"Raise the sails."
Canvas bellied with a sound like a beast breathing in. Ropes sang under Damon's hands. The fog Andrew had called up thinned to veils that trailed their wake and then let go. Sun slid down the planks and pooled at Ace's feet.
"Training yard," Gray said, already walking. "Now."
Ace followed him past the mainmast to a square of deck Damon had cleared and sanded until the wood showed its grain like a fingerprint. A shallow barrel of seawater stood by the rail. Pelly flicked ash into a dish, then set the dish down exactly three planks from the barrel as if precision were a religion.
Andrew arrived with a coil of rope and a bent grin. "If you fall, I'll make stairs."
"I'd rather not fall," Ace said.
"Everyone says that," Teuton called from a winch. "Then gravity does its joke."
Gray took a coin from his pocket and set it on the deck between them. "First lesson is simple. Heat this until it goes white without scorching my ship."
"White-hot on wood," Pelly said. "Excellent. I love anxiety."
Ace crouched. The coin flashed the sky back at him. His devil fruit stirred the same way it always did when work looked necessary. He drew flame into his palms and let it pour toward the metal.
"Stop," Gray said, voice mild.
Ace froze. The coin was warm. The plank under it felt warmer. He pulled the fire back with an effort, and the heat's echo crawled along his wrists like a cat that didn't want to be set down.
"You widened," Gray said. "You always widen when you want to feel strong."
"It raises the temperature faster," Ace said.
"It lies about that," Gray said. He nudged the coin with his boot. "Your heat leaks. Big isn't hot. Sharp is hot."
Alder leaned on the wheel, listening with half an ear. Abel perched on the rail near him, eyes on the horizon, palms tucked away like dangerous animals sleeping. Latin twirled a fan as if it were an instrument; Bard tuned silence on his violin. Charles sat cross-legged with his cup and beads, rolling fate around his fingers like a marble.
"Try this," Gray said. He put his hand out, palm up. Black fire rose from it in a column so thin it seemed like a wire standing on end. The air near it turned strange, like a song you could not hear but felt against your teeth. He lowered the wire of flame until it hovered a breath over the coin.
The coin screamed.
Color ran out of it, and then it went beyond color. For a heartbeat it was a soft light, like frost turned inside out. Gray removed his hand. The thin flame collapsed into nothing.
"No scorch on the plank," Pelly observed, grudgingly impressed. "Praise be."
Ace didn't bother to pretend he wasn't impressed. "How did you... make it that thin?"
"Pressure," Gray said. "You pushed out. Push in."
"Into what?"
Gray smiled like a man enjoying a riddle he already knew the answer to. "Into smaller."
Ace set his hands near the coin and pulled the fire tight. His first instinct was to make a cone. The cone fattened itself despite him. Heat spread to the wood and Pelly cleared his throat without looking at him, which was somehow worse than a shout.
Ace killed the flame. He rubbed his wrists, annoyed at his own habits. He's right. I widen when I'm angry. I widen when I'm scared. I widen because it looks like power. He set his breath in a different place, lower, smaller, and tried again.
"Slower," Gray said, as if reading his skin. "Heat is a conversation, not a speech. Make the coin lean toward you."
"Talk to metal," Bard murmured, pleased. "I can write a song about that."
"Please don't," Latin said.
Ace focused. He pictured not a cone but a needle. The memory of magma tried to make his hands shake; he pressed that into the idea of shape, not size. A thin thread of orange fell from his palm toward the coin.
The deck didn't blacken. The coin glowed red, then a meaner red, like anger grown narrow.
"Better," Gray said.
Abel didn't look away from the horizon. "Marine silhouettes gone," he reported softly. "Fog helped."
"Good," Pelly said. "I hate tidy enemies."
Andrew uncoiled rope and made a lazy loop. A small cloud slid down from nowhere and parked under the loop, like a dog sitting when someone lifted a treat. "Insurance," Andrew said. "If someone stupid falls, I'll be polite about it."
"Define someone," Teuton said.
"Anyone who falls," Andrew said.
The coin cooled as soon as Ace let his breath break. He cursed under it, then caught the look Pelly sent him and changed the curse into a cough halfway through.
"Again," Gray said, gentle as a blade laid flat.
Ace reached for heat and pulled it into a line. His hands wanted to flare. He let the want sit in his shoulders and kept the shape steady. He tightened the line until the edges of it fuzzed and the center stayed bright. The coin trembled, and for an instant the light threatened to jump down into the wood.
Pelly's chopsticks landed on Ace's knuckles before the jump could happen. "Respect the deck."
"Sorry," Ace said, and meant it.
"Closer," Gray said. "But smaller."
Ace learned that smaller had floors. Too small and the flame broke into angry dots, more hiss than heat. Too large and the deck complained. He learned to listen for the pitch the coin made, a thin whine that thickened as the metal softened. He learned that his arms got in the way of his hands, and his shoulders got in the way of his arms, and his temper got in the way of all of it.
"You're thinking about the fist that killed you," Gray said.
"No," Ace said, and then didn't waste breath on a second lie. "Yes."
"Good," Gray said. "Think of it as a problem you left unsolved. Solve it smaller."
Ace set his jaw. He brought the flame down until it was so thin his eyes went cross. The coin blurred. The air smelled like rain trying to become something else.
The coin did not scream, but it whispered in a frequency that made his teeth ache. Its edges went soft. A ripple crossed its face like a muscle tensing.
"Stop," Gray said.
Ace pulled his hands back and swore under his breath again, but this time the coin kept changing for a second without him. It shivered itself into a flatter version of itself and lay there steaming.
"Progress," Gray said. He held out his palm. "Now me."
"You want me to..."
"If you cannot mark me," Gray said, "you cannot hurt what hurt you."
Pelly blew smoke sideways so it didn't drift over the coin. "Do this carefully. I do not want to mop melted captain."
"Dream bigger," Gray said.
Ace stood. He didn't ask if he was allowed to burn a captain who smiled like that; the grins on this ship came with knives in their pockets. He braced his feet, lifted his hand, and drew the line down until it touched Gray's skin.
Black fire rose like a reflex from Gray's palm, not to meet Ace's heat but to hold it. It was like laying a wire on the surface of a river. The water did not break. It just changed color under the wire.
Ace pushed. The wire brightened. Gray's eyes narrowed in professional appreciation. A hair-thin filament of Ace's flame got lost in Gray's and came back out a shade darker.
"You're cheating," Ace said.
"I'm being me," Gray said. "Smaller. Again."
Ace's breath shook once. He shrank the flame until it made no shadow. He pushed that impossibility at the center of Gray's hand. For a sting of time he felt the world reduce to a point and a counterpoint, a pressure and a refusal. Then the refusal gave half a thought.
A spot on Gray's palm went dull, then glossy, then nothing at all. It wasn't a wound. It was a shine where there hadn't been shine.
Pelly leaned in. "Is that..."
"A kiss," Gray said, satisfied. "A very small, very hot kiss."
Ace exhaled. Again, he told himself, before Gray could say it and make it an order.
[LOGBOOK][He can mark me if he stops trying to impress everyone and starts trying to hurt one thing.]
"Again," Gray said, because of course he did.
Ace tried. He learned how the ship moved under his feet when he concentrated too hard to see it. He learned to let Andrew's cloud sit under the edge of his balance without resenting it. He learned that Alder hummed when the sea felt steady and stopped humming when fate frowned; he learned that Abel could watch a horizon and a man at once, and that one of those watches made the other better.
"Heading holds," Charles said softly, as if updating the weather. "Noise is high, signal is stubborn. Rocks remains a door, not a person."
"I prefer doors," Pelly said.
"You prefer locks," Gray said.
"Locks are just doors that believe in rules," Pelly said.
Ace laughed once, surprising himself. The laugh felt like a plank he could stand on. He put his hand back over Gray's and made the flame smaller again.
He found a rhythm that felt less like force and more like listening, the way he listened to a pan to know when oil was ready. He wasn't a cook, but he had spent enough time near people who were to steal the metaphor. Heat talked. He had been shouting over it.
The wire of flame softened without thickening. The shine in Gray's palm deepened by the width of a breath. Not a wound. A mark.
"Good," Gray said. "Now make that hurt."
"How," Ace asked, dry-mouthed, "do I measure hurt without... hurting you."
"You don't," Gray said, almost kind. "You trust me to stop you before you do something stupid."
"Define stupid," Andrew said, delighted.
"Melting my hand," Gray said. "Or the deck. Or your resolve."
Teuton sighed. "No one ever mentions melting the gunner."
"No one can melt you," Bard said. "You're mostly patience and salt."
"Flatterer," Teuton said, but he smiled.
Ace brought the line down one more time and felt the point of it catch like a pick on a string. The world tightened. There was a smell like cold metal and summer thrown at each other. Gray's black fire didn't rise this time. It curled an inch below Ace's heat and watched it work.
A pinprick appeared in Gray's skin, not open, not bleeding, just a single grain of something that hadn't been there deciding it might exist.
Pelly tapped Ace's wrist with the back of a knuckle. "Enough for now."
Ace let the flame die. The point of heat left a ghost in his vision that took the shape of the coin and then fell apart.
"Drink," Colin said, appearing with a cup he had hidden from physics. "Water. Or I'll tell your muscles a story about cramps."
Ace drank. It tasted like victory sold at a fair price.
[LOGBOOK][Note: Heat drills work. The kid stops widening when he has an audience he trusts. Mood: still good.]
Wind filled the next minute. The ship leaned into it. Alder hummed again. Abel's gaze did not change when he announced, "No tails."
"Good," Gray said. He flexed his hand and held it toward Ace. The faint pinprick looked less like damage and more like proof that both of them were paying attention. "Again."
Ace blinked. "Now?"
"Now," Gray said. "Or do you want to be ready later, when the sea asks for an answer you do not have?"
Ace put the cup down. He rolled his shoulders. He set his feet and his breath. He was tired, yes, but fatigue made the parts of him that wanted to perform sit down and shut up. He reached for smaller.
The wire landed clean. He did not push. He leaned. Gray's skin accepted the lean, then resisted, then warmed in response. The pinprick didn't deepen; it refined. The heat carried intent.
Pelly did not interrupt. That felt like a win all by itself.
Andrew's rope sighed. A small cloud tugged at the edge of the deck and then settled, bored but loyal.
Charles's beads clicked. "Noise dropped," he murmured. "Signal is... hm."
"Words, not poetry," Pelly said.
"Still a door," Charles said. "But closer."
"Closer is a map word," Damon said. "I like map words. They do not punch back."
"Some of them do," Alder said. "The ones with reefs in them."
Ace followed the shape of the voices like a net laid under his feet and kept his flame in a line. He heard Gray's breath once, a simple intake that meant approval. He felt the ship take a small wave like a gentleman choosing not to step in a puddle.
He didn't think about magma. He thought about the metal he was speaking to and the skin that wasn't his and the fact that a man who scared legends had decided to make room on his palm for a lesson.
"Enough," Gray said, when enough meant something and not just a word. He closed his hand, then opened it again. The shine had a border now so thin only a collector would object to it. Gray looked pleased as a thief with a key.
"Again," he said, and there was no edge of cruelty to it, only the certainty that repetition was the only bridge worth building.
Ace nodded. He lifted his hand.
[Foreshadow] If Ace can mark Gray, he can mark magma.
[LOGBOOK][Heading: first half. Target: Rocks. Training: heat over range. Outcome so far: he kissed my palm. Prediction: next time it will bite.]
"Again," Gray repeated, soft and fierce.