Morning descended through Auralis like sound through glass.
Every surface hummed faintly in tune with the city's pulse — the bridges, the walls, even the air between the dorm towers. It was discipline disguised as beauty. The academy didn't wake; it tuned itself.
Jax stood on one of the upper terraces of North Spire, wind pushing through his hair, the Aetherflow veins in the stone flickering underfoot. He didn't breathe out of habit. He breathed because rhythm demanded it.
Aroha's voice came from behind him. "You can't muscle rhythm, Hollow."
He turned. She carried two resonance bands — thin loops of woven crystal wire — and tossed one to him. "Put it on."
He slid the band over his wrist. It tightened, adjusting to his conduit signature, humming low.
"Lesson three," Aroha said. "Dual discipline control. Flow first. Null second. You've got one minute before your body argues."
She flicked her wrist and the training field came alive — a shimmer of light over the terrace, sealing them from the outer wind. The sound of the city dimmed, leaving only pulse and space.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Always."
"Then Flow."
He drew from his node — that silver current that wasn't blood but behaved like it wanted to be. The band brightened around his wrist. Energy coiled up his arm and into his hands, filling him, heating the air. The terrace lights leaned toward him like grass toward sunlight.
"Now Null."
He tilted it. The glow bent inward, softening, pressure collapsing into quiet. The brightness dimmed. Even Aroha's breathing seemed to slow in response.
"Good. Hold both."
He tried. Flow wanted to sing; Null wanted silence. His conduits pulsed in conflicting time signatures. It wasn't pain — pain was too simple. This was *discord*, a song that refused to agree with itself.
"Steady," Aroha said.
He opened his palms, exhaled, and forced the two rhythms to coexist. Flow shimmered. Null curved around it. For a moment — one heartbeat, one perfect breath — they met.
Then the bridge under his feet cracked like frost on glass.
Aroha moved before he fell. She caught his shoulder, fingers pressing into his conduit lines, forcing them to re-align. The field stabilized. The crack sealed.
"Better," she said, though her tone was tight. "But you can't brute-force synchronization. You have to *feel* it."
Jax rolled his shoulders, conduits sparking faintly. "Flow feels too loud. Null hates noise."
"Then make them listen to each other."
She gestured toward the railing. "Again."
He reset his stance, eyes closed this time. Flow first: warmth, movement, creation. Then Null: silence, containment, control. Two halves of the same law — life and limit. He found the midpoint between them and let his body breathe in rhythm.
When he opened his eyes again, the band had stopped glowing. It was steady.
Aroha's lips twitched. "You did it."
"Feels like a whisper."
"Good. That's control."
## 1 — Moving in Two Languages
"Again," Aroha said, already walking backward into the motion grid. "Now with footwork."
The terrace reconfigured—tiles sliding a fraction, corridors of force forming and dissolving like suggestions. A lightline traced a slow figure-eight beneath Jax's boots. Keeping Flow and Null balanced while standing was one argument. *Walking* it turned the discussion into a brawl.
"Left circle," Aroha called. "Flow anchors in the hips. Keep Null at the shoulders — tuned, not flared."
He stepped in. The first three paces were clean. On the fourth, the grid pushed a lateral pressure across his stance. Flow answered by wanting to surge. Null wanted to cancel the idea of the grid. His ribs buzzed with the beginnings of fray.
"Breathe," Aroha said, calm. "Flow is yes. Null is no. Your body is the sentence that holds both. Finish the sentence."
He shortened his stride a hair, let the yes travel into his right knee, and let the no incline at his collarbone. The two met above his sternum and didn't fight. The pressure softened. The grid flowed around him, interested rather than offended.
"Good," Aroha said. "Now add speed."
He obeyed. The figure-eight tightened; the terrace wind reached in and tugged his balance; the hum of the city's arteries rose. The resonance band on his wrist vibrated in micro-clicks as it logged his timing errors. He chased those clicks and then stopped chasing them, because chasing was Flow's bad habit. He let Null carry the tempo in the upper body and let Flow populate the steps with intention.
After three passes, sweatless heat lifted from his skin.
"Talk to me," Aroha said, circling.
"Flow wants… ownership," he said, not losing pace. "Null wants custodianship."
"Same word. Different arrogance. Again."
He ran the figure-eight until the grid collapsed back into flat tile.
Aroha tossed him a second band. "Ankle."
He slid it on. The moment it touched skin, it set a metronome just out of sync with the wrist. That off-beat was the lesson. His node tightened, unhappy.
"Hold them both," she said. "Make the beats disagree without making *you* disagree."
He set Flow in the legs, Null in the chest, and kept the wrist and ankle arguing in polite tones. The argument tried to widen. He shrank it with breath, like closing a door on a loud room.
Minutes stretched. The line between mastery and stubbornness blurred — his favorite line. When his back started to hum with those warning micro-crackles, Aroha was there with a tuner, turning a dial a quarter-click.
"There," she said, voice low. "Stabilized."
Jax didn't look up. "Thirty more seconds."
Aroha let him have them. She counted in silence.
At "thirty-one," he let go, and both bands dimmed to that comforting flat.
"You're improving," she said.
"Feels like I'm learning to apologize to myself and mean it."
"That's called adulthood," she said dryly. "Now drink."
He took the canteen. The water inside wasn't just water; the Pulse Forge infused it with a faint stabilizing chord. He felt the RCN accept it like a good idea.
Aroha watched the lines in his forearms settle. "You want the real reason I'm making you do this now, not next term?"
"Because Ryen exists."
"That's the joke reason." She inclined her head toward the city. "Because Auralis is shifting. When a city changes key, students who can't hold two ideas at once break."
He swallowed. "You think it's changing to… what, exactly?"
"I think something underneath it wants to be part of our song," she said. "And I don't like uninvited chorus."
The bands clicked once and went inert. She unclasped hers. "Eat. Class. Meet me in the Vault at fourteen-hundred."
"Vault again?"
"Until you can breathe down there without lying to your own nerves," Aroha said, already walking away. "Yes."
## 2 — The City Between Bells
Midday in Auralis taught itself. Bells didn't chime so much as *align*—a warm three-note phrase that rolled across bridges and courtyards, coaxing every conduit into a polite stretch. Students flowed from terraces to corridors to amphitheaters, each district singing its own timbre while sharing the same beat.
Jax cut along a Resonant Bridge arched over the Garden of Threads—bioluminescent vines braided with glassy Aether lines that pulsed like sleeping throats. Radiant Path apprentices tested light-lattice across open spans, braiding narrow walkways that curled and solidified into ramps exactly wide enough for two running bodies and one argument.
"Don't clip corners," their instructor warned. "Corners remember."
Farther along, Drift Sect students sprinted a floating track that kinked mid-lap to test adjustment. The track listened. So did their shoes, tuned soles catching the academy's breath and returning it as speed.
On a sky balcony, the Ember Choir rehearsed: six voices holding one long note that made the wind behave. Flags stilled. Shirts stopped flapping. Laughter went quiet without losing joy.
Jax slowed near a lower terrace where Pulse Forge engineers were repairing an arena plate. A hammer struck a concentric ring with no force—only intent—and the metal changed its mind about a crack.
"Don't brute," the Forge lead chided. "Hum it reason."
A student tried again, hummed, and the crack sealed as if embarrassed to have been noticed.
He crossed into the Cafeteria of Currents—high ceilings, long tables, trays moving on thin rails of light that kept plates warm or cold by preference. The space pulsed at a frequency that made food taste like clarity. Jax didn't care why it worked. He was simply grateful that the soup understood him.
Kara found him halfway to a window seat and hip-checked his tray. "Breakfast again?"
"Fuel," he said.
She dropped opposite, already talking. "Okay, hear me out. I think the Ember Choir's serenity field can thread with Drift's micro-adjust, at least for recovery sets. If you hold a low A on the third overtone while running sixteen-count tempo, the body stops panicking about tiny mistakes."
"That's not how you pitch a date," he said.
"It's how I pitch victory." She stabbed her synth fruit. "Also a date."
"You're unpredictable," he said, but he was smiling. "Did you sleep?"
"Four hours and a twenty-minute coherence nap." She leaned in. "I want to try something in the afternoon if you're not dead. A small vocal overlay on your Flow set to see if it calms the Null slope. Not inside the Vault," she added, reading his face. "On a terrace. Windows open. If it goes weird, the wind can carry my shame away."
"You trust your voice near my slope?"
"I trust your slope near my voice more than I trust my voice near Ryen's ego."
"Fair."
She lowered her voice. "Also—under-city scanners glitched again last night."
He set his spoon down. "Where?"
"Lower Vaults. The same sector we passed during recovery."
"The one with the chalk door?"
"Yeah. Someone—or something—set off every Aetherflow reader for six seconds straight. They said it was interference, but…" She trailed off, fork still hovering midair.
"But you don't buy it."
"Do you?"
He thought of that moment in the corridor — the quiet instruction, that impossible voice. **Pause.** "No," he said.
Kara leaned closer, voice lower now. "There's talk of a fracture point. A power running under the academy that predates the Orders. They're calling it the **First Resonance**."
Jax frowned. "That's myth."
"So's half of Auralis," she said. "And yet we live in it."
He didn't argue. Myths had a habit of becoming architecture here.
"Eat," she said, tapping his bowl. "Then be a responsible student and go let Aroha bully you into greatness."
"That sentence is redundant," he said, finishing his soup.
## 3 — Kara's Experiment
They took an open terrace on the South Ring for ten stolen minutes before Vault time—Kara's favorite for the way wind fractured into harmless shapes against the geometry.
"Okay." She shook out her shoulders, then her hands, then her jaw as if loosening a stuck hinge. "You hold Flow at comfort, Hollow slope at etiquette. I'll layer a choir-thread low. If you feel your conduits argue, lift a finger. I cut."
"No heroics," he said.
"Only petty victories."
He planted his feet hip-width, set Flow inside the bones like warm breath in winter. The slope of Null a degree and change, no farther. The terrace liked him. The railing's Aether veins glowed faintly in approval.
Kara exhaled once, then opened her mouth on a note she barely let out. Not volume—*placement*. It slid under his set like a support beam someone had forgotten to install. The muscles along his spine stopped trying to over-correct. His right ankle—a notorious gossip—quieted.
"Good?" she whispered between the note and the next breath.
"Good," he said, surprised.
She moved the note a half-tone, then quartered it, then tucked it back down where his ribs wanted it. He felt the slope of Null relax by a fraction without losing integrity.
"Okay, that's… neat," she murmured, pleased and a little spooked. "One more micro-test."
She layered a second overtone, even softer, and for three breaths the set became *easy*. A privilege. Aroha would call it cheating. Jax let himself enjoy it for exactly two heartbeats.
Then the terrace lights flickered.
Kara cut the note immediately. The air returned to proper wind. A sparrow that had perched on the rail like an impatient proctor resumed being a bird instead of a diagram.
"Did I do that?" she said.
"No," he said, which was the wrong answer and also the true one.
They stood very still as the terrace re-stabilized with the little shrug buildings give when they decide to keep being buildings. The flicker wasn't hers. It wasn't his. It was the same off-beat he'd felt the night before, testing itself against surface systems.
Kara blew out her cheeks and tried to make a joke of it. "Okay. So I can sing your slope into being less annoying."
"Temporarily," he said.
"Temporarily," she agreed, smile thin. "We're done."
"Thanks," he said, meaning it. "For the… beam."
"I like being your beam," she said, too fast, then made a face at herself. "Ugh. Go. Aroha time."
He went. She stayed, hands on the railing, watching the sea roll in against the mirrored face of Vocalis like a polite god.
## 4 — The Vault Breathes Wrong
Afternoon training was in the Vault again. Aroha met him at the door, expression unreadable.
"You heard about the glitch?" she asked.
"I did."
Her jaw tightened. "Ignore it. Council's handling it."
"Handling or hiding?"
"Same thing for now," she said, and keyed open the chamber.
Inside, the Vault had changed — walls darker, resonance lines pulsing slower than normal. The air itself felt thicker, like the rhythm underneath had forgotten how to breathe.
She noticed it too. "System lag," she muttered. "Probably from the morning sync."
He stepped onto the calibration ring. The Comma mark under his collarbone stirred faintly, a small, deliberate pulse.
Aroha crossed her arms. "You're thinking about the Vault disturbance, aren't you?"
"Trying not to."
"Then stop failing."
He smirked despite himself. "You have a way with encouragement."
She smiled faintly. "Balance isn't comfort, Hollow. It's awareness without panic. Show me what you learned this morning."
He inhaled. The floor brightened beneath him — Flow and Null rising in tandem.
At first it was easy. Then came the wobble, the soft vibration that said his body disagreed with his mind. He anchored with breathing, like she taught. Flow filled. Null wrapped. The hum stabilized.
"Better," Aroha said quietly. "You're learning restraint."
He nodded once, still focused — until the floor flickered.
It wasn't his doing.
The Vault's lights dimmed to a low hum. The calibration ring fractured into static geometry — lines breaking and reforming too fast to read. Jax's conduit flared instinctively. Null expanded, cutting the overload before it reached him.
Aroha's voice sharpened. "System abort!"
Nothing happened. The chamber didn't obey.
The rhythm in the walls fell out of sync with everything else — an offbeat, irregular pulse. It wasn't just glitching; it was *breathing wrong*.
Then the sound came. A low, deep tone. Not human. Not mechanical. Something below them — under the academy — was echoing through the infrastructure.
Jax felt it through the floor, not his ears. A frequency that didn't belong in any Aetherflow system.
Aroha swore under her breath. "Get out—"
The tone cut her off. The light snapped back to normal as if nothing had happened.
They stood there, both breathing hard. The Vault floor was perfectly still again. The hum corrected itself, crisp and steady.
Kara burst through the door seconds later, out of breath. "Every scanner in the district just spiked. You felt it?"
Aroha turned slowly toward her. "We felt it."
Kara looked between them. "It's spreading, Jax. The undercity resonance—it's starting to copy us."
"It's not just copy," Jax said, throat dry. "It's *answering*."
Aroha tapped her band and opened a channel to Control. "Vault to Central. We experienced an unscheduled harmonic intrusion. Requesting a hard reset and a sweep of all lower conduits."
"Central here," a voice returned, too calm. "We show green across the board."
"Your board is lying," Aroha said.
A tight pause. "Understood. Initiating manual verification."
Jax kept his slope tight until the last of the static geometry faded. The room's temperature had not changed, but his back felt cold.
Kara's eyes tracked the floor markings. "That tone — I heard it in the cafeteria without hearing it. Like it sat behind sound."
Aroha holstered the tuner. "If the academy has a sub-basement heartbeat, we're the pacemaker, not the patient. We leave."
She cut the Vault power from the wall—the old-fashioned way, palm on iron, turning pressure in a circle until the room sighed and accepted sleep. Only instructors could make the wall do that. Jax watched the way her forearm lines flared and dimmed like a storm being negotiated with.
In the corridor, a pair of Fray Division techs arrived in a hurry. Their eyes flicked over Aroha, over Jax, over the door and whatever it could be accused of. The taller one tried a professional smile.
"Routine sweep," he said. "No cause for concern."
Aroha blinked at him like a predator who had decided to humor a well-dressed mouse. "Of course," she said. "Tell your routine to bring me a printed log."
The tech swallowed. "Printed."
"Yes," Aroha said. "Ink."
They left the Vault to its quiet, which no longer felt like rest. It felt like patience.
## 5 — Drift and the Cost of Calm
"Walk," Aroha said, and she meant the long way. They took the arc that wound from North Spire through East Rise, down into the Garden levels where humidity curled hair and thoughts.
They didn't talk for a few minutes. Aroha let Jax's conduits settle by proximity to ordinary training: a group of first-years learning to fall without bracing; a Radiant instructor coaxing a misbehaving lattice into being gentle; a Forge apprentice sitting with a hammer in his lap, listening to a plate of metal explain its day.
At a Drift platform, Ryen was already limping his pride into speed drills with his sling tucked under a band. He caught sight of Jax, raised a hand, then thought better and saluted Aroha instead.
"He's not stupid," Aroha murmured. "Just generous with himself."
"Generous?"
"He gives himself the benefit of the doubt too easily." She glanced at Jax. "You do the opposite."
"Occupational hazard."
"Or childhood," she said, as if the difference mattered and didn't. "Either way, learn the middle."
Jax watched a pair of students run a moving stair that changed height with each step. The trick wasn't strength. It was serenity while thinking fast.
"Aetherflow's better when it stops needing applause," Aroha said, following his gaze. "The city will love you if you roar. It will trust you if you are quiet. We need trust."
"Because something is listening," he said.
"Because *we* are," she corrected. "And the first person you owe a steady rhythm is yourself."
Kara rejoined them at the midpoint with two bottles of Forge water and a look like she had told four rumors to sit down and be useful. She handed a bottle to Jax and walked backward for a few steps, watching them both.
"If the Council calls another assembly, I'm skipping," she said. "They'll say 'we're aware' five different ways, then ask the Choir to sing the word 'reassurance' in A major until we forget what a question is."
Aroha didn't hide a smile. "Don't skip. Sit near the back and record. Your notes are better than their minutes."
Kara preened with appropriate humility. "Obviously," she said, voice dropping, "the Council doesn't know what's coming. But we do."