The days no longer crawled like in the Womb. They scattered. Fast, uneven, split between three different lives under one roof.
Noah spent them bent over parchment and bone, the fate grimoire spread open on his knees like a wound. The book didn't warm to him. Its pages resisted, barbed with signs that twisted when he thought he almost had them. Thin threads of silver light flickered beneath his hands—sometimes catching between his fingers, sometimes cracking apart with a sting that numbed his palms. Every mistake left him dizzy. Every half-success coaxed blood from his nose or made his vision pulse.
Still, he pressed on.
Outside, the village lived loud enough that he could not forget it. The thock of hammers shaping bone and horn into tools. Children shrieking with laughter as they raced barefoot over moss. The calls of fishers returning with silver-blue catch that glimmered under the valley's light. It all reached him through the slit of their window, each sound a reminder that life went on without him. That people here knew who they were and what they were meant to do.
He didn't.
He turned a page. The diagrams swam. He tried again: thumb to sigil, breath steady, intention narrowed to a needle's eye. A flicker. A snap. His hand shook.
"Again," he muttered, though no one was listening.
Midday he tried something new—soft work, the book called it. Telekinesis by patience instead of force. Narrow the locus; cradle, don't strike. He set a carved bone needle on the floorboards and extended a single thread of will. The needle shivered. Lifted—half a finger's breadth—then jittered like a trapped beetle and clacked back down.
"Fine," Noah said to no one. "You win one round."
He tried a pebble next. It rose a full inch this time, hovered with insultingly fragile poise, then slashed sideways and nicked his ankle hard enough to make him swear.
"Okay," he hissed, pressing his lips flat. "Two rounds."
He held the thread, breath thin, palms burning as though he'd been hauling rope. The pebble steadied. Rose. A heartbeat of calm. Then the light in his fingers spasmed, the world tilted, and the pebble darted into the wall with a dull thunk, leaving a chalky kiss on the wood.
Noah sat back hard on his heels. He wiped a nosebleed with the heel of his hand and laughed once—sharp, too close to the edge. He'd promised himself he wouldn't touch the deck again, wouldn't call the cards, wouldn't lean on fate like a crutch with teeth. So this—this sweating, this shaking, this stubborn soft work—was what remained.
The window leaked birdsong. He hated the sound for half a breath. Then he didn't.
"Again," he said softly, and the needle shivered.
Abel's days unfolded differently.
He grew restless as the wound knit. Even with the healer's salves and careful re-bandaging, the idea of lying idle rattled him. So he went to the glade where the Menari's few fighters trained. Not many—most had been taken in chains by Helios—but enough to make a circle, spears in hand, eyes hard.
At first they watched him like an intruder. Then one asked—almost shyly—for him to show something. Anything.
Abel said little. He showed much.
He moved through them with a patient gravity—corrected stances, adjusted grips, set shoulders back with two fingers, pivoted hips with a light tap. He made them hold a line until their arms trembled. He fought the pull of pain in his side, never letting them see what it cost. Slowly, respect kindled in their eyes. Not awe like they gave Noah. Something sturdier. Trust.
"Again," he said, for the fiftieth time. "Hold. You break when your breath breaks, not before."
A young miner named Jora—broad-shouldered, gentle-eyed—lowered his spear with a groan. "If I hold any longer, I'll turn to salt."
"Good," Abel said. "You'll be harder to cut."
That made a few grins crack open. Jora shook out his arms and reset.
The children gathered, too, watching from the edges. They whispered about him the way they whispered about Noah, but the words were different. Strong one. Steadfast. They didn't call him touched by gods. They saw a man teaching them how to keep a spear steady when fear made fingers slick.
That suited Abel.
During a break, Cassian sauntered in with two wooden cups of cold mint tea, settling beside him on the bench. "Your fan club grows daily."
Abel accepted the cup. "They're not fans. They're scared."
Cassian's grin softened. "And you make scared people feel less alone. That's worth more than you think."
Abel considered the line of trainees, their faces raw with effort. "Worth is measured when the line holds," he said. "We'll see."
Later, as the shadows shifted blue, Jora sidled over, spear tucked under his arm. "Is it true?" he asked, eyes flicking toward the distant houses. "About your friend. That the child of the moon touched him."
Abel followed the glance instinctively to the window where Noah would be—bent, stubborn, lit by that soft ache of silver. "Something touched him," he said. "Whether it was a child or a grave, I don't know."
Jora nodded, chewing his lip. "We… we talk like it's good," he said awkwardly. "Like it means something for us. But signs don't stop blades."
"No," Abel agreed. "People do."
Jora stood straighter at that. Abel put him back on the line and made him prove it.
Cassian lived differently still.
If Abel carried weight and Noah carried guilt, Cassian chose to carry neither. Each morning he slid out the door with the ease of a stone skipping a river. By midday he came back with crumbs on his shirt, berry stains on his fingers, or clay dust on his palms, babbling about whoever he'd met.
"The baker says I have the hands of a thief." He tossed a warm flatbread onto their bedrolls. "She's not wrong. I stole this."
Another day: "The drum-maker let me carve a rim. Well. 'Let' is strong. He looked away; I carved a rim. It's ugly. He laughed."
He picked up Menari words faster than Noah thought possible, weaving them into jokes until Noah wanted to stuff moss in his mouth. Children followed Cassian like a noisy comet. He never refused their dares to race or climb or spin until he fell dizzy into the grass. By the end of a week, Cassian had names for half the village while Noah still barely dared to meet anyone's eyes.
He also listened. He had a knack for standing in the right place with a cup in his hand and an expression that invited confidences. He brought gossip home like a cat brings odd gifts.
"Two hunters say they saw torchlight on the western ridge," he reported one evening, dropping onto the moss bed with a bounce. "Not ours."
"Helios?" Abel asked, winding fresh cloth around his side.
Cassian spread his hands. "They didn't see armor. But who else camps with torches and songs about fire?"
Noah looked up from the grimoire, the word torches catching on a splinter inside him. "Songs?" he asked.
Cassian nodded. "Priests. Or drunks. Hard to tell the difference at a distance."
He was good at charming older women, too—gossip gilded with affection. The elder who wove moon-thread bracelets called him bright noise and smacked his cheek when he flirted. A miner with a laugh like thunder gave Cassian a tiny steel nail "for luck," which Cassian promptly pretended was a relic of Namira just to watch Noah roll his eyes.
Yet, beneath the jokes, he watched Noah closely. When Noah's hands shook too long after a failed spell, Cassian fetched water without comment. When the nosebleeds came, he pressed a clean cloth to Noah's lip and told a terrible story until the tremor passed.
"You're not funny," Noah said once, cloth pinched between two fingers, voice thick.
"I'm extremely funny," Cassian said. "You're just a tough audience."
Noah didn't smile. Not then. Later, he did.
They shared a room, but their days pulled them apart—threads unraveling in different directions. Yet each night they returned to the same small gravity. The moss beds pressed close. The air hung heavy with herbs and the faint mineral tang of the spring basin. Abel eased himself down first, measuring his breaths. Cassian sprawled second, a warm, obnoxious cat of a man, one arm inevitably flung across Noah's ribs or thigh. Noah came last, still buzzing with ink and failure, lying rigid until exhaustion dragged him under.
Some nights there was talking. Some nights there was only the soft symphony of three people deciding not to die.
One evening, as the blue in the window deepened toward black, Abel spoke into the near-dark. "I worry about you," he said simply.
"Which you?" Cassian asked, head tipped toward the ceiling. "Him or me."
"Yes," Abel said.
Noah let out a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Romance is alive and well."
"I don't know what that is," Abel said. "I know this: if Helios comes, the first blow will aim for your throat, Noah. Because the second blow will be for the people who think you are a sign."
Noah rolled onto his back. The ceiling arched in shadow. "Good," he said, brittle. "I've always wanted to be popular."
"Not funny," Abel said.
"Extremely funny," Cassian whispered. Abel's hand thumped his shoulder lightly in rebuke, and even Cassian's grin dimmed.
Silence. Then Noah said, quieter: "I'm trying."
"We see you," Cassian said.
Abel didn't add anything. He didn't need to.
The Menari village breathed around them like a great, patient animal. Dawn brought fog braided with silver through the orchards. Noon spilled clear voices and hammer rhythms along the paths. Evening folded the valley into blue and violet, lanterns fishing stars out of the trees.
Noah ventured out more often—at first to scavenge for small stones with a flat face for telekinesis practice (he told no one; Cassian told everyone), later to fetch water and stand in lines behind people who eyed him and did not quite smile. He learned the names of three children who insisted on racing him to the well and let them win once. The next time, he didn't. They loved him more for losing.
Abel's drills grew a spine. He replaced river reeds with ash-wood shafts, showed the Menari how to bind spearheads with hide and resin. He convinced a bone-carver to shape a handful of barbed points. He made lines—simple, repeatable, survivable. He refused to talk about war; he talked about distance and angle and where to aim when a breastplate made a chest a wall.
Cassian invented jobs for himself. He learned to patch nets and to tie a knot that wouldn't slip when wet. He carried messages for the priestess to families who lived at the valley's edge; he returned with stories that made both Noah and Abel rub their foreheads.
"Someone should tell you 'no' more often," Abel said.
"I hear it plenty," Cassian said, cheerful. "Usually from you."
Whispers of unease slipped through the village as the days thinned. Noah caught them at the market corners and in the hush of mothers tugging children indoors when the sun sagged. Men looked to the ridge when shadows lengthened.
Helios patrols on the slopes.
Tracks where no Menari walked.
Armor glimpsed at distance. Lions scented on the wind.
Abel heard it. He acted.
He walked the perimeter with two older hunters, counting places where the brush broke too cleanly. He knelt in damp earth and measured the spread of a boot heel with his thumb. He made the drill circle stay late until the blue in the trees turned dark and dew slicked the spear shafts. He asked the priestess for ten young runners with good lungs and sent them in pairs to the eastern gullies to learn the paths as if they were letters in a prayer.
One dusk, as Noah lingered at the glade's edge with his book shut but still radiating refusal, the priestess stepped to his side. She looked at Abel's silhouette at the far treeline, the spear line breathing like a lung.
"They think you are a sign," she said.
Noah's throat tightened. "Of what."
"That the moon's child watches still," she said. "That his hand moves through you."
He barked a laugh—brittle, useless. "Tell them they're wrong."
She finally looked at him. The moonlight found the edges of the tattoos at her jaw. "It doesn't matter what you believe," she said. "Only what they see."
She left him with that. Noah stood in the dark, teeth grinding, wishing her words didn't crawl so deep under his skin.
That same night, back in their quarters, the quiet felt like a test. Cassian sprawled with his hands behind his head, humming a tune a child had taught him. Abel sharpened a bone-edged knife with methodical strokes, the rasp steady, patient.
Noah opened the grimoire again.
The telekinesis page was a maze of small cruelties. Cradle, don't strike. He set the bone needle on the floor. He narrowed his breath. He pinched the thread with thought alone and lifted.
The needle rose. It quivered. Noah held it—sweat beading his lip—then tried to walk it an inch through the air. The thread tugged, somewhere between mind and muscle. The needle obeyed. A breath, two. Then his palm flared with pain, his vision stuttered, and the needle dropped like a shot bird.
He swore under his breath. Cassian glanced over. Abel's sharpening did not pause.
Noah tried the pebble again. Three inches this time. His eyes watered. The pebble turned in the air like a planet given a new orbit. He almost laughed—an exhausted, ruined sound—when the thread snapped and the pebble smacked his bare foot.
"Fuck," he said without heat.
"That's progress," Cassian offered. "You only bled from the face once today."
Noah flipped him the laziest possible gesture. He turned the page.
The Fate Lines exercise waited there, the one he'd failed a dozen times: Thread, pull, bind. He'd refused it all week, saving it like a punishment. Tonight it did not feel like punishment; it felt like a dare.
"Fine," he whispered. "One more."
He drew breath in a slow count of four, let it out over eight. He pictured the thread not as a lash but as a line drawn between two points that wanted to touch. He chose the far upright of the bedframe—scarred wood with a knot he'd stared at too long. His fingers tingled. The silver prickle gathered in his palm, then in the muscle of his forearm, then higher—in the ache behind his breastbone where fear lived.
He did not shove it outward. He pulled it through himself.
The world narrowed. A single, pale cord snapped into being—soft at first, then tightening with a low, musical hum, as if someone had plucked a string that had always been strung between him and the wood. It did not lash. It connected. It held.
Cassian jerked upright. Abel's sharpening stopped mid-stroke.
Noah's chest heaved. The line thrummed, light pooled along it, and for a fragile, perfect heartbeat the whip was not a weapon. It was a promise that he could shape this thing without shattering.
He adjusted his wrist a hair. The line obeyed, angling cleanly. His vision pulsed black at the edges, but he held it a second longer—two—until the ache became alarm and he let go.
The light blinked out. The silence afterward was enormous.
Cassian grinned first, bright as a lantern. "Holy shit," he breathed. "You actually did it."
Abel didn't smile. He didn't need to. The approval in his eyes was clean and unadorned. "Control," he said.
Noah sagged back, breath scraping, sweat cold at his temple. Exhaustion flooded him—wrung-out, trembling—but something else floated up with it, buoyant and small.
Not despair.
Pride.
He swiped his sleeve across his mouth, aware of how ridiculous he must look—wild hair, ink on his fingers, a smear of blood under his nose like a badly drawn mustache. Cassian made a show of suppressing a laugh; Abel's mouth twitched, betraying him at last.
Noah leaned his head against the wall. The moonlight through the slit window painted a narrow bar of silver across the floor between their beds. Outside, somewhere near the ridge, a watch horn groaned once—low, uncertain. The sound died quickly. Too quickly.
"Tomorrow," Abel said—not to frighten him, not to soothe him. Just truth. "We extend the perimeter."
"Tomorrow," Cassian echoed, softer. "I tell the baker you don't hate her bread."
"I don't hate her bread," Noah said, eyes closed.
"I know," Cassian said. "You hate mine."
Noah would have thrown the pebble at him if he could have lifted it. He didn't try. He let the laugh escape instead—rough, quiet, real.
They settled. The room breathed around them. For a moment—just a moment—the storm waiting beyond the valley did not feel so close.
But on the wind, beneath the green smell of moss and the sweet bite of drying herbs, a thin thread of smoke rode down from the mountains. The Menari runners would smell it by dawn; Abel would find the cold print of boots by noon. The priestess would stand in the glade with her staff planted in the earth and say nothing at all.
For tonight, three people lay in a ribbon of moonlight, each with a different heartbeat and the same stubborn vow.
The line had held.
And outside, Helios crept closer.