CHAPTER 41 — Marks in the Stone
The walk back felt longer.
Same causeway. Same hunched trees. Same low croak of frogs and the hiss of insects over water.
But now the marsh had a shape burned into Aiden's mind.
That spiral.
That crooked bolt.
His storm.
Pressed into mud by something that shouldn't know how.
His chest still felt too tight. Not crackling-wild, like it had when he first came out of the Gate. Just… overloaded. Like he'd tried to carry more weight than his bones were made for.
The pup trotted closer than before, shoulder brushing his boot with every other step, fur buzzing faintly against his ankle.
"Easy," Aiden murmured.
He wasn't sure if he meant the pup or himself.
"Eyes forward," Veldt reminded them quietly.
No one argued.
They stayed in tight formation on the causeway, boots slapping stone instead of mud. Mist curled at the edges of the path, occasionally licking over the runes and sparking faintly as the magics brushed.
Nellie kept her hand braced over her Verdant mark like she was physically holding it in. Her breathing was shallow through her nose, jaw clenched, eyes very deliberately not looking at the wardline.
Runa walked so close to her that their shoulders brushed.
Myra, on Aiden's other side, kept flicking her gaze between him and the fog, as if daring either one to try something.
"Still feel it?" she murmured.
Aiden's first instinct was to say no.
He didn't.
"Yes," he said. "It's like… when a storm rolls out past the hills but the air hasn't caught up yet. My ribs feel wrong."
"Good wrong or bad wrong?" she asked.
He thought about the mark in the mud.
"Both," he said.
"Love that for us," Myra muttered.
The wardline ahead brightened.
The Academy's curve of green light rose from the marsh like a second horizon, humming faintly. The nearer they got, the more Aiden felt the difference between in and out.
The wild pressed.
The wards pushed back.
He was stuck in the middle, held there by his own bones.
They reached the gate.
"Same as before," Veldt said. "Don't linger in the threshold. If you hesitate, the wards will try to decide which side you belong on."
"Still not comforting," Myra whispered.
"One," Veldt counted.
The pup's claws clicked faster on the stone, as if bracing.
"Two."
Nellie exhaled shakily, squeezing her eyes shut.
"Three."
They stepped.
The barrier rushed over Aiden's skin in a wash of cold pressure.
For an instant, the wards tasted everything in him again—the storm, the Thorn Marks, the echo of the Warden's regard. This time, instead of recoiling, his storm pushed back.
Home, it growled.
Mine.
The barrier thickened around his chest.
Green light crawled across his vision—too bright, too close.
Aiden gritted his teeth and held his breath.
Not here, he told his storm. Not this fight. Not now.
He pictured Nellie, white-faced on the causeway.
Myra's hand on his arm.
Runa between them and the marsh.
The pressure hesitated.
Then thinned.
He stumbled as his boots hit Academy stone. The sudden difference in sound—the relative quiet of the courtyard, the muffled bells, the distant chatter—felt almost unreal after the marsh's too-loud breathing.
The pup shook itself hard enough to rattle its bones.
Nellie sagged back against Runa's side. "I hate that part," she whispered.
Runa snorted. "You get used to it."
"That implies we're doing it again," Myra said.
"We are," Veldt said.
No one sounded surprised.
He turned to face them fully, expression hard to read under the scar and the morning light.
"Meris. Report to the Verdant Hall. Lirienne, take your scouts and file terrain notations with the Wardscribes. I will handle the initial debrief with Elowen."
His gaze moved to Aiden. Settled. "Raikos. You're with me."
Aiden swallowed. "Yes, sir."
"What about us?" Myra demanded.
"You," Veldt said, "will escort Verdant Tinkwhistle back to her dorms before she falls over. Ironjaw, you make sure Lynell doesn't get distracted and talk them into a celebration detour."
Myra opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"…that's fair," she admitted.
Nellie managed a small, wobbly smile. "I'm okay. Really. Just… thread-sore."
"Thread-sore?" Runa repeated.
"Like when you pull too many stitches at once," Nellie explained. "Everything feels tugged."
Runa nodded like that made perfect sense. "We're going," she told Veldt. "You'll have him back alive."
Veldt's scar twitched. It might almost have been a smile.
"See that I do," he said.
Myra clapped Aiden's shoulder once as she passed, quick and careful. "If Elowen kills you, haunt us with helpful advice."
"I'll haunt only you," he said.
"Rude," she muttered, but her grin made it land soft.
Nellie brushed his sleeve. "If your storm gets loud again, tell her," she said earnestly. "Don't… don't try to hold all of it alone."
His chest tightened.
He nodded.
Then they were gone—Myra chattering about swamp mud recipes just to fill the silence, Nellie listening with tired laughter, Runa walking behind them like a mobile stone wall.
The courtyard felt bigger without them.
Louder.
Emptier.
Veldt turned toward the Verdant Hall.
"Walk," he said.
Aiden walked.
---
The Hall's doors opened before they reached them.
Not dramatically. Just… early. As if they'd been waiting and decided on their own that now was the right moment.
Aiden felt the shift as they crossed the threshold.
The air inside sat heavier on his shoulders, thick with the green-gold hum of old magic. The pools along the walls brightened when he stepped in, their surfaces rippling once and then going absolutely still again.
The Hall remembered him.
That was a weird thing to think about a building.
It was also true.
Elowen stood at the central basin, one hand resting lightly on the stone rim, the other loosely at her side. She didn't look surprised to see them.
"Report," she said to Veldt, without preamble.
He did.
Clear. Concise. No embellishment.
He laid out the walk, the wounded marsh, the shimmer at the wardline, the moment the Warden pressed.
"The pressure was brief," he finished. "Measured. It did not strike, only leaned. Enough to make the anchors flare, not enough to crack them."
"And the students?" Elowen asked.
"Steady," Veldt said. "Thread-sensitive, but steady. Raikos and Tinkwhistle felt the push directly. The bond-beast reacted; I do not believe it would have stayed leashed if the Warden had forced more."
Elowen's gaze slid to the pup. It had retreated halfway behind Aiden's boots, watching the adults with round, bright eyes, fur prickled in a permanent static halo.
"And the mark?" she asked.
Veldt's jaw tightened. "New. Just beyond the ward ring. It matches the pattern the storm makes when Raikos surges."
Elowen's hand shifted slightly on the basin's stone.
Not a flinch.
The tiniest tightening.
"Show me," she said.
Veldt traced the pattern in the air with two fingers: a spiral, tight and slightly off-center, slashed through with a jagged line.
Aiden's storm twitched.
"That is not an old sign," Elowen murmured. "No fragment of the older scripts matches it."
Aiden swallowed. "It's mine," he said quietly. "I mean… it feels like mine. Like seeing my handwriting on someone else's letter."
Elowen looked at him fully for the first time since they walked in.
Her gaze weighed him the way the Hall did—heavy, considering, not unkind.
"What did it say to you?" she asked.
He hesitated.
"It didn't… speak," he said. "Not like in the Hollow. No words. Just… pressure. Like it was trying to see if I would break. And then—"
He frowned, searching for how to explain the not-quite-voice that had slipped under his thoughts.
"—it pushed this idea into my head," he said. "Not in words. Just… a feeling."
"And that feeling was?" Elowen prompted.
Aiden forced the word up past his throat.
"Disappointed," he said. "It… decided I wasn't ready. Yet."
Silence folded around that.
The Hall seemed to listen harder.
"The Warden tested the wards," Elowen said slowly. "And tested you. And left a mark in response."
Her fingers tapped the basin once.
Not nervous.
Thinking.
"That is… earlier than I would have preferred," she added, mostly to herself.
Aiden's stomach knotted. "Earlier for what?"
"For it to decide you are worth shaping," she said.
He sucked in a breath. "I thought it already decided that. In the Hollow. When it… found me."
"That," Elowen said softly, "was curiosity. Curiosity does not always lead to action. This"—she nodded toward Veldt's invisible sketch—"is intent."
Veldt folded his arms. "You think it wants him as a proxy?"
"I think," Elowen said, "that the last time the world tried to make a storm-soul walk on two legs, the Wardens were both midwives and executioners. I will not have that cycle repeated without understanding the cost."
Aiden's skin crawled. "Executioners," he echoed.
Elowen's gaze softened, just enough to keep the word from cutting all the way through.
"Not yet," she said. "For now, you are a student. A boy with too much lightning and too many marks. And a Cohort who refuses to let you stand alone."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Aiden muttered.
"I say that like it is the only reason I am willing to entertain this path," she said.
The pup shuffled closer to his heel, pressing tiny weight against his leg.
"What do we do?" Aiden asked. "About the mark. About… all of this."
"For now," Elowen said, "you breathe."
He stared at her. "That's it? The Warden is out there carving my storm into the ground and we… inhale?"
"For now," she repeated. "You breathe. You attend your classes. You train. You anchor yourself to the ordinary so you do not float away when the extraordinary pulls."
She tapped the basin again.
A ripple of emerald light ran around its rim and up the pillars, vanishing into the rafters.
"The Hall will record the Warden's contact," she said. "We will adjust the anchor runes. We will bring in an older Wardscribe from the north, one who remembers the last time a Warden pressed this close."
Veldt's brows rose. "You trust them?"
"I trust their experience," she said. "Not their judgment. That is why they will advise, and I will decide."
Then, to Aiden, "And you will not go near the marsh without express authorization. No slips. No secret visits. No 'just a look from the wall' to see if it left you another message."
He flushed. "I hadn't—"
She raised one eyebrow.
He shut his mouth.
"I'm not saying I would," he muttered. "Just that I get it."
"The Warden will test you again," Elowen said. "You do not need to help it find you."
That… felt true.
Uncomfortably true.
His storm did not argue.
Instead, it sat heavier—like it, too, was considering the idea of being hunted by homework and not liking the assignment.
Veldt inclined his head. "I'll file the formal report," he said. "Do you need Raikos further?"
"Yes," Elowen said.
Aiden's stomach did another little twist.
Veldt gave him a look that said you'll live and then left them, boots echoing softly as the doors closed behind him.
The Hall grew quieter.
The pools along the walls dimmed to a softer glow.
Elowen stepped away from the basin and into the training circle, the same place where she'd made him hold his storm, and then let it go, and then drag it back until his bones shook.
"Come," she said.
He did.
The runes underfoot brightened to a muted green—not the storm-blue they'd taken when he'd lost control last time. Today, the light felt calmer, more like moss underfoot than lightning in his veins.
"You are angry," Elowen said.
He blinked. "What? I'm—no, I'm—"
"Afraid," she amended. "And angry that you are afraid."
He grimaced. "That obvious?"
"To me?" she said. "Yes. To the Hall? Also yes."
A vine tilted down from the rafters over their heads, as if nodding in agreement.
Aiden sighed. "It left my mark in the mud," he said. "Of course I'm afraid."
"Fear is not shameful," Elowen said. "Running toward it blindly or away from it completely, that is where damage happens. We will do neither."
"What does that leave?" he asked.
She studied him for a moment.
"Stillness," she said. "And then… choosing."
He thought of Chapter 35's lesson—the storm circling, then sitting.
"You want me to meditate," he said, making a face.
"If you like," she said, unbothered. "You may also think of it as plotting. Or stalking your own fear until you understand its shape."
"That sounds mildly worse."
"Good," she said. "Then you are paying attention."
She gestured for him to sit.
He did, cross-legged in the center of the circle. The pup plopped down against his knee with a soft wheeze, tail curling around its paws. Little sparks ticked between its claws and the rune-lines, but the Hall didn't flinch.
"Close your eyes," Elowen said.
He obeyed.
"Where is your anger?" she asked.
He hunted for it.
It was everywhere, at first—a low irritation at the Warden, at the wards, at being watched and measured and labeled not ready by something that could crush
Thank you for being here. Let's show them this story can succeed.him like a bug. But when he pushed past the surface annoyance, he found a sharper part of it, narrower and darker.
"At myself," he said slowly. "For not… being more. Stronger. Better at—" His throat tightened. "They keep pushing the wards and I keep almost breaking."
"Do you think strength is what the Warden wants from you?" Elowen asked.
"Yes," he said.
He meant it.
"And do you want to give it what it wants?" she asked.
"No," he said immediately.
He meant that more.
"Good," Elowen said. "Hold both of those truths. The more you try to become what it wants, the more you make its path easier. The more you become yourself…"
She let the sentence hang.
He felt his storm shift.
"What if who I am is still… what it wants?" he asked quietly.
"Then," Elowen said, "you will have to be very stubborn."
He huffed out something like a laugh.
"Focus on the mark it left," she went on. "Not the one on the ground. The ones on you. Thorn. Storm. Whatever that third thread is. Feel where they overlap and where they do not."
He inhaled.
Let his awareness slide inward.
The Thorn Marks along his ribs glowed in his mind's eye like braids of green light, twisting around his bones. The storm behind his sternum was a knot of blue-white, restless but not surging.
And there—thin, silver, almost too faint to see—another thread laced between them.
Not the Warden.
Not the Gate.
Something older. Or maybe sideways—a different kind of mark.
Before, that realization would have sent his storm scratching at the edges of him in panic.
Now, it paused.
"What do you feel?" Elowen asked softly.
"Crowded," he admitted. "Like I'm a house that someone keeps carving extra doors into."
"Who decides who walks through those doors?" she asked.
He wanted to say them.
The Warden. The Gate. The world.
"Me," he said instead.
The word felt heavy on his tongue.
Dangerous.
True.
"Say it again," Elowen said.
"Me," he repeated. "I do."
His storm snapped toward that thought like metal to a magnet.
It didn't go tame.
It didn't go quiet.
But it curled a little closer to his center, wrapping around his bones instead of ramming against them.
The Thorn Marks warmed, their glow smoothing from erratic flares into a slower, steadier pulse.
Even that thin silver thread… settled.
"This is what preparedness feels like," Elowen said. "Not certainty. Not power. Alignment."
"That sounds like something you'd carve on a Hall arch," he muttered.
"It is," she said. "I did."
He cracked one eye open.
"Really?"
She smiled, just a little. "You are not the first stubborn child to pass through these doors."
He let his eyes slip shut again.
Breathed.
For the first time since he'd seen that storm mark scraped into the marsh, the anger and the fear did not sit on top of everything. They drifted, still there, but not in charge.
"Good," Elowen murmured. "When the Warden presses again, remember this."
He swallowed. "And if I forget?"
"Then your Cohort will remind you," she said simply. "That is why they exist at all."
He thought of Nellie's small, steady hands.
Myra's loud, fearless shouting at things ten times her size.
Runa's hammer, quiet and absolute.
The pup's ridiculous growl.
His chest ached.
In a good way.
He opened his eyes fully.
The Hall's light felt less heavy now. Less like a weight pressing him down and more like a cloak around his shoulders.
"Are we done?" he asked.
"For today," Elowen said. "Go. Eat. Tell your Cohort what you saw, before rumor does it for you. And Aiden…"
He paused at the edge of the circle.
"Yeah?"
"When the Warden said not ready," she said, "it was right."
That stung.
She went on before he could flinch all the way.
"And if you had been ready," she added, "it would have taken you. Or tried. I am very glad it was disappointed."
His storm hummed at that.
Not offended.
Relieved.
"Me too," he said quietly.
The pup barked once in firm agreement.
He left the Hall with its listening walls and its stone trees, the doors closing behind him with a sound like leaves knitting together.
Outside, the Academy felt… smaller.
Safer.
For now.
But beyond the walls, past the wardline and the wounded marsh, something vast and fog-bound shifted its attention.
It remembered the feel of his mark.
Not ready, it had judged.
Not yet.
Fog coiled around a half-drowned stone, tracing the spiral and bolt it had pressed into the mud.
Next time, the Warden thought—
—and the marsh stirred like a beast turning over in sleep—
we will see how stubborn a storm can be.
End of book 1