Khalen waited until the grove stopped watching like a crowd.
The hum never stopped. It lived in the wood the way blood lived in veins, constant and indifferent, until you made it pay attention.
He sat on the edge of the bedding Ned had indicated, a thick mat of woven reed and pale moss that smelled faintly of rain and crushed leaf. The chamber around him was grown, not built, hollowed from living trunk and lined with braided roots that served as ribs. There were no corners. Every surface curved or folded like muscle. The place had decided sharp angles were for dead things.
Outside the opening, vinework hung like a curtain. It did not sway with any wind Khalen could feel. It simply rested there, patient and listening.
Lys and Therrin had gone quiet in the neighbouring chamber, or maybe they were still awake, lying to themselves about sleep the way trained people did. Khalen couldn't tell. The grove muffled sound in a way that felt less like distance and more like consent.
He rubbed his palm over his face, dragging fatigue down with it. His head still held a dull bruise from earlier, the place where the grove had answered his pulse with a lesson sharp enough to make him fall.
Don't touch what you don't understand.
Ned's words had landed like a command and a prophecy. Khalen had hated them, mostly because they were true.
He shifted his belt, feeling the familiar weight of the skull there. OH's seams were dim, a candle turned down low. It didn't speak. It didn't crack jokes. It did something worse.
It waited.
Khalen stared at the vine curtain until his eyes started to unfocus. He could feel his ship in the back of his mind like a clenched fist. The Valkyrie, asleep under spears. Every minute she stayed silent felt like betrayal, even though she'd never betrayed him once in her life.
His throat tightened.
He forced himself to breathe through it.
The air pressed back, gentle but immovable, as if the grove had put a hand against his chest and decided the depth of his lungs for him. It wasn't choking him. It wasn't kindness, either.
Control, disguised as comfort.
Khalen's fingers curled into the bedding, compressing moss and reed. Green grit worked under his nails. He released it and tried again, softer this time, as if he was learning how to touch without grabbing.
The first laugh came inside his head, not out loud. A warm, smug little sound.
OH.
"You are, and I say this with love," OH murmured into the back of Khalen's thoughts, "the loudest quiet person I have ever met."
Khalen didn't answer. He kept his eyes on the curtain.
The skull's seams ticked up to that faint-bright line. It brightened, smug.
OH continued anyway. It always did, when it thought you needed it. "Do you know what you looked like earlier, when you tried to 'control' your fire?"
Khalen's jaw tightened. He gave OH one thought, clipped and sharp. Don't.
OH gave him a beat of mercy. Then: "A baby."
Khalen's fingers paused.
"A baby," OH repeated, sweetly cruel in the way only something that loved you could get away with. "Not the cute kind. The kind that thinks it's being subtle while it telegraphs hunger to every adult in the room."
Khalen breathed in. The air pressed back.
"You're angry," OH observed. "That's good. Anger is focus with teeth."
Khalen swallowed. His throat scraped. He thought of the tea, the honesty ripping through him, the moment his fire had gone looking for more. He thought of Ned's plain voice. Up. We're done. He thought of the grove deciding, in one measured instant, how loud he was allowed to be.
"My control isn't…" he began, then stopped. Too loud for this place.
OH didn't need the rest. "It isn't nothing," OH said, softer. "But it isn't what you think it is."
Khalen stared down at his own hands.
OH's voice threaded itself through the grove's ear. "You've been holding your fire like a man holding his breath in a crowd, hoping no one notices. It worked because most places are deaf. Most places don't listen to what you don't say."
Khalen's eyes flicked to the vine curtain.
"This grove listens," OH said, almost pleased. "Ned listens. And when you pushed into the trunk like that, you didn't send. You announced."
The memory of that pulse returned, the instant white crack behind his eyes.
Khalen's shoulders tightened. "It hit back."
"It corrected," OH replied. "A spank, as you so poetically put it in your head."
Khalen hadn't realised he'd thought the word until OH said it aloud, amused.
He exhaled through his nose. "So what. I'm supposed to just sit here and be watched."
"Ah," OH said, delighted. "There it is. The 'I refuse to be small' reflex. My favourite."
Khalen's lips twitched despite himself, a tight, unwilling thing.
OH pounced on the crack. "Good. Keep that. Now aim it."
Khalen shifted, setting his back against the inner curve of the trunk. The wood was warm. Not heat, not fire. Warm in a way that made his nerves crawl.
He closed his eyes.
The wood's attention deepened, or maybe his focus made it feel deeper. Either way, it was there, tightness behind his teeth, in the bones behind his ears, in the space between breaths.
OH's voice softened, the smugness trimmed down to clean instruction. "You want to map a room without eyes."
Khalen opened one eye, irritated. "You already told me."
"Yes," OH said, and somehow the word sounded like a grin. "And you immediately attempted to do it like a man punching a door to see if it's locked."
Khalen shut his eye again. "Fine. Tell me how."
There was a pause, just long enough to feel like OH had won.
Then: "Vathereon took a day to even begin," OH said. "A full day. Sun up to sun down. And that was in a place that wanted him dead, not a grove that wants you quiet."
Khalen's annoyance flared. "Helpful."
"Oh, I'm being helpful," OH replied. "I'm lowering your expectations. You can't fail if you're already doomed."
Khalen's mouth tightened.
OH added, brightly: "That was a joke. Mostly."
Khalen breathed in, slow. He let the air press back, felt the boundary of it. Not to fight it. To learn its shape.
"Start small," OH said. "Not in force. In intent."
Khalen's fingers rested on the bedding. He pictured his Breath, not as fire, not as blaze, but as a thread. A single line, quiet enough to slide under a door.
He pressed that imagined thread into the wood behind him, not through the trunk like a spear, but along the grain.
Nothing happened.
Khalen held it there, the way you held a hand under water and waited for the surface to stop reacting.
Nothing.
He tried again, a fraction more.
Nothing got louder. The air drew taut, not angry, not loud, just suddenly aware.
Khalen's eyes snapped open.
OH's voice came quick, not a shout, more like a hand on the back of his head. "Stop. Not like that."
Khalen held still, breath shallow.
"You don't want it to notice you," OH said. "You want it to dismiss you."
Khalen's jaw flexed. "How."
"Like a skitterling," OH said, and there it was again, the big brother tone, a little too pleased with himself. "Skitterling. No, worse. The kind that thinks it's stealthy. You ever hear something in the brush and your whole body goes sharp, then a bug darts out and you feel stupid for caring?"
Khalen didn't answer, but the image landed. A twig tick, a flicker of motion, nothing worth a blade.
"That," OH said. "You're not knocking on the trunk. You're leaving a breathprint that says: tiny thing, passing through, not worth eyes."
Khalen narrowed his eyes at the vine curtain. "So I lie."
"You blend," OH corrected. "Lying is sloppy. Blending is survival."
Khalen huffed once, almost a laugh. "Fine. I'll be forgettable. That'll be new."
He let out a slow breath. "Again."
He closed his eyes.
This time he didn't send the thread like a hand reaching. He sent it like a scuff in dust, a soft scrape that could have been nothing. A little pulse, then a pause. Not asking a question, not demanding an answer.
Nothing happened.
OH didn't pounce on the silence. It waited, listening with him.
Khalen sent it again, smaller, then let it fade, like a skitterling had crossed the edge of a path and disappeared.
The grove stayed indifferent.
"There," OH murmured. "Did you feel that?"
Khalen's throat tightened. "It didn't hit me."
"It didn't look at you," OH said, satisfied. "That's step one."
Khalen kept his eyes shut. His hands stayed open on his knees, palms up, refusing the urge to clench.
OH went quieter, more serious without losing warmth. "Vathereon didn't learn this because he was wise. He learned because he was blind and hungry and alone in a place where sound got you killed."
Khalen's breath caught at the phrasing.
"The Sea took his eyes," OH continued, "and then it took pieces of him. Not metaphorically. Pieces. That's when his mind stopped trying to force the world to behave and started listening to what the world already was."
Khalen pictured it, unwillingly. Sand like water, the horizon bending, something moving under the crust.
"That's what survival does," OH said. "It pries you open. If you don't die first."
Khalen swallowed, jaw tight, and sent the skitterling-print again. A soft pulse, then nothing. A presence that was barely a presence.
The air stayed easy.
Khalen's mouth twitched, not a smile yet, but close.
"Again," OH said, and there was less teasing now. More focus. Like it wanted Khalen to win.
Khalen went again.
And again.
And again.
Hours slid by in repetition. The grove's light thinned behind the vine curtain, green turning deeper, then thinning toward something cooler. Spores drifted past the seam like slow snowfall.
Khalen's body heated with effort. Sweat gathered at his hairline, then ran, then soaked. His shirt clung to his ribs. His hands trembled with the sustained work of restraint, the strange violence of making yourself smaller on purpose.
He failed sometimes. Not loudly. Not with a spike that earned punishment. Just a fraction too much intent, a hair too much push, and the air drew taut.
Each time, he pulled back.
Each time, it let him.
OH stayed with him through it, quieter now. A muttered "good" when Khalen corrected fast. A dry "yeah, no" when Khalen got proud and tried to jump a step. Less commentary, more presence.
Khalen began to realise that was the point. The grove wasn't reacting to his power. It was reacting to his posture. To his insistence on being seen.
He sent the breathprint like a skitterling again, softer still.
Pulse. Pause. Vanish.
Again.
Nothing tightened.
It shifted.
Not away. Not against.
Around.
Khalen held perfectly still, heart loud in his own ears, breath shallow. He expected the slap. He expected the correction.
It didn't come.
Instead the air pressure eased, almost imperceptible, like a hand that had been braced against his chest loosened by a finger.
OH's voice went very quiet. "Don't grab that. Don't celebrate it. Just… keep breathing."
Khalen let the breathprint exist, then fade. He sat unmoving, sweat dripping off his chin onto the bedding, and smiled anyway, a small tired thing that belonged only to him.
Outside the vine curtain, something answered.
Not a voice. Not words.
A shape in the air, a single change that didn't feel like warning. It felt like a fingertip tapping a table twice, not impatient, not angry, just precise.
There. Pay attention.
A cluster of spores drifted past the seam and, for one breath, held an almost-arrow toward the threshold before the pattern collapsed back into randomness.
The vinework at the threshold loosened on one side, not opening all the way, just parting enough to show a seam of darkness beyond. Not the corridor Ned had used. Something narrower. A passage the grove hadn't lent him earlier.
OH didn't speak for a long beat.
When it finally did, the tone had changed. The teasing drained out. "That's not for everyone."
Khalen's smile faded into something sharper. "It's for me."
"It might be an invitation," OH said carefully. "Or a test."
Khalen wiped his face with the back of his hand. He was shaking with fatigue, but it felt cleaner now, like the effort had burned off everything excess. He looked at the seam in the vinework and felt his ship in the back of his mind like a bruise.
The Valkyrie, asleep.
He stood, slow. His knees protested. His clothes clung to his spine. He steadied his breathing until the air stopped pressing back so hard.
OH's seams held that faint-bright line at his belt. "You don't have to prove anything tonight."
Khalen's eyes stayed on the seam. "I'm not proving. I'm learning."
He moved to the threshold.
The vinework didn't resist. It didn't welcome him either. It simply made room, the way a body made room for a blade it hadn't decided to reject yet.
Khalen stepped through.
The hum followed.
Not loud. Not angry.
Close.
Like footsteps behind him that weren't chasing, only keeping pace.
He didn't look back.
By the time Lys and Therrin woke, by the time Ned's people came to collect the volatile fireman who'd been ordered to sleep and not touch what he didn't understand, the chamber was empty.
The bedding was damp and twisted where he'd sat for hours. The air still held the sharp mineral tang of sweat and effort. On the threshold, the vinework had settled back into place, seamless again, as if it had never opened at all.
And Khalen was gone, swallowed by a passage that hadn't existed an hour ago.
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