The fog in the garden was thicker today. It was heavy with moisture that clung to Vane's skin and slicked the flagstones.
"Again," Senna commanded. Her voice was tighter than usual. Strained.
Vane reset his stance. His legs were past burning; they were a dull throbbing landscape of misery. But his hands were moving. He held the training spear—a real one he'd checked out from the armory, not a broom—and he kept it in motion.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
He was cycling through the Lunar Deflection. The spear tip drew endless figure-eights in the mist.
"Keep the tip heavy," Senna snapped. She was sitting stiffly in her chair. Her hands gripped the armrests so tight her knuckles were white. "You are letting the centrifugal force die on the upswing. If the speed drops, the air resistance returns. If the air resistance returns, you are slow. If you are slow, you are dead."
Vane gritted his teeth. He snapped his wrists, forcing the spear to accelerate. The whoosh sharpened into a low hiss.
"Better," she rasped. "Now... transition. First Form. Quicksilver Thrust."
Vane pivoted on his lead foot. He didn't stop the spin; he converted it. He let the momentum of the swing carry the spear back, coiling his body like a spring, and then released it forward in a single, explosive linear motion.
SNAP.
The spear tip punched the air. It was fast. Faster than anything he had ever done with a dagger.
"Sloppy recovery," Senna spat. "You are lingering at full extension. You stopped. What is the rule, Vane?"
"A spear that stops is a dead spear," Vane recited through gritted teeth.
"Then why are you posing? Pull it back! Recoil! Spin it again!"
Vane yanked the spear back to restart the cycle. He opened his mouth to ask for a water break.
The sound Senna made wasn't a scream. It was worse. It was a sharp, strangled gasp. It sounded like all the air in her lungs had been suddenly replaced with broken glass.
CLATTER.
Vane dropped the spear.
He spun around. Senna was doubled over in her chair. Her body was seized in a violent, rigid spasm. Her hands were clawing at her own chest, tearing at the thin fabric of her hospital gown.
"Senna!"
He rushed to her. The chair was tilting dangerously close to the edge of the balcony as she thrashed. He grabbed the handles and pulled it back, then knelt in front of her.
"What is it? What do I do?"
She couldn't answer. Her jaw was locked tight. Her teeth ground audibly. Her eyes were rolled back in her head showing mostly whites.
He grabbed her shoulders to steady her and the shock kicked him through his uniform. She wasn't just cold. She was vibrating.
It wasn't a muscle tremor. It felt like holding a high-voltage transformer that was about to explode. Her skin buzzed against his palms.
Under the collar of her gown he saw them. Thick black veins darker than old ink. They pulsed sluggishly against her pale skin. They were creeping up her neck and branching out like lightning burns across her collarbone.
It was the dead mana corruption. But it was reacting to her Authority. The corruption wasn't just killing her tissue; it was trying to discharge the stored energy of a broken engine.
"Breathe," Vane urged uselessly. He instinctively tried to push some of his own mana into her. A clumsy attempt at reinforcement.
Zzzzt.
Her body rejected it violently. A shock of freezing static kicked his mana back into his own hand, numbing his fingers.
The seizure lasted for an agonizing minute. Then slowly the rigidity left her frame. She slumped forward gasping for air and coughing wetly. A thin trickle of black fluid leaked from the corner of her mouth.
Vane didn't let go of her shoulders. She felt incredibly fragile now. Like a bundle of dry sticks held together by stubbornness and static electricity.
"I am taking you inside," Vane said.
She was too weak to argue. He scooped her up—she weighed almost nothing—and carried her off the balcony. He kicked open the rusted door of the attached brutalist building.
The inside was dusty and smelled of mildew and abandonment. He laid her down on the least disgusting rusted metal cot.
She lay there. Her eyes were closed. She breathed shallowly. The black veins on her neck were slowly receding fading back down toward her chest like a retreating tide.
Vane pulled up a rusted metal stool and sat next to the cot. His heart hammered.
"You should have left me on the balcony," Senna whispered. Her eyes were still closed. Her voice was wrecked. A husk of sound.
"And let you vibrate yourself over the edge?" Vane asked roughly. "Not happening."
She opened her eyes. They were dull. The terrifying sharpness was gone for the moment. "It happens. The engine misfires. It hurts. Then it stops."
"That wasn't normal pain," Vane said. "You are an Expert. Your body should be practically immortal. What the hell did that to you?"
Senna stared at the dusty ceiling for a long time.
"Expert," she repeated bitterly. "Yes. That is what they put on the certificate."
She turned her head slowly to look at him.
"You want to know about foundations, boy? You want to know what lies underneath the art?" She tapped her own chest right over the sternum where the black veins had retreated.
"Two years ago. The deepest dungeon break on the western continent. The Void-Hydra's lair. I was the rearguard. My team retreated. The Academy sealed the blast doors... but they sealed them in front of me, not behind me."
Vane felt a chill that had nothing to do with the fog. "They locked you in."
"They made a tactical decision," she corrected. Her voice was devoid of emotion. "The Hydra was coming. A mountain of corrupted muscle and dead mana. It had nine heads and it regenerated faster than fire could burn it."
Her eyes snapped open. For a second the terrifying fire was back.
"My family motto is 'We are the Horizon.' I refused to let that thing pass me. But I had no weapon left. My spear had shattered hours ago. So I used the Authority."
She grabbed the front of her gown bunching the fabric over her heart.
"You still think small, freshman. You think an Authority is just a big spell. It isn't. The Silver Fang is an engine. It converts your soul into a law of physics. It creates Spatial Serration."
"Serration?" Vane asked.
"I didn't block the Hydra, Vane. You don't block a mountain. I redefined the corridor. I imposed a Sovereign Law on that space. I turned the air in that hallway into a field of vibrating edges. I made the space itself sharp."
She let out a shaky breath.
"I told the Hydra: 'If you move forward, you cease to exist.' And it tried. It threw itself at me. And every time it crossed the threshold, the spatial vibration shredded it. It turned bone and scale into mist. I created a killing floor. A blender made of vacuum."
She looked at Vane. Her gaze pierced him.
"But engines burn fuel. When you force the universe to cut something that shouldn't be cut—when you force space to act like a chainsaw—the friction is catastrophic. I ran out of mana in seconds. So the engine started burning me."
She tapped her chest again.
"It's called conceptual recoil. I shattered my own channels trying to maintain the vibration. The corruption backwashed into me because I burned away the parts of me that kept it out. I became the serration."
Vane sat frozen.
Inside him the [Usurper] Authority stirred. It wasn't a ping. It was a sensation.
For a terrifying second Vane didn't feel the cold room. He felt the heavy hum.
He felt the sensation of being an industrial turbine spinning at fifty thousand RPM. He felt the terrifying need to be perfectly balanced because if he wobbled even a millimeter at that speed, he would tear himself apart.
It wasn't the weight of a wall. It was the terrifying inertia of absolute velocity.
I am the Edge.
The sensation vanished as quickly as it had come leaving Vane gasping. Sweat popped on his forehead.
He realized with a jolt of cold fear that he had almost triggered his own power. The intimacy of the moment—holding her through the seizure, the shared breath—had nearly opened the bridge.
He could have copied it right then. He could have stolen the Silver Fang while she lay helpless.
But looking at her now... understanding the sheer conceptual speed of the engine she carried... trying to steal the legacy of that corridor with a cheap trick felt repulsive.
It felt insufficient. Like trying to put a jet engine in a bicycle.
He wasn't fast enough to hold that kind of power yet. If he tried to take it the easy way the recoil would shred him just as surely as it shredded the Hydra.
"The Argent Horizon isn't just a fighting style, Vane," Senna whispered. Her voice faded. "It is the cooling system for the engine. It is the structure that keeps you from melting down when you turn the key. Without the flow—without the constant rotation to dissipate the force—the Authority will eat you alive before you even swing."
Vane looked down at his hands. He had come here for a shortcut. He had found a roadmap to suicide.
"You okay to move?" Vane asked.
Senna blinked. "I'm breathing."
Vane stood and moved to the side of the cot. He slid one arm behind her thin shoulders and another under her knees. He lifted her. It was terrifying how light she was. She felt less like a person and more like a collection of dried bones held together by resentment.
He carried her out of the ward moving carefully back onto the rusted balcony. The cold damp fog hit his face cleansing the smell of sickness.
He lowered her carefully back into the wheelchair. She slumped immediately gripping the armrests to stay upright.
It took her two full minutes to compose herself. When she finally looked up at him again some of the old cold steel had returned to her gaze.
"Well?" she demanded. Her voice was weak but razor-sharp. "Did the reality of the foundation scare you off, boy? It's not too late to run back to the main campus and play with daggers where it's safe."
Vane looked down at the practice spear lying on the wet flagstones where he'd dropped it.
He thought about the easy path. Then he thought about the killing floor in the dark corridor. The line of death where space itself became a weapon.
"No," Vane said quietly. "We're not done."
He bent down and picked up the spear. He couldn't learn her Authority—that engine was hers alone. But he was learning the cooling system. He needed to build the chassis before he could ever hope to turn the key.
"Get back in position," Senna ordered. Though she barely had the breath to project the command.
Vane stepped to the familiar marks on the cracked stones. His legs throbbed.
He didn't just drop into a crouch this time. He paused. He stood tall for a moment and closed his eyes.
He didn't visualize a wall anymore. He visualized the Turbine. The Engine. The need to keep moving so the pressure didn't build up and kill him.
He opened his eyes. He began to spin the spear.
Swish. Swish. Whoosh.
He sank into the rhythm of the Lunar Deflection. He let the spear slide through his hands. He let the momentum build.
Hiss.
He didn't stop. He kept the air moving. He kept the edge live.
Senna watched him from her chair. Her eyes were sunken in dark circles but they widened just a fraction as she heard the sound. She saw the subtle shift in his movement—the indefinable difference between swinging a stick and guiding a vector.
"Better," she whispered. She followed it with a wet painful cough. "Keep it spinning. Don't let it land."