And the mountain listened.
So he didn't rush. While cheers rolled across Fengshen Square and elder hands set seals into fresh timber, Alaric hung back and let the others claim glory first. The sword-bearer went to a tall boy with knuckles like knots; the shield-tower to a girl whose jaw looked strong enough to bite iron; spear and glaive vanished into oaths and grins.
That left the archer.
Lean frame, ribs banded in bronze, forearms laminated with pale yew; a recurved bow grown from wrist and palm, tiny channels along the limbs where Aether would harden into arrows. A marksman's machine for the second rank.
Alaric stepped in at last and set his palm to the breastplate. A faint green flared—acceptance written in light. For an instant the helm seemed to tilt toward him. Illusion, he told himself, even as the scar at his throat warmed like a coal.
The rites dragged on: incense at the ancestral tablets, a red thread tied at each wrist and cut to prove bonds were chosen, not imposed, fresh sigils traced and burned invisible on their brows. When the last stick died in ash, the sun already leaned west.
The square emptied of elders, filled with disciples. Hands clapped his shoulders; palms pressed his; congratulations poured with the easy generosity that always follows spectacle. Through the tide shouldered Ronan Kade—loud as a drum—with a narrow-eyed man in his wake.
"Alaric!" Ronan boomed, folding him into a hug that smelled of oil and triumph. "By the peaks, you did it. Deacon Vale."
"I did," Alaric said, smiling like a man surprised by his own good news.
"Cyprian Holt," the other introduced, smooth as a drawn blade. He inclined his head with courteous precision. "I've heard of you. My congratulations."
"Hardly a name worth hearing," Alaric returned. "But thank you."
"Then enough speeches," Ronan declared, slinging an arm over Alaric's shoulder. "Your pavilion. Three jars. We drink the dust out of your throat till tomorrow forgets today."
"I don't keep—" Alaric began.
"I do," Cyprian said, producing a sealed jar from his sleeve with a neat, magician's pride. "Ronan buys meat when I bring wine. Come. You can't insult fate by meeting it sober."
They were already prepared—feast and jars like a plan made days ago. Alaric let that detail slide into the pocket behind his teeth and led them up the mountain.
The pavilion smelled of rain-wet timber and silver-bloom. Ronan had a jar open before Alaric could pull chairs from the table; Cyprian laid out spiced meat and pickled greens with the tidy hands of a man who likes the world to obey him. Alaric sat, polite, watchful.
The first jar emptied quickly—Ronan drank as if cups might run away. By the second, his laugh had deepened to a roar.
"Tell me," he said, thumping the table hard enough to make the dishes hop, "what matters most on this cursed road we walk?"
Alaric played the thoughtful novice. "Hard to name one. Wealth, companions, method, safe ground—each is vital in its hour."
"Luck," Cyprian said, eyes thin with light.
Ronan barked a delighted laugh and clapped him so hard the jar rattled. "Luck. Fate. Call it what you want—it's the marrow of immortality. Five centuries back, the Xu clan were beggars in a floodplain. One ancestor trips on an old shrine, finds a book of pills, and suddenly he's a True Ascendant with a family name that still opens doors."
"Roots and teachers set the course," Cyprian said mildly. "But without chance, prodigies break on their first wall."
They wanted something. Men did not come with jars and parables unless the hook was already sharp.
"May the peaks grant you more luck than you can drink," Alaric said, shy, a little embarrassed.
Ronan leaned in, voice dropping. "Three months past, in the Pyne Hills, I found a gate. Old stone, a thousand years if a day. Seals weathered but holding. Eight in ten it's untouched. We go in quiet, we come out rich enough to buy discipleships for our grandchildren. You, me, Cyprian. Three ways."
Cyprian's eagerness slid into his eyes. "One chance like this can turn a life. You'll come, won't you?"
Alaric let his face brighten—honest, almost hungry—then falter. He set his cup down as if it suddenly weighed a stone. "I want to," he said quietly. "Truly. But—" He touched his throat; let his fingers tremble. "You've heard the story. The swordsman. The scar. He didn't just cut flesh. When danger breathes down my neck, my hands shake, my spells slip. Even the simplest workings… fall apart."
Cyprian's smile thinned. "You've been mid-stage a year and can't manage a proper spell?"
Shame colored Alaric's cheeks. "Ice Shard, Fire Spike, Wind Step—I've drilled them all. Months. Watch."
He formed the seal cleanly, breath steady, focus sharp—then let control slip at the last heart-beat. The Aether unraveled like sand through fingers. A weak puff of frost, then nothing.
Cyprian exhaled hard, disgust flickering. Ronan's grin faltered. "By the peaks," he muttered. "That's a curse."
"I know." Alaric made the bleak smile sit on his face. "I'd be worse than useless in a ruin. I'd doom us all."
Silence stretched. Cyprian drained his cup and set it down harder than needed. "Then forget it. We need teeth, not trembling."
Ronan squeezed Alaric's shoulder before he stood. "You're a good man, Vale. Good men die first in dark holes. Forget we asked."
Alaric walked them to the door with every courtesy. When their boots faded, the smile dropped from his lips like a mask cut free.
He unsealed the storage bag. The archer-puppet unfolded with a whisper of bronze and yew, standing sentinel by the table. Its glassy eyes caught the lamplight.
"Not yet," Alaric murmured. "Not your ruin. My path is patience."
The helm didn't move. It felt like agreement anyway.
He crossed the courtyard to the old stone table, set two fingers in the shallow groove, and the world slipped—cold blooming behind his eyes like a bell struck from within.
Mist, trees like pale pillars, Aether thick enough to drink—he was back in the grove.
The stele waited. Light rippled, letters burning through, spare and merciless:
Law sealed, oath taken—the sect's luck binds to you.Receive the Eon-Forging Crucible.Draw deepfire. Shape the Warden.
The ground beyond the stele parted. A mouth of black basalt yawned open; a squat furnace pushed itself up from the soil, seams glowing cherry. Beneath the grate something moved—fire with weight. Not ordinary blaze, but deepfire: slow, blue at the heart, the heat of old earth that had never seen air. A stone table stood beside it, iron tools laid in a neat clutch: chisels, clamps, crooked-neck ladle, soaking rack.
"Hello," Alaric whispered, because awe requires manners.
Heat stroked his skin without burning—warning and welcome in one. He set out his small hoard: a vial of Verdant Infusion (green as bottle glass), Quillwood planks light as bone, a jar of Tricolor Flux that separated into red, gold, milk when shaken. The missing pieces—Quicksilver Filament and Grave-Mercury—would come later by quota or barter. For now, the body.
The grove heard his thought. Trees shifted in the mist. Ironheart oak rose in ranks among them, trunks straight as vows. He laid his palm to one—century wood, dense, resonant—and felt it answer. Not with pain; with permission.
"I'll put you to a good waking," he said.
He swung the grove's ax. Chips flew; resin sweetened the air. When the trunk leaned at last, he guided it down, whispering thanks. Debarking was quick. He planed a face flat, measured a ribcage, set the billet into the soaking rack, and poured Verdant Infusion until the vat swallowed it whole.
"Eighty-one days," he murmured. "Drink. Harden. Forget the fear of water and flame."
The stele pulsed once—as if to say: the law of making does not bend. Start anyway.
He fed the bellows.
The deepfire leapt like a predator—blue-white tongues hauling themselves past the lip, splashing heat that seared his nerves without blistering skin. The flame wanted out—air, forest, sky. Panic clawed up his ribs. His scar burned white-hot and a memory came with the pain: You have sworn. Endure.
He leaned his weight into the handle, dragged breath through his chest until his lungs matched the fire's rhythm. The Crucible steadied; the wild surge collapsed inward—hotter, contained. A pale jet slid down into the vat. The infusion boiled with light; bubbles rose like dying runes. The wood drank, slow as trees.
When the tremor passed, Alaric sagged on the bellows, throat raw, arms shaking. Between the trunks a sentinel's silhouette stood where no path had been, helm angled toward the glow. It moved closer without a sound, expectant as a soldier awaiting a horn.
"Not yet," Alaric told it.
The helm tilted, almost curious. Mist folded. It receded.
The billet's core now glowed faintly from within, veins of green threading grain. The first step was taken. He laughed once, shaky and real. "So that's what you meant by shape the Warden."
He cleared the side table and laid out finer tools: steel scribes, bone compasses, needle-thin chalk, a disc of Ironheart cut from the same tree—the mind-plate.
Outer lines he knew—Thirty-Six paths that carried Aether like aqueducts. Inner work was different: four clusters, each a law, each a leash. Spark to quicken motion; Measure to ration power; Hearth to accept command; Name to distinguish this will from all others.
He chalked the anchoring circle, quartered it, marked the nests. His hand stayed steady; the scar at his throat hummed with each stroke like an approving throat-song. He spun Spark as a hair-thin lattice, wove Measure into a square of tiny teeth to bleed off frenzy, curved Hearth into a listening spiral.
Only Name remained.
He hesitated. Elders taught nonsense names—safe and dull. The grove had not given him a safe life. A true name would bind it closer—more obedient, more his—and it would be heard.
He touched his scar. The heat there was quiet, permissive.
"Then hear me," he said to wood and fire and whatever listened beyond them.
He scribed the first curve of Name. The Crucible drew breath. Mist thickened, eddies turning like eyes. The ground seemed to decide under his boots. He thought of a line learned in a different life: water does not strive. He shaped the second stroke like a river taking a corner.
Heat crawled up his forearms. The sentinel stood again at the grove's edge, helm angled, waiting—expectant, not menacing. Alaric rested the chalk, shut his eyes, and chose.
"Morrow," he breathed. Not thunder, not blood—tomorrow. The promise that refuses to die.
He completed the bind. The chalk lines flared silver and sank into Ironheart. The plate pulsed once. Trunks leaned infinitesimally toward the bench; the Crucible roared without heightening flame; the vat shivered; far off, chains clinked under soil.
Threads arrayed themselves between his chest and the circle of wood, taut as bowstrings. The sentinel took one knee—not to him, but to the plate.
Name is debt, said an old voice in his bones, neither pleased nor angry. Pay it.
The mind-plate brightened, hungry for spark. Alaric set it on the Crucible's lip and reached with the ladle to tease a breath of deepfire across the fresh glyphs—
—and under the grove a deeper rumble climbed, slow and terrible, as if a door the size of a valley turned on its hinge. The stele flared. The sentinel's visor lit like twin coals.
Heat pressed his face like a hand. The mountain was listening again—and this time, it pressed back.
"Easy," he whispered to flame and stone. He gave the plate only a kiss of heat, enough to temper lines without warping the circle, then pulled it away and let it cool on the rack. The Crucible growled, unsatisfied but obeying. The rumble ebbed to a threat held in the teeth.
"Debt acknowledged," Alaric said, voice hoarse. "Payment—ongoing."
The grove released its breath. Mist thinned. The stele dimmed to a patient glow.
When his hands stopped shaking, he gathered the tools, left the billet to drink, and touched the groove in the old table. The mountain turned inside out. The pavilion returned: lamplight, rain-washed stone, the silver-bloom's scent.
He straightened slowly. The archer-puppet still stood by the table—silent, decorous, glass eyes dull. He reached for water, throat scraped raw, and only then heard it: a sound too soft to be sound, like a thread drawn across a bow.
The puppet's bow-arm flexed.
Just a whisper of motion. The laminated yew creaked as if it remembered tension. At the joint near the wrist, a line he hadn't carved—couldn't have carved—glimmered faintly, as if a chalk mark were dreaming itself into wood. The name in his pocket—in his bones—answered with heat. Morrow.
Footsteps sounded outside. Not a disciple's shuffle. Measured. Unhurried. An elder's walk.
Alaric's scar burned, the heat a warning flare. The puppet's bowstring—there had been no string—stretched itself out of breath and light, a filament of Aether trembling from wrist to palm.
The footsteps stopped at his gate. Knuckles rapped the wood, three times. Calm as judgment.
"Deacon Vale," came Helion Vey's voice through the rain. "Open."
The bow-arm drew a finger's width.
Alaric didn't breathe.
"Now," Helion said, polite and very final.
The string brightened—just as the latch turned.