The summons came on cheap paper.
Not palace stock, not tower parchment—thin, fibrous stuff that smelled faintly of smoke and river mud. The seal was wax, but the
impression was shallow and smudged, as if whoever pressed it down had been shaking.
John turned it over in his hands before breaking it.
"Not Maevra," he said. "Not Halvar. Not the palace."
Doris, halfway through strapping Brian into the sling, frowned. "Then who—?"
He unfolded it.
The writing hit him before the words did.
Crooked strokes. Ink a little too heavy on the downstrokes. Letters leaning into one another like tired people on a long road.
Doris knew that hand.
Her heart lurched.
"Mother," she whispered.
John read aloud, because his hands had steadied faster than hers.
Dori,
They say the bells screamed. They say the tower shook.They say our grandchild laughed and the chapel answered. I am tired of hearing
my family's life in other people's mouths.
We are at the east gate. Your father refuses to turn back. The guards will not let us in without a signed order. You are in the tower and I am in the street and I am too old for this nonsense.
If you are alive (if you are not, I will haunt you), send someone with a proper seal.
— Mother
The ink blotted at "nonsense."
Doris took the paper as if it might break.
"They came here," she said.
"East gate," John confirmed. "In the city. Not the village."
"Of course they came here," Flint said from the pallet, where he'd been pretending not to listen. "If I heard my daughter had joined a
screaming tower and birthed a bell-wrecking child, I'd show up too."
Doris swallowed.
"We don't even have a proper seal," she said weakly.
"Yes, we do," Dorothy said from her corner, without opening her eyes.
They all looked at her.
She sighed, reached into the folds of her worn coat, and tossed something onto the table.
It landed with a dull clink: a small metal disk, worn at the edges, stamped with a sigil that made the air tense for a heartbeat.
A circle pierced by three straight lines.
Voidborn.
Old, older than any imperial emblem.
Doris stared.
"I thought you burned that," she said.
"I burned mine," Dorothy replied. "That one belonged to your grandmother. I took it when she stopped needing it. I wasn't sure when you'd be ready to see it. Today seems adequate."
John eyed the disk warily. "Will that get them through the gate?" he asked.
Dorothy snorted. "Half the guards won't recognise it. The other half will pretend they don't. That's why we'll staple it to something
they do respect."
Flint's eyes lit. "Forgery?" he asked hopefully.
"Bureaucracy," Dorothy said. "Get Maevra's second-best seal, the one she uses for 'urgent but boring.' Attach it to an order authorising
'family requisition under tower protection.' Add a Voidborn token like a footnote. The guards will see, in this order: tower authority, a reason to obey, and a symbol they're too superstitious to question. They'll let your
parents in because it's the simplest option."
"And Maevra will just… sign?" John asked.
"She'll complain," Dorothy said. "Then sign. She's been meaning to bring them closer anyway. Easier to protect hostages when they're under your wards."
Doris flinched. "They're not hostages," she said.
"Not yet," Dorothy said quietly. "The palace is thinking about it. The Paragons already are. Better we decide where they stand than leave them on whatever road rumor chooses."
Brian made a small noise, sensing tension.
Doris stroked his back.
"Go," Dorothy said, levering herself up with a grunt. "I'll watch him. If the chapel decides to sing at him again, I'll hit it with my staff."
Flint coughed. "Should one of us stay with you?" he asked. "For moral support? Or to catch you if you decide to throw yourself at the bell?"
Dorothy gave him a look that could have put cracks in granite.
"Bring her parents," she said. "Bring my tea. I'll manage the rest."
Maevra did complain.
Of course she did.
"You realise," she said, pressing a thumb into the bridge of her nose, "that every time we stabilise one fault line, three new ones present themselves? Chapel sanctum. Emperor. Paragons in the drains. And now your parents at my gate."
Doris stood very straight in front of the Head's desk.
"I didn't invite them," she said. "If I had, I would have warned you first."
Maevra huffed. "I know," she said. "They're Aetheris. They don't wait for invitations."
John shifted, the letter from Doris's mother folded in his hand.
Halvar, lounging against a shelf, twirled the Voidborn disk between his fingers.
"I'd rather they were in here than out there," he said. "If the Paragons are sniffing around any old story about a Voidborn girl who ran, they'll find your family whether we hide them or not."
Maevra's gaze slid to the disk.
"Put that away," she snapped. "Before someone comes in and has an aneurysm."
Halvar pocketed it obligingly.
Maevra reached for her pen.
"Fine," she said. "We bring them in. Under tower protection. No chapels, no markets alone, no talking to nobles, no selling snacks to students. If your mother starts a stew stall on my grounds, I will personally relocate her to the top of the Spire."
Doris's lips twitched. "She'd make a fortune," she murmured.
"Yes," Maevra said darkly. "That's what worries me."
She scrawled the order quickly: Authorisation for escorted entry: Aetheris family, two persons, under tower ward and witness.
Then she took out a second seal—a less ornate one than the great disc she used for council edicts, but still stamped with the Academy's authority—and pressed it into red wax.
The sigil bit deep.
Halvar added the Voidborn token to the bottom with a loop of wire, like an old coin hanging from a new decree.
"It looks like an apology note from history," he said.
Maevra stood, smoothed her robes, and fixed Doris with a look that was equal parts impatience and concern.
"Bring them straight here," she said. "No detours. I want to see their faces when you tell them about sanctums and emperors."
Doris swallowed.
"It's going to break them," she said.
Maevra shook her head. "No," she said. "It's going to crack them. There's a difference. You're proof."
The east gate was busier than Doris remembered.
Merchants shouting, guards checking carts, children darting between wheels, dogs stealing food out of the unwatched.
City life, the same messy rhythm as any caravan halt, just… anchored.
But under the familiar noise was a different tension: more wardens in tower cloaks, more questions at the checkpoints, more eyes on the horizon.
The hymn incident had rattled people.
Even the walls looked watchful.
Doris spotted her parents before John did.
They stood near the outer arch, beneath a chipped relief of the Emperor's face. Her father had his arms folded, jaw set; her mother argued with a guard whose patience was leaking fast.
"—I don't care what your list says," her mother
snapped. "My daughter is in that stone beast and my grandson is laughing at bells and if you think ink on a page is going to—"
"Mother," Doris called.
The woman turned so fast she nearly lost her balance.
She hadn't changed much.
More lines around the eyes.
More gray in the hair braided back from her face.
The same mouth, set in the same stubborn line Doris saw in the mirror.
"Dori," she breathed.
Her father's shoulders dropped.
He'd aged more.
His hair had gone almost entirely white; his back had a new curve, like the world had leaned on him a little too long.
But his eyes—dark, sharp, assessing—were the same.
"Doriane," he said quietly.
The old name hit harder than she expected.
She stopped three steps from them, suddenly unsure what to do with her hands.
Then her mother closed the distance, grabbed her by the shoulders, and shook her as if to test whether she was real.
"Idiot child," she said, eyes wet. "You were supposed to stay away from all this."
"Hello, Mother," Doris said, laughing and crying at the same time.
Her father's gaze slid past her to John, to the tower cloak, to the seal in his hand.
Then back to his daughter.
"We heard stories," he said. "We didn't believe half of them. We believed enough to start walking."
Doris wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"You shouldn't have," she said. "It's not safe."
"Neither is sitting in a village waiting for the sky to crack," her mother said. "If the world's ending, I'd rather be where I can throw something at whoever's in charge."
John stepped forward, offering the parchment.
"Maevra Serren, Head of Aetherion," he said. "This authorises your entry under tower protection. And this—" He pointed to the
small disk dangling from the wax. "—is apparently your family heirloom making a
comeback."
Her father's mouth tightened at the sight of the Voidborn sigil.
"I told your grandmother we should melt those," he muttered.
"She told you they'd be useful," her mother said. "As usual, she was right."
The guard, who had been watching this with increasing bewilderment, cleared his throat.
"Is this… official?" he asked, eyeing the seal.
"Yes," Doris said. "Tower order. You can read it if you like."
He did, lips moving.
When he reached the line about under ward and witness, he paled slightly.
"We're not supposed to argue with those," he said faintly.
"Good," John said. "Then don't."
The gate ward shimmered as the Aetheris parents stepped through.
Doris felt the hum notice them.
Old resonance.
Old choices.
Old guilt.
The tower made no move to reject them.
If anything, it seemed… interested.
Her mother looped her arm through Doris's without asking.
"Show me my grandson," she demanded.
Doris hesitated.
"He's…" she began.
"Complicated," John supplied.
Her mother snorted. "Of course he is," she said. "Have you met you?"
Brian regarded his grandparents with the solemn suspicion he reserved for strangers and new vegetables.
They stood in the suite doorway, suddenly hesitant in a way Doris had never seen.
Her mother took a careful step forward.
"Oh," she whispered.
He was on the pallet, propped against a rolled blanket, fists full of cloth, eyes wide. The chalk stars glowed faintly above him.
For a heartbeat, the room was very quiet.
No tower hum.
No Paragon whispers.
Just a family seeing itself carry on.
Her mother knelt beside the pallet, joints popping audibly.
"Hello, little storm," she said softly. "I'm your
grandmother. I've been waiting a very long time to see if you'd exist."
Brian stared.
Then, cautiously, he reached out and grabbed a tuft of her hair.
She winced.
"Definitely yours," she told Doris.
Her father hovered behind her, hands flexing as if tempted to scoop the child up and afraid to do it wrong.
"May I?" he asked.
Doris swallowed past the lump in her throat.
"Yes," she said. "Just… support his head. He thinks he's bigger than he is."
"Like his mother," her mother muttered.
Her father lifted Brian with the unexpected ease of someone who had done this before, long ago.
Brian blinked, surprised by the height change.
Then his small body relaxed against the broad, worn chest.
"Too light," her father said, voice rough. "He should be fatter. Trade you some of my worries for a few pounds."
"He eats constantly," Doris said. "He burns it in… other ways."
Her mother glanced up at the chalk stars.
"At least you're protecting him properly," she said. "Walls. Wards. Old women with sticks."
Dorothy made a noise like a disgruntled cat.
Her mother ignored it.
The tower hum, which had been a steady background thrum, shifted—curious, attentive.
The presence of three generations in one small room marked itself in the pattern.
Doris felt it.
So did John.
So did Dorothy.
"So," her mother said after a moment, eyes still on Brian's face. "Tell us. How bad is it?"
No soft questions.
No pretending.
Doris had missed that too.
She sat at the table, gestured for them to join.
Her father reluctantly surrendered Brian back to her arms; the baby made a small wail of protest, then subsided when he recognised the familiar heartbeat.
John poured tea from a pot Flint had bullied out of the kitchen.
Dorothy watched, staff across her knees, eyes sharp.
Doris took a breath.
She didn't tell them everything.
Not yet.
Not the under-Market or Echo's grin or every wrong note in the chapel hymn.
But she told them enough.
About the storm.
The canyon.
The ridgeclaws.
The first time the tower screamed.
About Brian's laugh in the chapel and the way the bell had changed.
About the sanctum shell under Third and the descent they were planning.
Her mother's mouth thinned.
Her father's hands tightened around his cup until his knuckles went white.
"We knew they were still there," he said quietly. "The anchors. We tried to pretend they weren't. We told ourselves Aetherion would
seal them and forget. That the empire would bury your family's mistakes under new laws and new prayers."
He looked at Dorothy.
"You told us that was stupid," he said.
"I did," she said. "Repeatedly."
"We didn't listen," he said.
"You did," Dorothy replied. "Eventually. You ran. You married out. You named your daughter something that didn't start with 'Ae.' It bought her time."
Her mother gave a brittle laugh.
"Time for what?" she asked. "To come back? To have a child the stone likes even more?"
Brian, oblivious to being discussed as a cosmic problem, gummed the edge of Doris's sleeve.
"We tried to give you a life," her mother said, voice trembling. "Away from diagrams and lectures and people who thought the world
was a puzzle to fix. We didn't tell you everything. We hoped… stupidly… that if
we didn't name the cracks, they wouldn't find you."
Doris looked down at her son.
At his small hands.
His ridiculous, perfect ears.
His unafraid gaze.
"You gave me enough to survive," she said. "And enough to come back. That's more than most children of old lines get."
Her father shook his head.
"You shouldn't have had to come back," he said. "You shouldn't have had to feel that field wake under your feet again. I know what it's like. I was in that town when—"
He stopped.
Doris's stomach turned.
She had told John the story.
The town that cracked.
The sanctum failure that had driven her family away.
Her father had never told it aloud.
"Tell him," Dorothy said quietly. "Tell all of them. The stone remembers the event. It might help if the people do too."
He stared into his cup for a long moment.
"It was called Herenvale," he said finally. "Little place. Chapel built over a minor anchoring node. Nothing grand. Just enough to keep the hillside from sliding in spring thaw. Your grandfather helped tune it. He was proud of that."
Doris knew this.
She'd heard the story in fragments.
Never like this.
Her father's voice went distant.
"The war came close," he said. "Too close. The empire wanted the high road. The rebels wanted the same. Someone—no one ever proved who—decided the best way to deny both was to destabilise the sanctum. Not break it. Just… wobble it. Enough to make the hillside unreliable."
He swallowed.
"The Paragons weren't involved," he said. "Not then. It was ours. Our own arrogance. Our own willingness to use anchors as tools. The field held longer than anyone expected. It took the strain. It carried the wrong pattern for months. Years. Then one spring, after a winter of extra rain… it broke."
His hands shook.
"Herenvale didn't slide," he said. "It… folded. The hill didn't come down. It… turned. Houses slid into each other. Chapels twisted. People—" His voice cracked. "People ended up places they shouldn't have fit. There were no clean bodies. Just… pieces."
No one spoke.
The hum in the room had gone very, very still.
"I was on the road," he said. "Running errands. A shift in the stone knocked me off my feet. When I looked back, the town was… wrong. You could see it from miles away. Like someone had taken a knife to the horizon and
misaligned it."
He rubbed his face.
"We went back," he said. "Your grandfather. Your grandmother. Me. We tried to untangle it. To rescue what we could. The sanctum was screaming. The anchor had lost the pattern it was supposed to hold and grabbed whatever it could. It took weeks to convince it the town was dead."
Doris's throat burned.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered.
"We told you the cleaned version," her mother said. "That sanctums were dangerous. That people died. That we left. We thought the details would… root too deep. We didn't want you to feel obligated to fix old mistakes."
She laughed bitterly.
"That worked out well."
John's jaw was tight.
"So when you say the chapel sanctum is a risk," he said, "you're not guessing."
"No," her father said. "You're walking onto the same kind of knife we did. The difference is, you've seen it from both sides. You know what
happens when the stone forgets what it's supposed to hold."
Doris looked at Brian.
At the chalk stars.
At the ledger open on the table, half a page filled with notes from the last quiet room session.
"I don't want Herenvale under Third Chapel," she said.
"Neither do I," her father said.
He reached into his coat.
"I wasn't going to bring this," he said. "I thought… it would just drag you further in. But you're already there."
He put a small object on the table.
A stone.
No bigger than a thumb joint.
Smooth.
Dark.
Etched with the faint, worn remains of sigils.
Doris knew it.
"Anchor chip," she breathed. "From Herenvale."
Her father nodded.
"The only piece that came away clean," he said. "Your grandmother kept it as a reminder. 'We did this,' she said. 'We can't pretend
we didn't.' When she died, your mother wanted to bury it. I… couldn't. I told myself I'd throw it into the river someday. I never did."
John eyed it warily. "Is it safe?" he asked.
"It's inert," Doris said automatically. Then, quieter, "Mostly."
The hum in the room ticked.
Interested.
Not hungry.
Just aware.
Dorothy leaned forward.
"It's a memory," she said. "Not a weapon. The pattern it held burned out when the town folded. Now it's just… residue. But stones like
this are good teachers. They remember what not to do."
"Take it," her father said. "When you go under the chapel. Let the sanctum feel it. Let it know what happens if it follows the wrong song
too long. Maybe it will hesitate."
Serais would have a theological fit, Doris thought.
Halvar would want to run tests.
Lyr would want to lick it.
She reached out and picked it up.
It was warmer than it looked.
Heavy, for its size.
The hum touched it like a dog sniffing an old bone.
"Ledger," she whispered.
John nodded.
He wrote, with care:
— Mother and Father arrived (east gate). Brought Herenvale shard. First-hand account: sanctum used in war -> long-term field strain
-> eventual catastrophic fold. Chip inert now, but carries memory. Plan: carry into chapel sanctum as "lesson." Risk: unknown. Potential: anchor hesitates.
Her mother watched the writing with a mixture of pride and dread.
"You're really going to do this," she said. "Walk under a chapel. Talk to a sanctum. Let your child's laugh into the walls."
"Yes," Doris said.
Her mother closed her eyes.
"When your grandfather found out I was pregnant with you," she said softly, "he said, 'Good. Maybe she'll be the one who remembers enough to fix what we broke.' I told him to shut up. That you weren't a tool. That you were a person. I still believe that. I will haunt you if you forget it."
Doris smiled shakily.
"I have John for that," she said. "And Dorothy. And Bridget, once she gets my letter. And you. And Mother, I promise—if the day comes when fixing things means losing him, I will let the world fall."
The words surprised even her.
They settled into the hum like a promise carved into stone.
Her father nodded slowly.
"That's all I needed to hear," he said.
Brian yawned.
The crooked star glowed.
The Herenvale shard warmed in Doris's hand.
Outside, the chapel bells marked another hour, their tones clean—for now.
Under Third Chapel, the sanctum shell stirred, aware of a new piece in play.
In the palace, a man in fine clothes frowned over a reply that did not yet give him what he wanted.
In some hidden hollow, Echo traced new lines and wondered what memories the sanctum would taste when Voidborn and Aetherbound and old Herenvale stone all stood in its field at once.
In a tower room crowded with three generations and too much history, a family sat with tea and guilt and stubborn love and a tiny chip of disaster, and decided, together, how to walk into the cracks without letting them define them.
Stones remembered.
Now, finally, so did they.