The steam-vent chamber became their sanctuary. It was a cathedral of industry gone quiet, where the citadel's lifeblood—scalding water and raw geothermal force—roared through ancient pipes, filling the air with a deafening, rhythmic thunder and a cloak of impenetrable mist. The magical interference was a tangible buzz in the teeth, a static that made the very air feel charged and unpredictable.
Here, under the watchful eyes of Mills and Arthur, the Dyad reforged themselves.
There were no shouted commands from Gareth, no critical eyes from the empty benches of the Crucible. There was only the roar, the heat, and the bond.
"It's like... trying to hear a whisper in a hurricane," Kaitlyn shouted over the din on their first night, frustration etching her face.
Erik closed his eyes, his analytical mind wrestling with the problem. "The noise is the point! In the Crucible, it's quiet, and every flaw is magnified. Here, the flaw is the noise. We have to be the clear signal within it."
They started with the basics Alistair had taught them, the things Gareth had dismissed as mystical nonsense. Finding the shared breath. The synced pulse. But now, they had to fight to find it, to hold it against the cavern's overwhelming barrage of sound and sensation. It was infuriating, exhausting work.
Mills proved invaluable. Perched on a rusted pipe with a book of layered shielding theory in her lap, she'd call out observations in her soft voice, somehow carrying over the roar. "Erik, you're trying to dampen the interference! You're fighting the mountain! Don't fight it—use Kaitlyn's output as your anchor!"
Kaitlyn, meanwhile, was a live wire in the chaos, her power sparking unpredictably. Arthur, leaning against the wall with arms crossed, would simply point at a wobbling pipe or a trembling rivet. "Your control slips there. The energy is bleeding into the environment. Tighten it. Imagine it's a spear, not a shockwave."
Slowly, painfully, they improved. The bond became less of a fragile thread and more of a tuned frequency. Erik learned to use Kaitlyn's vibrant, chaotic energy signature as a homing beacon in the sensory storm. Kaitlyn learned to use Erik's calm, focused mind as a stabilising gyroscope for her power.
One night, after weeks of secret practice, they attempted their first combined exercise in the chaos. Erik, his senses extended, identified a specific, humming pipe twenty feet above them, vibrating at a pitch that set his teeth on edge. He didn't speak. He projected the image, the frequency, the precise vector, down the bond.
Kaitlyn didn't look. She raised a hand, and a focused telekinetic grip—not a shove, but a precise, resonant tap—struck the pipe exactly where Erik had shown her.
The pipe's irritating hum died instantly, replaced by a deeper, more harmonious thrum.
In the sudden relative quiet, they stared at each other, panting, eyes wide. They had done it. Not a wild, combined blast of force, but a piece of delicate, shared surgery.
A slow, triumphant grin spread across Kaitlyn's grimy face. Erik let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
From the entrance, Mills clapped her hands together silently, beaming. Arthur gave a single, firm nod of approval.
It was a tiny victory. But in the heart of the mountain that sought to control them, it felt like a revolution.
---
Life in the gilded cage continued its dual track. Days were a blur of gruelling, individualistic training under Gareth's scorn, and lectures on Hunter supremacy. Evenings were stolen hours in the steam-chamber, reclaiming their unity.
The social tensions in the citadel tightened like a garrote.
Prince David's "interest" in Kaitlyn curdled into a toxic obsession. He couldn't comprehend her indifference, her clear preference for Arthur's quiet competence over his royal pronouncements. He began to use his status as a weapon.
He saw Arthur assigned to clean the kennels of the spectral Cŵn Annwn hounds—a dangerous, demeaning task. He "accidentally" tripped Mills in the refectory, sending her books flying. His taunts became crueller, more personal, aimed at their status as parentless wards.
Kaitlyn's temper, always simmering, finally boiled over. In the Crucible, after David made a sneering comment about Arthur's lineage, she broke from a sparring drill and marched up to the prince.
"You're not a leader," she spat, her voice ringing in the stone arena. "You're a spoiled brat with a crown. Arthur's worth ten of you."
The silence was absolute. Insulting the prince in public was unthinkable.
David's face went from pale to mottled red. "You forget your place, wildling."
"My place isn't on my knees for you,"she shot back.
The punishment was swift and severe. Gareth, at a subtle nod from Rhys who had been observing, declared Kaitlyn needed to learn "humility and the chain of command." Her training for the next week was to be solo sessions with Gareth—brutal, relentless beat-downs disguised as sparring. She would return to their chambers each night barely able to walk, healed just enough by a sorrowful Becky to do it again the next day.
Erik watched, his own anger a cold, sharp thing in his gut. He couldn't fight her battles here. But he could learn. He threw himself into the citadel's tactical archives with Mills' help, studying the kingdom's laws, its guard rotations, its history of internal conflicts. He was no longer just learning to be a weapon; he was learning the enemy's blueprint.
The strain showed on their bond. With Kaitlyn isolated and in pain, the connection felt thin, frayed. In the steam-chamber one night, their practice was a disaster. Erik's guidance was frantic, Kaitlyn's responses were sluggish and pained.
"It's no good," she finally gasped, sinking to the warm stone floor. "He's breaking me apart. I can't... I can't find the centre."
Erik knelt beside her, a rare, desperate anger in his eyes. "Then we don't find it. We make a new one. A stronger one. They think pain weakens the bond. What if it forges it?"
He took her injured hand. Instead of trying to sync with her exhausted, scattered energy, he did the opposite. He opened the bond and let her feel his own cool, razor-sharp fury—not at Gareth, but at the entire system. He let her feel his meticulous plans, his cold analysis of David's weaknesses, his unwavering certainty that they would win. He fed her not comfort, but resolve.
Kaitlyn's breathing steadied. The spark returned to her eyes, not the spark of uncontrolled fire, but the hard, enduring glow of heated steel. She squeezed his hand back. The bond hummed, not with easy harmony, but with a fierce, shared determination. It was different. Tougher.
Arthur, watching from the shadows, murmured to Mills, "They don't just share power. They share a will. You can't break that with a hammer. You can only make it harder."
The next day, battered but uncowed, Kaitlyn stood again in the Crucible. David was there, smirking from the sidelines. As Gareth advanced, she didn't assume a defensive stance. She closed her eyes for a split second.
Across the citadel, in the library, Erik felt her focus. He set down his book. He didn't send her power or a plan. He simply became an open channel, a still point in the universe for her to anchor against.
When Gareth lunged, Kaitlyn moved. It wasn't the wild, powerful burst he expected. It was a fluid, efficient deflection, using his own momentum against him, followed by a precise, shocking jab of telekinetic force to his elbow joint. It wouldn't disable a man like Gareth, but it made him stumble, his attack falling apart.
He recovered instantly, of course. But the look on his face wasn't anger. It was a flicker of surprised reassessment.
Kaitlyn stood her ground, a trickle of blood at her lip, but her chin was high. She didn't look at Gareth. She looked right at Prince David.
The message was clear: You cannot break me. We are unbreakable.
That night, the secret alliance met in the steam-chamber, but the mood had shifted. It was no longer just about stolen practice. Arthur spoke, his voice low and serious. "David will escalate. He sees your bond as a challenge to his authority. And my... proximity to Kaitlyn... as an insult."
"What do we do?" Mills asked, wringing her hands.
"We do what they're training us to do," Erik said, his voice calm with a new, frightening certainty. "We learn faster. We get stronger. Not just to survive their training. To survive him. And when the time comes," he looked at Kaitlyn, and the bond thrummed with agreement, "we use everything they've taught us, and everything we've taught ourselves, to bring this gilded cage down around their ears."
The forge in the mountain's heart was no longer just tempering the Dyad. It was tempering a conspiracy.