The hall outside felt louder now that they'd stepped back into it.
News had clearly moved faster than people pretending not to know news. Faces turned toward them, then away too quickly. A pair of first-years made a warding sign in Nellie's direction before realizing exactly how rude that was and bolting.
Myra's jaw clenched. "I hate them a little."
"They're scared," Nellie whispered.
"So are we," Myra shot back. "I don't make ward-signs at you."
Runa rumbled low. "If anyone attempts to touch your marks without permission, I will touch their fingers with my hammer."
"That's not how 'touch' works," Myra said.
"It will be," Runa replied.
They threaded their way toward the dining hall.
Enough people pretended not to stare that it looped back around into obvious.
Aiden kept his shoulders square, his eyes forward, his storm steady. Every so often it surged when it caught a stray phrase—walking hazard… Warden's chosen… Storm's bride (that one made Myra snort and nearly choke)—but Kethel's lesson held.
Listen. Don't open the door.
He could do that.
Mostly.
They were almost to the dining hall when the first real test arrived.
Not from the marsh.
From the Arcane Channel track.
---
They'd claimed the wide space in front of the south training rings like they owned it.
A knot of second-years in navy-accented cloaks, channel-sigils bright along their forearms, cores humming at their belts in tight, efficient cycles. Aiden recognized the posture: people who'd been proving themselves to each other for long enough to forget there was a world outside their own competitions.
When they saw Stormthread, conversation thinned.
The group parted just enough to let one boy step forward.
Tall. Clean-cut. Dark hair pulled back. Grey eyes sharp as cut glass.
Aiden had never spoken to him.
That didn't matter.
The boy spoke like he knew everything he needed.
"Raikos," he called.
Every student within earshot went quiet.
Stormthread stopped.
Myra's hand drifted toward her boot knife.
Runa's grip tightened on her hammer.
Nellie edged half a step closer to Aiden without seeming to realize she was doing it.
"Yes?" Aiden said.
"You let it speak to you," the boy said. No preamble. No courtesy title. "On the parapet. You didn't deny it until after it marked you."
Aiden's storm twitched.
He kept his voice level. "You were there?"
"I was," the boy said. "On the far wall. I felt the wardline dip."
"That dip was the Warden," Nellie said quietly. "Not him."
The boy didn't look at her. His gaze stayed locked on Aiden.
"The Warden pushed," he acknowledged. "But it answered you. It said your name. That means resonance. It means focus. It means you are a risk."
"Thank you," Aiden said. "Looks like the staff has that covered."
The boy's lip curled.
"The staff is fallible."
"Strong sentence coming from someone about to break a direct command," Myra muttered under her breath.
Aiden almost smiled.
The boy lifted his chin.
"If you cannot control your storm when provoked," he said louder now, "then you endanger every ward, every core, every student in this Academy."
Murmurs stirred.
This was what Veldt had warned them about.
This was not fear.
This was someone trying to wrap fear in duty.
"What exactly are you suggesting?" Aiden asked.
"A demonstration," the boy said. "Of control. Here. Now. With witnesses."
Nellie's breath caught. "That's—"
"Stupid?" Myra cut in. "Illegal? A great way to get your eyebrows incinerated?"
"Forbidden," Runa added.
"Interesting," the boy said. "You're very quick to speak for him."
"We're his Cohort," Myra snapped. "We're supposed to."
He ignored her. "If you cannot hold your storm under pressure, Raikos, then the rest of us deserve to know just how close we are to being dragged into your Warden's notice."
Aiden felt the storm hitch.
The Warden's notice.
He could still feel that gaze under his ribs.
He wanted—so badly—to show every watching face that he wasn't a hazard. That he could hold the storm tighter than anyone realized. That he could stand in the middle of a channel strike and not fry the ground.
Kethel's voice slid into his memory like a knife.
Fear is louder than lightning.
He inhaled.
Then exhaled.
"No," Aiden said.
The boy laughed once. It wasn't pleasant. "You refuse a basic test of discipline?"
"It's not a test," Aiden said. "It's bait. You want me to flare under your strike so you can run to the scribes and say 'see, he can't hold it.'"
"If you're that confident in your control," the boy said, "why refuse?"
"Because Veldt will break your nose before I even have to try," Myra said sweetly.
"Stormthread."
The new voice cut across the gathering like a slash.
Veldt, again.
Of course.
He stepped out from the shadow of the training arch, expression colder than the marsh fog.
"Step away from each other," he said.
The Arcane boy stiffened. "Master Veldt, I was simply—"
"Breaking three conduct codes and two direct instructions," Veldt said. "Channel Cohort Brennar, you were present at this morning's briefing. You heard my orders to all upper years regarding Stormbound interaction."
"Sir," Brennar said tightly, "with respect, if his resonance is compromised—"
"If his resonance were compromised," Veldt said, "you would not be standing here making speeches about it. You would be ash."
The murmurs changed flavor again.
Brennar's jaw flexed.
"This place is not ready for another Warden-touched stormbearer," he said quietly. "My family remembers the last one."
Nellie flinched. Runa's head snapped toward the boy. Myra froze.
Aiden's storm shuddered.
Kethel hadn't told him there had been a last one.
Veldt's eyes hardened. "Your family's fear does not give you the right to start a duel in the middle of my rings."
"It's not fear," Brennar snapped. "It's pattern recognition."
He lifted his hand.
Aiden felt the arcane gathering before he saw it.
Reflex took over.
Lightning surged under his skin, racing straight for his palms.
He could burn the attack out of the air before it ever left Brennar's fingers—
No.
He slammed Kethel's cage pattern down across his nerves.
The storm hit it like water hitting iron.
Pain spiked up his arms.
He did not move.
Brennar's bolt of channeled force snapped outward.
He was aiming for the ground in front of Aiden—that much even panicked part of Aiden's brain saw. Enough to "test" without technically attacking.
He never got there.
Runa stepped into its path.
Her hammer came up in a smooth, brutal arc.
The bolt hit metal.
The entire ring shook.
Force blasted outward sideways in a shockwave that knocked three spectators over and dimmed three nearby cores. Splintered stone sprayed the wall.
When the smoke cleared, Runa was still standing.
Barely.
She planted the hammer's head into the cracked stone and leaned on it once, catching breath.
The silence after was sharper than any shout.
Veldt's expression didn't change.
His voice dropped.
"You're done."
Brennar opened his mouth, face flushing. "I—"
He didn't get further.
Four suppression sigils lit at his feet, slamming up around him like translucent walls. Two more flared around the rest of his Cohort. Their cores dimmed as the rings cut resonance.
Veldt didn't raise his hand.
He didn't have to.
The rings were pre-set.
They'd been waiting for someone to be this stupid since the moment the Warden spoke.
"Channel Cohort Brennar," Veldt said, voice crisp enough to chip teeth. "Effective immediately, you are suspended from open training. You will report to Wardscribe Auris for evaluation and then to Discipline."
Brennar stared. "You can't—"
"I can," Veldt said. "And I have. You're lucky you're not reporting to the marsh."
His gaze swept the spectators.
"Let this be clear," he said. "Stormthread is not your testing ground. Any student who attempts to 'measure' their control or provoke resonance will be treated as a threat to the wards and removed from general population."
He didn't have to say you will be done as students.
The rings pulsed once and started moving Brennar and his Cohort toward the far exit like polite, utterly unstoppable cages.
Myra exhaled slowly. "Well," she said. "That was… something."
Nellie's hands shook around the strap of her satchel. "He really would have done it," she whispered. "Pushed your storm. Just to see."
Runa's breathing was still a fraction harder than normal. She adjusted her grip on the hammer with care. "His fear is old," she said. "Inherited. That makes it stubborn. And stupid."
Aiden's storm, which had rampaged up his arms, now crashed back down into his ribs, stalled and aching.
He felt hollow.
And weirdly… proud.
Not of Runa's block. Not of Veldt's intervention.
Of the simple, brutal fact that the bolt had flown and he had done nothing.
He could have answered with lightning.
He hadn't.
His ribs still hummed with the effort of saying no.
"You did it," Nellie whispered suddenly.
He blinked. "What?"
"You didn't answer," she said. "Your storm… I felt it. It hit something inside you and went no farther. The threads jerked, and then—" She swallowed. "—settled on us instead."
Myra raised an eyebrow. "On us?"
"Like we were… buffering you," Nellie said.
Runa nodded slowly, eyes distant. "I felt it. For a breath. Like weight across the Cohort, not just him."
The pup made a small, satisfied sound and bumped its head against Aiden's ankle.
"Show off," he muttered, rubbing its ears.
Inside, something unclenched.
Not the fear.
Not the attention.
Something quieter.
Permission, maybe.
To believe Kethel's torture chamber had done more than just hurt.
---
That night, Kethel found him again.
Not on the parapet.
In the narrow service corridor beneath the Verdant Hall where the wardlines hummed so strongly the air seemed to breathe.
"You didn't fry the channel idiot," Kethel said without hello.
"No," Aiden said.
"Good," Kethel replied. "Elowen is pleased. Veldt is less murderously tense. The wards are intact. The Warden still sulks outside. This is what we call progress."
Aiden snorted. "He called me a risk."
"You are," Kethel said blandly. "So is every powerful core in a fragile world."
"Comforting."
"Accurate."
They studied him for a moment.
"The next time it speaks," Kethel said softly, "it will not say your name."
Aiden stiffened. "Then what?"
"It will ask you to do something."
His mouth went dry. "And if I say no again?"
Kethel's pale eyes were very old.
"Then you might be the first stormbearer in a century to teach a Warden that 'no' is a word it must learn."
The thought scared him.
It also lit something the Warden had never touched.
His own stubbornness.
"Sounds exhausting," Aiden muttered.
"It will be," Kethel said. "Bring your Cohort."
He thought of Myra's knife, Runa's hammer, Nellie's shaking hands that never stopped binding, the pup's tiny storm pressed against his ankle.
He thought of the fog knowing his name.
Then he thought of Elowen's voice saying you are not its anything.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "We will."
Outside, beyond the walls, the marsh fog shifted again.
It did not say his name.
Not yet.
It had heard him once.
Now, apparently, it was his turn.
---