They didn't start with swords.
They started with chairs.
"Sit," the ward-mage said.
Kairn eyed the chair like it was a trap.
It was just wood.
He sat anyway.
Lysa dropped into the one beside him.
Fen sprawled in his.
Yselle stood by the door, arms folded, the expression of someone who planned to stay until this either worked or broke something in a way she could understand.
The Stone hummed in the center of the room.
Not a full trance.
Just presence.
"We're not putting you into the web," the mage said. "We're teaching you how not to drown when your own heads decide to be helpful."
"Comforting," Fen muttered.
"Close your eyes," the mage said.
Kairn did.
The Stone's hum became louder with darkness.
His Systems stirred.
Dragon.
Null.
Engine.
Greenfold.
The thin, bright line to the core pulsed, faint and patient.
"First lesson," the mage said quietly. "Pick your beat. Not the one he wrote. Yours."
Lysa's fingers tapped his knee.
Da-dum.
Steady.
Kairn matched his breath to it.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
"Good," the mage said. "Now I talk. Your job is to ignore anything that sounds like command and notice when your body wants to obey anyway."
"That sounds hard," Fen said.
"Yes," the mage said. "Close your eyes, knife-boy."
Fen sighed and obeyed.
The mage's voice shifted.
It lost its usual dryness.
It slid into something smoother, more even.
"Stop," he said.
Kairn's fingers twitched.
His shoulders wanted to lock.
He *felt* the old pathways light up—the ones the King had carved.
He forced a breath.
Lysa's beat slammed his ribs.
Da-dum.
He unclenched.
"Stand," the mage said.
His legs flexed.
His knees half-rose.
He pushed his heels down.
The chair creaked.
"Sleep," the mage said.
His eyelids drooped further.
He inhaled sharply, sat up.
"Good," the mage murmured. "Again."
They spent an hour like that.
Simple commands.
Stop.
Stand.
Turn.
Kneel.
Each one slid along grooves Kairn hadn't known still existed until they were lit.
Each time, he fought the urge.
He failed, sometimes.
His hand jerked.
His foot shifted.
His head tilted.
Lysa hit him—gently, then less gently—whenever she saw it.
Fen swore constantly.
"I hate this," Fen said after he accidentally stood twice in a row.
"Good," the mage said. "You should."
By the end, Kairn's jaw ached from clenching it.
The mage finally stepped back.
"Lesson," he said. "It's not about never *hearing* a command. It's about recognizing which ones are riding old scars and choosing anyway."
"Sounds like all of my therapy," Lysa said dryly.
"Second lesson is worse," the mage said.
"Of course it is," Fen groaned.
They moved to the yard.
Sia and Tam watched from the steps, sweat-slick from drills.
Mar lingered in the Stone doorway, eyes distant.
"Don't glare at me," Yselle told them. "Watching is part of your education."
"What are they doing?" Tam whispered.
"Breaking their heads on purpose," Sia said. "So some other thing doesn't break them first."
The mage drew a circle in chalk on the packed earth.
"Stand," he told Kairn.
Kairn stood in the circle.
Lysa to his left.
Fen to his right.
"Close your eyes," the mage said. "This time, I won't speak."
"That seems worse," Fen said.
"It is," the mage said.
Kairn closed his eyes.
"Your mind likes to help," the mage said. "It fills in gaps. It finishes patterns. He used that against you. He made you think the chain was your thought."
Kairn remembered the pool.
The mountain.
The avatar.
The way his own memories had turned on him.
He ground his teeth.
"Imagine something you want," the mage said. "Then imagine what it would sound like if he used it."
Kairn inhaled.
He pictured Farbridge intact.
No web.
No mine.
He pictured never hearing the King again.
*You can have that,* a voice in his head murmured, soft as breath. *Just step aside. Just let go of this fight. Be small. Be quiet. Someone else will pick it up.*
His shoulders loosened without his say-so.
Lysa's hand closed around his wrist.
"Beat," she snapped.
He slapped his thigh.
Da-dum.
The offer thinned.
He switched.
He pictured the kids safe, grown, never seeing a chain on their own necks.
*You can give them that,* the inner-voice whispered. *If you stop pulling at the thing that notices them. Hide. Kneel. Be useful in quiet ways. I know how.*
His knees bent a fraction.
Fen's elbow dug into his side.
"Up," Fen muttered. "Come on."
Kairn straightened.
He kept going until his head throbbed.
By the time the mage called halt, he was shaking for a different reason.
"This isn't about him," the mage said. "It's about you. He uses what's already in you. Guilt. Want. Fear. You can't erase those. You shouldn't. But you can stop letting them drive without you noticing."
"Feels like I'm picking fights with ghosts," Fen said.
"You are," the mage said. "They punch back."
For two days, that was life.
Physical drills when his ribs allowed.
Breath training on the wall to simulate thin air without the climb.
Mental drills in the Stone room, learning to hear his own thoughts and not trust them just because they sounded like him.
Greenfold chimed in occasionally.
"You are very loud for things that are so small," she said once when he stumbled out of a session, head pounding.
"We're practicing," he muttered.
"You are trying to be quiet in the wrong places," she said. "Be quiet where he listens. Be loud where he thinks you will be still."
He wasn't sure what that meant yet.
He filed it away.
The kids trained too.
Sia's staff work sharpened.
She put three Roadkeepers on the ground in an afternoon and nearly wept with relief when they told her that was the point.
Tam learned the hall's bell codes, his small hand ringing each one until he could do it without looking.
Mar stayed near the Stone so often Yselle had to order him outside at night.
"You're not a root," she said. "You need sleep and sun. Go."
Kairn watched it all from the edges when he wasn't being thrown into some new exercise meant to keep his mind from being a straight road for the King.
One evening, he found Tam sitting alone on the wall, feet dangling over the drop, the lucky stone rolling between his palms.
"Cold up here," Kairn said, sitting beside him.
Tam shrugged.
"My head's loud in the yard," he said. "It's… less loud up here."
"Mine too," Kairn said.
They sat in silence for a bit.
The sky was clear.
Stars pricked through the dark.
Mornspire's silhouette was a jagged black tooth against them.
"Are you going to die?" Tam asked suddenly.
Kairn didn't pretend he hadn't expected the question.
"Probably," he said. "Everyone does."
Tam grimaced.
"You know what I mean," he said. "When you go there."
Kairn watched his own breath fog in the cold air.
"I don't know," he said. "I think I might. I think I might not. I know I'll try very hard not to."
Tam turned the stone over and over.
"If you die," he said, "does he win?"
"No," Kairn said immediately.
Tam blinked.
"How?" he asked. "If you're not there to bite him?"
"Because winning for him isn't just staying alive," Kairn said. "It's making us give up. It's making us decide it's easier to let him decide. If I die trying to break him, that hurts him. Even if I don't finish. If I live and decide it's not worth it, that helps him."
Tam frowned.
"That sounds like a bad deal," he said.
"It is," Kairn said.
He smiled, small.
"But we get something he doesn't," he added.
"What?" Tam asked.
"Each other," Kairn said. "He doesn't understand that. He thinks everything is a line you stand on alone. He doesn't understand why I got up on that peak again when I was already half-broken. He doesn't understand why I'm not planning to go into his head by myself."
Tam was quiet for a long moment.
"I don't want you to go," he said.
"I know," Kairn said.
"I also don't want him to keep being there," Tam said. "So I don't know what I want."
"That's all right," Kairn said. "You don't have to decide. That's on me. On us."
"On Yselle," Tam said.
"On Yselle," Kairn agreed.
"And Lysa," Tam added.
"And Lysa," Kairn said.
"And Fen, a little," Tam said reluctantly.
"Even Fen," Kairn said.
Tam sighed.
"That's a lot of people," he said.
"Good," Kairn said.
He stood, joints popping.
"Go to bed," he added. "Your head will be even louder if you don't sleep."
Tam made a face but obeyed.
On the third day, the ward-mage called a halt to the mental drills.
"You're not ready," he told Kairn. "But you're as ready as I can make you without turning your mind into a knot so tight it can't move."
"That's… encouraging," Kairn said.
"Think of it as learning to swim in a bucket before we throw you in the river," the mage said. "You'll still get wet. But you're less likely to drown immediately."
Yselle called a council that night.
Smaller than the last.
Just her, Kairn, Lysa, Fen, the mage, Barra, and, to no one's surprise, Greenfold—present as a small branch in a pot on the table, leaves trembling when she spoke.
"You really like being involved," Fen told the branch.
"I like seeing where my root goes," she replied through rustling leaves.
Yselle unrolled a new map.
This one had almost nothing on it.
Just the Stone.
The hall.
A line drawn off the page.
"We're not mapping this," she said. "We're writing a list."
She wrote as she spoke.
"Goal: hit core," she said. "Cost if succeed: web falls, some worlds fall with it. Cost if fail: god learns too much about how to bite back. Cost if stay: slow bleed."
She looked up.
"Everyone clear?" she asked.
No one said no.
"Roles," she said, writing the word. "Kairn: key. Lysa: jam. Fen: move. Mage: anchor. Me: rear guard. Forest: wild card."
"Rude," Greenfold said.
"Accurate," Yselle replied.
Barra cleared his throat.
"And me?" he asked.
Yselle hesitated.
Kairn saw it.
Barra did too.
"I should stay," he said before she could speak. "You need someone here who knows all the roads and has enough scars people listen when he screams."
"You'll hate it," she said.
"Yes," he said. "I'll live."
She exhaled.
"Thank you," she said.
He shrugged, rough.
"Someone has to tell your story if you don't come back," he said.
Kairn's chest tightened.
"Equipment," Yselle said briskly. "We don't know what carries over. Mental, not physical. But we prepare anyway. Ropes, blades, symbols, whatever the mage thinks can tie you back."
"Stone?" Lysa asked.
Everyone looked at the Hall Stone through the doorway.
"No," the mage said. "Not all of it. If we move it, we rip roads up. But…" He tapped his staff against the floor. "I can carve a sliver. A shard. Still linked. A piece that will hum if the rest hums. It'll hurt the Stone. It'll hurt me. It'll hurt him." He nodded at Kairn. "But it will give you a line to here that isn't just what you are."
"Do it," Yselle said.
He nodded, grim.
"Timing," Yselle said. "We don't wait long. He's already patching. The crack you made won't stay open forever. But we also don't go tomorrow. I want four more days. Kairn, you need it. Lysa, Fen, you need it. Mage needs it to make the shard. I need it to put my hall in order."
"Four days," Kairn repeated.
It sounded both too short and too long.
"Any objection?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"Good," she said.
She rolled the blank map up.
"Get some sleep," she added. "The next time we do this, it won't be in chairs."
That night, Kairn lay awake longer than he should have.
Lysa's breathing was steady beside him.
Shadows from the small lamp flickered on the ceiling.
His chest hurt.
His head hurt.
His hand tingled where the Stone-line pulsed faintly under the skin.
He thought of the mine.
The tower.
The core.
The peak.
The hall.
The kids.
The way the King's voice had sounded when something finally hurt him.
He was afraid.
He admitted it.
Out loud.
"I'm scared," he whispered.
Lysa's hand found his under the blanket.
"Good," she murmured, not opening her eyes. "Means you know what this is. Means you'll run *toward* the fear on purpose, not by accident. Now sleep."
He did.
Eventually.
The road ahead had never been stranger.
Or more necessary.