CHAPTER 47 — Splinters in the Stone
The second breakfast bell had no right to sound that cheerful.
Students poured through the main hall like someone had tipped the Academy and shaken. Voices bounced off stone, cloaks brushed, boots scuffed. The world, by all appearances, had decided to pretend there hadn't just been an ancient marsh thing tugging at its wardlines.
Stormthread moved slower than the current.
Runa walked at a steady pace, Nellie tucked close to her side. Myra limped in exaggerated fashion, one hand pressed to her temple.
"I'm dying," she announced.
"You are not dying," Runa said.
"I definitely left part of my soul on that floor."
"That was your focus," Runa replied. "You can grow a new one."
Behind them, Aiden snorted despite himself.
The pup rode on his shoulder again, using his head as an extra vantage point. Its fur had settled down, no longer sparking like an overexcited hearth. He'd expected it to be as rattled as he was after Kethel's exercise.
Instead, the cub seemed… smug.
Like the whole "tell the splinter no" thing had personally been its idea.
The storm under his ribs wasn't exactly happy. But it was… quieter. Sore, almost. Like a muscle they'd finally made do something other than punch.
Nellie clutched her satchel as if afraid the threads might spill out if she loosened her grip. "My head still feels full," she murmured. "Like someone overstuffed it with ward diagrams and then forgot to stop."
"That was Kethel," Myra said. "They do not know the meaning of stopping."
"Careful," Aiden muttered. "I think the lines tell them when someone talks about them."
Myra gasped softly. "Do you think they listen through every rune in the building?"
"Yes," Runa said.
"I hate that."
Nellie tried to smile and almost made it. "They said we did well," she offered.
"They said we didn't fall over," Myra corrected. "Barely. The nosebleed line is a low bar."
"It is still a bar you tripped under," Runa said.
"Rude."
They turned into the dining hall. The smell of bread, eggs, and something involving mushrooms hit Aiden like a comforting punch. His stomach made a noise that the pup attempted to glare at again.
"Don't even start," Aiden told it. "You are objectively always hungry. You don't get to judge."
The cub licked his ear in what could only be called a counterargument.
They managed to claim their usual table along the wall. For once, no one else had taken it; the early hour and First Bell summons had scattered the usual crowd patterns.
Aiden slid onto the bench with a groan he wouldn't admit to making. Runa dropped down across from him. Nellie sat beside her, carefully pouring tea. Myra returned from the line balancing an impossible tower of bread, fruit, and whatever she'd bribed the kitchen for.
"You're sure you're not dying?" Aiden asked, watching her pile.
"If I were dying," she said, "I would die doing what I loved: eating, and complaining about wizards."
Nellie peered at Aiden over her cup. "You… okay?" she asked softly.
He paused, spoon halfway to his mouth.
He'd been asked that more in the last week than in most of his previous life combined.
"I'm…" He searched for the word. "Not exploding."
"Progress," Runa said.
Myra pointed a crust at him. "You told a marsh nightmare's splinter 'no' and it listened. You get at least one day of smug out of that."
He thought of Kethel's warning.
Next time, it won't send a splinter.
His appetite tried to hide under the table.
"Maybe half a day," he said.
The pup, having decided Aiden's bowl was insufficiently interesting, migrated to Nellie's lap. Her shoulders dropped half an inch as she stroked its fur, the static soothing her instead of stinging.
They ate.
Or at least, two of them did.
Nellie nibbled. Runa ate with the efficient focus of someone refueling a siege engine. Myra inhaled her food like it owed her money. Aiden forced his way through a bowl of porridge because if he didn't, Myra would start lecturing him about collapsing dramatically in the middle of class and that would be unbearable.
Around them, the hall gradually filled.
Whispers floated.
"—Stormthread—"
"—Wardscribe had them at First Bell—"
"—heard he made them step on a live ward map—"
"—if they break the line, they're kicking everyone out of the north tower—"
"Relax," Myra muttered. "If we break anything, it'll be on purpose."
"That is not reassuring," Nellie said.
"Wasn't meant to be," Myra replied.
Aiden kept his gaze mostly on his bowl.
He could feel eyes on them.
Some wary.
Some curious.
One or two… hopeful?
Those made him more uncomfortable than the fear.
Hope came with expectations.
Veldt's warning from yesterday echoed: You are raw. Your marks are unstable. The Warden is adapting.
His spoon clinked against the bowl.
"Stop thinking storm thoughts," Myra said.
"I didn't say anything," he protested.
"You don't have to," she said. "You do this thing where your face goes all 'I am personally responsible for the structural integrity of the world,' and then the pup starts crackling and then my anxiety wakes up."
Runa nodded. "It is unpleasant."
Nellie added, very quietly, "It also tugs at the threads. When you spiral. It makes them… nervy."
He winced. "Sorry."
She shook her head. "I'm not scolding," she said. "Just… telling you. So you know what it does to the Hall."
"It notices you when you notice it," Runa said.
"Exactly," Nellie said.
Aiden exhaled and tried to think about porridge instead of marsh gods.
The pup sneezed a tiny spark into his bowl.
Well. Porridge and static.
He could work with that.
---
Their first class after breakfast was in one of the north lecture halls, which felt like a cruel joke.
"Who scheduled this?" Myra grumbled as they climbed the steps. "We just told the wardline no and now it's going to sulk at us all morning."
"Wards do not sulk," Runa said. "People sulk."
"Maybe the wards have learned," Myra muttered.
The lecture hall smelled of chalk dust and old core oil. Raised rows of benches climbed toward the back wall. At the front, an enormous slate stood under a lattice of faintly glowing sigils—the automatic copying rig Nellie loved, because it wrote everything the teacher put on the board into neat little glowing runes in the corner of her notebook.
Today's class: Combined Tracks Fundamentals.
Which meant a little of everything and a lot of arguing.
The teacher, Mistress Jora, stood at the front in a brown coat stained with so many colors of chalk it might've been intentional. Her grey hair was bound in a messy knot with what looked like two sticks and a broken wand.
"Morning," she said as the last students filed in. "Stormthread. Good, you survived. Sit."
"Reassuring thing to say," Myra whispered as they found a spot together mid-tier.
The pup curled up under the bench, sparks subdued to a faint pulse.
Aiden tried to pay attention.
Jora launched into a diagram of energy flows between core-bearing fighters and Verdant healers in field units. Lines of chalk arced between circles labeled Vanguard, Healer, Scout, and Channel.
"If you drain your healer empty," Jora said, "you will find that wounds are very creative about finding the exact moment you regret it. So—who can tell me the three signs your Verdant is overextended?"
Nellie's hand shot up so hard she nearly fell off the bench. "Fading glow at the mark, tremor in the hands, and thread-loss—difficulty distinguishing external lines from internal ones," she blurted.
"Yes, good," Jora said. "And what do you do then?"
"Stop," Nellie said instantly.
Jora pointed at her with a stub of chalk. "Correct. Everyone else, memorize that answer. I don't care what heroic legend you're trying to reenact; if your healer says they're done, they're done. The only thing worse than too little Verdant on the field is Verdant turned inward by accident. That way lies screaming."
A few students chuckled uneasily.
Aiden kept his eyes on the board.
Halfway through Jora's rant about channelers who refused to learn basic knife work, the lights flickered.
Not the torches.
The sigils.
The lattice above the slate pulsed too bright, then too dim, then steadied.
A murmur rippled through the room.
Jora frowned. "None of you touched that," she said. It wasn't a question.
"No, Mistress," an Arcane student in the front row said quickly.
Aiden felt it.
A tiny, almost imperceptible twitch in the stone under his boots.
Like the memory of the tug from Kethel's map, but dulled. Muffled.
His storm pricked its ears.
Nellie's head snapped up.
"Threads?" he whispered.
She bit her lip. "Something… brushed them," she murmured back. "But it's… faint. Like it came through the copying rig instead of the walls."
"That's not better," Myra muttered.
Runa's hand slid to the haft of her hammer on reflex.
Jora studied the sigils for another heartbeat.
The lattice glowed steady again.
"Well," she said briskly. "If the Hall is going to explode, we'll hear about it. Back to idiots with too much lightning."
Several heads turned toward Aiden.
He sank lower on the bench. "That was one time," he hissed.
"Two," Nellie whispered.
"Three," Runa said.
Myra raised fingers as if continuing the count.
"Traitors," Aiden muttered.
The rest of the lesson passed without further incident.
By the time they staggered out into the corridor, Aiden had almost convinced himself the flicker was just the rig needing recalibration.
Almost.
Then the warning chime sounded.
A single note, high and sharp.
Not a class bell.
Not an alarm he recognized.
Students paused mid-step.
"What was that?" someone asked.
Another chime.
Higher.
Faster.
Nellie went white. "That's the Verdant internal line," she whispered. "It—it only rings when something trips the Hall's health wards. Inside."
A third chime cut through the murmurs.
Then Elowen's voice rode the air, amplified by runes.
"All students are to remain in their current halls," she said, clear and level. "Instructors, confirm headcounts and await further instruction. Stormbound Provisional Cohort: report to the North Practice Yard immediately."
Myra blinked. "Well," she said faintly. "That seems directed."
Runa was already moving. "Come."
Aiden's storm surged in one hot pulse.
The pup leapt back to his shoulder, fur rising.
Nellie gripped her satchel. "Internal health wards," she repeated under her breath. "Something inside the Hall is… wrong."
"Or hurt," Aiden said.
"Or both," Runa added.
---
The North Practice Yard looked wrong the moment they stepped under the arch.
Too quiet.
No clack of practice weapons. No shouted instructions. No thump of bodies hitting dirt.
Instead, a ring of instructors formed a loose perimeter around one of the smaller training circles. Verdant healers in moss-colored robes knelt near the edge with satchels open. The air tasted sharp and metallic, like after a lightning strike—only there was no storm.
Veldt stood near the entrance, jaw tight. Lirienne hovered at his shoulder, bow unstrung but close.
Elowen waited a little farther in, coat stirring in a breeze Aiden couldn't feel.
Kethel Auris knelt by the circle's outer line, one hand pressed to the rune-stamped dirt.
The rune itself was the wrong color.
It should have glowed greenish-blue, like everything else in the Yard. Instead, a sickly violet-black sheen threaded through it, like bruised flesh.
"What happened?" Aiden blurted as they approached.
Veldt's gaze flicked over them, counting. "You are late," he said.
"We came as soon as—" Myra started.
"Veldt," Elowen said.
He bit off whatever lecture he'd been about to deliver.
Kethel rose slowly to their feet.
Up close, Aiden saw that the pale rings on their fingers were dimmer than they'd been that morning.
"A training construct misfired," Kethel said. "Or rather, it fired correctly. The wards around it did not."
One of the smaller practice circles inside the ring had been scorched. A practice dummy lay in pieces—straw blackened, wood splintered.
"What's wrong with the rune?" Nellie asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Kethel's colorless eyes went to her. "It tried to invert," they said. "To draw life inward instead of pushing threat outward."
Nellie swayed.
Runa caught her elbow.
"In plain words," Myra said. "For those of us who do not speak rune."
Kethel tapped the discolored marking with the end of their staff. It pulsed once, weakly, like something trying to remember how to breathe.
"The circle tried," they said, "to eat the person standing in it."
Aiden's stomach lurched.
He looked wildly around. "Are they—?"