as we dare. Today is about two things: learning where chapel ends and sanctum begins, and finding out how the stone reacts to you, Doriane, before we stand over centuries of bones."
Doris swallowed.
It was easier when people called her Doris, when she could pretend she was a merchant with a knack for math and not the girl who'd once run calculations for people who thought reality should be editable.
Now the old name fit too well.
"All right," she said.
Halvar moved to the wall and spread his fingers against it, eyes half-lidded.
"The baseline hum in here," he said, "is already different from the quiet room. Older work. More scars. Listen."
John obeyed.
He'd expected a heavier feel, something ominous.
Instead, the hum felt… hollow.
Like a vessel that had once been full and was now mostly empty, with only traces of what it had held clinging to the sides.
"Feels like… an empty cup," Kael said softly from near the entrance. He'd talked his way into the drill on the logic that if he was going
to be running messages to screaming people later, he should at least know what they were screaming about.
"Good," Lyr said. "That's exactly what it used to be. A cup for controlled anchoring field. We turned it over, drained it, locked the cupboard. Now we're going to pour just enough in to see how you all splash."
"Reassuring," Merrit muttered.
Brian made a small noise, head turning.
The hum in the room twitched—not wrong, just attentive.
Doris felt it like a prickle along her arms.
"He feels it," she whispered.
"Of course he does," Dorothy said. "He's been listening since he was born. The question is whether the room feels him."
Maevra nodded to Lyr. "Begin," she said.
Lyr stepped to the central circle.
She knelt, touched three points along the darker stone, and whispered a phrase in a Voidborn dialect so old even Doris had only seen it in notes.
The circle lines brightened.
The hum deepened.
John's stomach dropped.
Not because anything terrible happened.
Because it felt "right."
Not comfortable.
Not safe.
Just consistent in a way that made his bones hum along.
Sanctum.
He'd never stood in one before.
Now, even in this watered-down version, he could tell where chapel ended and something else began.
Serais shivered.
"It's like the crypt," he said. "But… clearer. Less… rotten."
"This is how it felt when it was new," Doris said quietly. "When we still thought we could control everything."
She stepped forward.
The wardlight along the circle's edge brightened as she crossed into it.
Brian's fingers curled into her robe.
The hum jumped.
Not wildly.
Not violently.
But every line in the room twisted a fraction of an inch toward them, like grass leaning toward the sun.
"Oh," Lyr breathed.
Halvar swore softly under his breath.
"Report," Maevra said, voice even.
"Sanctum field recognized Voidborn resonance," Lyr said quickly. "Even drained, it remembers its builder marks. It's orienting to her. Not hostile. Not pulling. But… aligning."
"Is that bad?" Merrit asked.
"Depends who's doing the aligning," Dorothy said.
Doris stood very still in the center of the circle.
It reminded her of three memories at once.
Standing in a training ring as a girl, instructors watching, anchors humming underfoot.
Standing at the edge of a battlefield sanctum, the air full of blood and burning.
Standing in the town that had cracked, feeling the old anchors scream.
This was softer than any of those.
But the shape was the same.
"Doriane?" Maevra asked quietly. "Talk to it."
Doris's throat was dry.
"Talk to who?" she asked.
"The field," Lyr said. "The memory. The stone. The pattern. Call it what you want. You don't have to construct a ritual. Just… name it."
Doris closed her eyes.
Under her feet, the hum waited.
It felt like being at the edge of a conversation that had paused when she walked in.
She thought of all the words she could use.
Anchors, arrays, stabilisers, lattices.
None of them were right.
So she went with what she had.
"I'm not your enemy," she whispered.
The hum flickered.
She felt, faintly, a sense of… curiosity.
"You were built to hold," she murmured. "Not to pry. Not to crack. Not to burn. You remember that. Even after they gutted you. Even after they left you empty. We're going to ask you to remember it again. Soon. Under
the chapel. Not here."
Her hand tightened on Brian.
He shifted against her, making a soft sound.
The hum surged around them like a breath drawn in.
John's heart slammed against his ribs.
"Enough," Halvar said quickly. "Pull back."
Doris opened her eyes.
The lines along the circle dimmed back to their previous level.
The hum retreated a fraction.
Brian yawned.
"Status?" Maevra asked.
Lyr licked her lips. "Room field responded to Doriane's voice," she said. "Not to words. To presence. It remembered its old alignment.
If she'd kept going, we might've woken more of the original matrix."
"In a drained practice hall?" Halvar asked. "We're not ready for that."
"Which is why you told her to stop," Dorothy said. "Good reflex."
Doris stepped out of the circle slowly.
The lines dimmed further.
This time, the hum didn't lean.
It watched.
John met her eyes.
"How bad?" he asked quietly.
"How easy," she corrected. "That's what's
frightening. The sanctum field wants someone to listen to again. It doesn't care if it's me or Echo or some Paragon with a cracked skull. It just wants pattern."
"Stones are loyal to structure, not people," Dorothy said. "They'll hold whichever song is loudest."
"So we sing first," Orane said.
The second part of the drill involved John whether he liked it or not.
"Your turn," Halvar said.
"I can't talk to sanctums," John said. "I barely know how to ask my own walls to behave."
"You're not going to talk," Halvar said. "You're
going to refuse."
John grimaced.
"What are we refusing?" he asked. "We haven't done anything yet."
Lyr stepped into the circle again.
This time, she sketched a much smaller sigil near the edge—nothing like the full activation marks, more like a tiny, localised stress test.
The hum under John's feet tightened.
A faint crackle of wrongness whispered toward him, like the early buzz of a hook that hadn't yet committed.
"In the chapel sanctum," Lyr said, "Echo and their friends will try to use these fields the way they did under the river. Only more…
sophisticated. You won't always know which line they're touching. You will feel when the pattern tries to override what you've set as 'home.' That's your cue."
"To do what?" John asked.
"To remind it," Halvar said. "That your baseline exists. That your family exists. That their ritual is not the only song in the room."
In other words: to do what he'd done under the Market.
But more deliberately.
He stepped to the circle's edge.
The wrongness thickened near his hand, an almost imperceptible vibration that made the hairs on his arm stand on end.
He placed his palm flat against the stone.
He could feel Doriane's earlier words still ghosting through it.
Not as content.
As… resonance.
Her presence had left a trace.
He added his own.
Not with Voidborn terms.
Not with chapel hymn.
With stubbornness.
"No," he said softly.
He pictured Brian's cradle.
The chalk stars.
The letter pinned above the bed.
The list of non-negotiables for the Emperor.
The river turning inward instead of out.
He let those images fill him until they pressed out through his hand into the stone.
The wrongness shivered.
Then, like a bubble pricked with a pin, it collapsed.
The hum snapped back to baseline.
Nothing cracked.
Nothing screamed.
John exhaled shakily.
"How was that?" he asked.
Halvar looked like someone had just given him a new set of tools and taken away half his sleep.
"Effective," he said. "Lyr?"
She nodded reluctantly. "The micro-stress I introduced never reached the old anchor fragments," she said. "It hit his refusal and folded back. If he can do that in the chapel under full load…"
"He'll break himself," Dorothy said bluntly. "Or he'll break their line. Or both. Depends how much they push and how much he anchors on."
Maevra's jaw flexed.
"We'll limit how often we let him do it," she said. "He is not a human wardstone. Neither is Doriane."
"Funny," Doris said. "The Paragons would disagree."
"Good," Maevra replied. "Let them. They can be wrong."
They ran the drill three more times.
Each time, Lyr adjusted variables:
A slightly stronger pulse.
A slightly different angle.
A layered chapel hum over the sanctum tease.
Each time, Doris felt the room tilt toward her when she stepped into the circle.
Each time, John felt his own stomach flip as he shoved back against wrongness.
By the end, he was sweating, shoulder throbbing, jaw tight.
Brian, on the other hand, had fallen asleep.
On one pass, when the hum tightened particularly sharply, he snuffled, made a cranky noise, and then sighed, the sound small and oddly decisive.
The wardlines flickered.
The sanctum pulse wobbled.
Lyr's head snapped up.
"What was that?" she demanded.
"Me," John gasped. "I think. Maybe. And him."
"No," Lyr said. "The pattern there—" She pointed to a thin thread of light near the floor. "That oscillation isn't you. That's… echo. Not
Echo. Echo. Like something else in the field agreeing with you."
"Agreeing?" Doris said. "Or mocking?"
"Agreeing," Dorothy said quietly. "Practice hall remembers what 'enough' feels like. It's heard this argument before. Long before the
Paragons were a stain on anyone's robe."
Maevra exhaled slowly.
"Good," she said. "Then we're not the only ones in the room who remember."
Afterward, Halvar insisted they rest.
"Not just your bodies," he said. "Your patterns. You can't keep hitting the same line over and over without giving it time to settle."
They went back to the suite.
Brian woke halfway up the stairs and decided, loudly, that naps were a conspiracy.
Flint greeted them at the door with a loaf of suspiciously fresh bread.
"Orane stole it from the kitchen for you," he said. "She said, and I quote, 'if they're going to make you play at sanctums, you deserve
carbohydrates.'"
John tore off a piece, more grateful than he'd admit.
Doris sat at the table and picked up the quill before anyone could tell her not to.
Her hand shook only a little.
— First sanctum drill (practice hall). Old anchor fragments responded to me. Room aligned when I stepped into circle. Not hostile. Hungry. John refused micro-stress successfully. No cracks, no screams. Brian slept through half of it and scolded the lattice once.
She paused.
Then, in smaller script:
— It's too easy to slip back into the old work. I talk to stone and it answers. I hate that it feels like coming home.
John read it and added, below:
— I watched the room lean toward her. Paragons will want that. So will everyone else. Need to remember: she is not a tool. I'm not a
wardstone. We're a family trying to keep our son from being ground into patterns.
He underlined "family" once.
Brian, as if hearing his own unspoken inclusion, smacked his hand onto the page, leaving a faint smear of drool.
"Ledger contribution," Flint said solemnly.
"Genuine Aetherbound ink," Dorothy added.
They didn't wipe it off.
Later, when Brian finally surrendered to sleep under the chalk stars, Doris sat at the window slit, looking out over the city.
Rain had cleared days ago, but the streets still wore the memory of it—mud in the alleys, damp washing strung between buildings, half-collapsed piles of sand where children had tried to dam puddles.
A patch of sky glowed orange where the sun sank behind a far hill.
Chapel bells rang the hour.
She closed her eyes and listened.
Chapel hum.
Tower hum.
Practice sanctum hum, still clinging to her bones.
Somewhere below, the real chapel anchor muttered in its sleep.
Somewhere beyond, Paragons traced new sigils.
She opened her eyes again.
John came to stand beside her, shoulders brushing.
"Tomorrow?" he asked.
"More drills," she said. "More pretending. More not pretending."
"We're allowed to be afraid," he said.
"I know," she said. "I'm just tired of only being that."
He glanced at the map Halvar had left on the table, edges curled.
"We're getting better," he said. "At saying no. At hearing wrong. At teaching the walls."
She huffed a quiet laugh.
"You sound like Halvar," she said.
"He's infecting me," John replied. "With responsibility."
She leaned her head briefly against his shoulder.
"I heard something today," she said. "In the sanctum field. Not just old work. Something like… agreement. Like the stone was glad someone was telling it not to crack."
"Dorothy said these rooms have seen worse," he said. "Maybe they're tired too."
"Stones don't get tired," she murmured.
"People do," he said.
She looked back at Brian.
He slept on his back tonight, arms flung wide, fingers half-curled.
The crooked star glowed quietly.
"We have to go under that chapel," she said. "And we have to come back. Both of us. Not because the tower needs us. Because he does."
John nodded.
"We will," he said.
"You can't know that," she replied.
"No," he said. "But I can promise we'll go in with more than fear and duty. We'll go in with names. With our own lines. With a room that
remembers his laugh. That has to count for something."
She let herself believe that, for a moment.
Just long enough to breathe without her chest hurting.
Then she filed it away with the other fragile hopes.
Not as certainty.
As a marker.
A line to aim for.
Tomorrow, there would be more drills.
More maps.
More letters from the palace, more Paragon scratches under drains.
Soon, there would be an actual descent.
For now, they had a practice sanctum, a stubborn Rector, an overworked archivist, a priest with salt, a warden with a grudge, an old woman with a staff, and a baby whose laugh made wardstones vibrate.
It wasn't enough.
It was what they had.
They would make it matter.
The tower hummed around them.
The line, stretched, did not yet break.