The training hall was already awake when they arrived. Moonlight poured through the open ceiling and struck the circular floor where pale stone had been worn down by repetition rather than care. The grooves were shallow and uneven, some crossing over others, all faintly lit as Lunar Ichor crept through them like slow blood under skin. The place felt old, not abandoned, just done pretending to be gentle. Anything that stepped into the ring was expected to learn or break.
Clyde stepped onto the stone without hesitation. The moment his boot touched down, something under his skin aligned. Not sharply. Precisely. Lunar Ichor stirred and spread in smooth, measured flow. It didn't surge. It adjusted, like it had been waiting for this exact environment to respond.
Aurelian followed behind him, hands loose, posture relaxed in the way only people who survived long enough ever managed. He glanced at Clyde, then at the floor, then back again, as if measuring two things at once.
"You know what Moon Cage is," he said. "You just don't know how to actually do it."
Clyde nodded once.
"Good," Aurelian said.
He stepped into the ring and tapped the stone with his heel. Lunar Ichor in the grooves pulsed faintly in response. "Moon Cage isn't about pushing. Anyone can shove Lunar Ichor outward and call it a spell, but that isn't proper control."
Clyde frowned slightly. "Then what is it?"
"Arrangement," Aurelian said. "You shape the wave first. The lunar ichor wave forms lunar molecules and you must control and guide the particles until its properly aligned. Enough alignment and you will get a lattice and that's the Cage."
Clyde exhaled and let Lunar Ichor rise. Slowly. Carefully. He didn't force expansion. He let it spread just past his skin, thin and even, like a held breath. The air in front of him thickened slightly, but the resistance wasn't uniform. Some parts held. Others slipped.
Aurelian shook his head. "You feel that inconsistency?"
"Yeah," Clyde said. "It won't settle."
"Because you're guessing," Aurelian replied. "You're close enough to make it work, but not close enough to make it clean."
Clyde adjusted instinctively, tightening frequency here, loosening it there. The structure improved, but micro-instabilities kept forming, small errors compounding into drag.
"I can feel it slipping," Clyde said. "Like it wants to collapse."
"It will," Aurelian said. "Unless you stop approximating." He tilted his head slightly. "Use your Hollow Eyes."
Clyde hesitated. Just a beat. Then his eyes darkened into violet, deep as the cosmos, a horizontal infinity sigil forming at their core. A four-pointed star sat etched within it, while thirty-five faint stars orbited endlessly around the mark.
The world sharpened.
Depth fractured into layers. Air stopped being empty. Clyde could feel spacing now, the tiny gaps between particles, the way matter never quite sat perfectly still. The wave in front of him stopped being abstract. It became geometry.
He adjusted.
Lunar Ichor flattened and reorganized. Frequency narrowed. Phase aligned. Instead of fighting resistance, he placed instruction. The molecules inside the forming Cage snapped into a repeating pattern, clean and deliberate. The distortion stabilized instantly, dense without pressure, rigid without strain.
Aurelian let out a quiet whistle. "There. That's Moon Cage."
Clyde held it. without any tremor nor shakes, even his breathing didn't shift.
"Now don't drop it," Aurelian said. "Change it."
Clyde glanced at him. "How?"
"Compress one section," Aurelian replied. "Not the whole thing. Increase repetition. Same lattice, but with higher density."
Clyde focused and adjusted the wave along one side of the structure. The lattice thickened exactly where he targeted it. The air there stopped yielding at all.
"That's the Moon Barrier," Aurelian said. "Same logic with ifferent intent."
Clyde released it, without any recoil. Everything settled cleanly.
They repeated it. Again and again. Cage. Barrier. Adjust. Correct. Aurelian stopped explaining and started watching instead, only stepping in when Clyde wasted motion or overcorrected. Clyde fixed mistakes almost as soon as they appeared. His Lunar Ichor stayed steady, baseline high and unshaken, as if sustained control barely registered as effort.
After a while, Aurelian crossed his arms. "You're controlling the wave now," he said. "That's good. But spells don't stay in open air forever."
Clyde looked at him. "You mean weapons."
"And tools," Aurelian said. "Anything that can hold instruction longer than you can."
He nodded toward Clyde's coat. "Use a conductor."
Clyde pulled out his scissors.
They were ordinary. Scratched. Slightly uneven at the hinge. Not special. That was the point.
He didn't flood them with Lunar Ichor. He threaded it in carefully, aligning the wave along the internal structure instead of wrapping around it. The metal responded immediately. Its color deepened, not glowing, just denser, as molecular spacing tightened under the guided resonance.
Aurelian watched closely now. "That's resonance," he said. "Not surrounding, but etching.."
Clyde tested a short cut through the air. It was clean, no drag, no wasted motion. The wave followed the blade precisely and vanished the moment it was done.
They stopped when the grooves in the floor dimmed and the hall settled back into stillness. Clyde wasn't tired. Not even close. His Lunar Ichor remained dense and responsive, like it had learned something fundamental and refused to forget it.
By the time he got home, the moon had dipped low enough that its light slipped through the windows at an angle. The house was quiet, lived-in, settled.
Luchian was by the easel, sleeves rolled up, paint already on the palette. He glanced over.
"You hungry?" he asked.
"Nope," Clyde said.
Luchian studied him for a second, then smiled faintly. "You want to paint for a bit? You never do it anymore."
Clyde hesitated. Then nodded. "Yeah, sure."
They worked in silence at first. Luchian showed him how to steady his hand, how to control pressure, how every stroke had intent even when it looked casual.
"Don't fight the brush," Luchian said. "Guide it."
The words stuck.
Later, in his room, Clyde sat at his desk and picked up a pen. He let Lunar Ichor rise and opened his Hollow Eyes again. This time, he didn't spiral the wave. He etched it directly into the material. Molecular spacing shifted. Density changed. The pen darkened, its color deepening as the structure tightened.
A perfect resonance.
A knock sounded.
Clyde opened the door. Luchian stood there with an envelope.
"Courier came by," he said. "Said it was urgent."
Clyde took it. The paper felt stiff.
Luchian nodded once and walked away. Clyde closed the door and opened the letter.
Emergency, Howlings multiplying. Report immediately to Lunar Sentinel hideout.—Aldric
Outside, a howl split the night. Then another, then more, overlapping instead of fading.
Clyde closed the letter, picked up the pen, and stood.