They started at dawn because pain keeps better on an empty stomach.
Cairn took Evan to the dead railyard where iron slept in long red lines and weeds pretended to be chain. Fog pooled low, the kind that swallows ankles and makes men think about ghosts. Hook Street was waking behind them, ovens coughing out heat; the Slums drummed three–two–three under their breath because habits survive better than people do.
Cairn bounced his fists against his palms. Yellow arcs clung to him like trained dogs—close, quiet, ready to bite.
"Today you stop sprinting into walls," he said. "Today you make the walls sprint into you."
Evan rolled his tight shoulder and felt the bandages remind him what ribs sound like when they argue. Violet crawled his arms like ivy that had learned to fight. The lanes around the yard tingled, picking up his heartbeat even before he asked them to.
"You trying to teach patience?" Evan said, squinting at the fog. "Bad student."
"Not patience," Cairn said. "Geometry."
He moved.
No warning. One step and he was there, iron fist coming in low. Evan slipped to the left—habit—then tripped on nothing because Cairn put his knee where the world would've been. He hit cinders, saw stars, tasted metal.
Condition: Minor (stunned). Conduction strain: +3%.
Cairn hauled him up by the collar before the ground did any good. "You're faster than your feet. That's the problem. Ghost Current lets you move the street. So move it."
Evan spat grit. "How."
"Anchor," Cairn said, already stepping in again.
Evan didn't dodge this time. He stomped.
[Lane Override] — Engaged.
Pipes under the yard thrummed his rhythm; forgotten rails hummed back. The fog itself shivered. Cairn's punch hit air that behaved like iron—Evan's air, Evan's lane—and shunted a hair right. It still clipped him, but it clipped him on his terms. He slid, bled, grinned.
"Good," Cairn said. "Again."
They fell into a loop: Cairn attacking in simple, ugly lines that broke bones when they landed; Evan bending the yard a degree at a time. He learned to pull a rail's memory into his step, to make a cinder bed behave like stone, to tell fog which way was forward. Every time he failed, Cairn put a lesson into his ribs.
By the fourth failure, Evan stopped trying to outrun the punches. He made them expensive.
[Ghost Current] — Vector Compression (micro) successful.
Effect: Incoming force redirected 7%.
"Seven's a child's tip," Cairn said, mouth skewed with a smile he didn't show anyone else. "Get it to fifteen and I'll stop hitting you with my favorites."
"You have favorites?" Evan ducked, drove a knee into Cairn's hip, thunderstepped low to make the shockwave do some of the talking.
Cairn didn't move. He weighed the ground. His yellow arcs settled like anvils, and the shockwave died with a whimper.
"Anchor," Cairn repeated, and fed him another honest punch.
Evan anchored harder.
He spread his storm thin through the rails, through the old bolts, through the pipe that ran guilty under the yard. He set his feet like argument and pulled.
The next hit slid off him like rain off a coat someone loved enough to wax.
Vector Compression: 7% → 12%.
Lane Override Radius: +10m. Overflow stored: 2%.
Cairn nodded. "Better. Now move without moving."
"What?"
"Echo Step," Cairn said. "The new toy. Stop painting ghosts that vanish when I sneeze. Make them work."
Evan lifted his hands and felt the Slums tug inside his chest like a dog at a door that knows a boy is coming home. He exhaled on the old rhythm, three–two–three, but stitched something else under it, a counter-beat he'd felt last night when Choir tried to rip his words out of his throat.
He stepped.
An Evan peeled off to his left, violet and solid enough to throw dust. Another to his right, blurred at the edges but kicking cinders real. Cairn's eyes didn't widen—he was too tired for dramatics—but both copies earned him the briefest respect.
Then Cairn punched the first Echo in the teeth. It popped. He elbowed the second into a rail. It bounced once, flickered, died.
"Cute," Cairn said. "I want them mean."
Evan set his jaw and tried again. He gave the Echoes jobs: one to interrupt a punch lane, one to occupy a foot of ground long enough to make Cairn choose a worse step. He layered them on his rhythm this time, not just on his want.
They held.
Cairn hit one and winced. Skin actually bruised. He kicked the other and it tripped him an inch, enough to ruin the next simple, ugly strike.
"Meaner," Cairn said, delighted in the way only men get when they see violence made clever.
[Echo Step] — Proficiency ↑.
Duration: 1.5s → 2.2s.
Impact: 40% → 60% (within Lane Override).
They worked him until noon. When Evan fell, he fell inside a lane he owned and the ground softened its elbows. When he rose, it was because the rails hummed and he borrowed their confidence.
By midday he could keep three Echoes going at once and assign them shape. One ran like him. One guarded a pipe mouth. One stood still and lied about being the real Evan until the real Cairn bought the lie and paid in a yellow-flash grunt.
"Drink," Cairn ordered, tossing him a canteen. "Then show me your cleave."
Evan swallowed iron-flavored water and thought about Choir's mouths breaking under the spiral of his storm. He thought about Marra. He let the thought be a coal, not a bonfire, and stood.
He breathed—Hook heat, Foundry iron, Slums stubborn in his chest—and pulled Ghost Current tight as a belt.
Then he unbuckled it.
[Vector Cleave] — Initiated.
Radius: 15m → 18m.
Cairn came in on purpose, because that's what you do when you teach: you risk your nose. Evan slashed air with his storm; arcs cut shallow through fog, rails sang, cinders leapt to get out of the way. Cairn shifted. The cleave followed his choice, not his foot. It hurt him anyway.
Yellow arcs flared. Cairn took a step back and grinned with teeth. "Good. You're learning to cut decisions."
Evan blinked sweat out of his eyes. "That a thing?"
"It is now," Cairn said.
They didn't stop. They pivoted to dirty tricks. Cairn made him fight with one arm dead. Cairn made him fight on one leg. Cairn dumped a bucket of water across the yard so Echoes would slip if Evan forgot to tell the puddle who owned it. Every time Evan forgot, the puddle told him who owned him.
By late afternoon the panel finally decided he wasn't wasting everyone's time.
Training Milestones Achieved.
— Lane Override → Competent (C → C+).
— Echo Step → Competent (C → C+).
— Vector Compression (micro) → 15%.
— Vector Cleave → Stable (Phase II).
Overflow stored: 3% (Domain lattice).
Temporary Buff (Drill-Fed): Anchor Footing — Knockback resistance +12% (24h).
Evan let the messages fade and rolled his shoulder until it decided to be a shoulder.
"Again?" he asked.
Cairn stretched his neck until it cracked. "Against me? No. You'll start learning bad habits—mine. Time to hit a thing that hates you properly."
A Registry courier jogged into the yard, slate held out like a shield. "Captain Ghost! Controlled engagement ready—Sector Grayline. Mid-level anomaly corralled in a two-lane grid per your request."
Evan looked at Cairn. Cairn looked back with the dignity of a man pretending that wasn't his idea.
"Bring your Echoes," Cairn said. "Bring your lanes. Bring fewer promises."
They moved.
Grayline sat between Hook Street and the Slums, a stretch of warehouses that never decided if they preferred sugar or smoke. Registry had barricaded both ends—carts sideways, beams across, men with polehooks and faces that wanted to be somewhere else. Aelira stood on a stack of crates, braid wrapped twice, slate tucked in her belt.
"You asked for a live one," she said when Evan arrived. "We lured you a dog."
The dog was wrong. It wore a person's shape badly. Its skin flickered like heat above a forge, and where its eyes should have been there was only shimmer. It paced the grid between barricades, nosing at the air as if smell could tell it which word was prey.
"Designation," a scribe said, reading his slate, "Ripple. Mid-level. Reflex capture—"
The creature blurred and reappeared one meter to the left, repeating the last step of its pace in a loop. Evan felt the echo of it—time apologizing—and grinned a little despite himself.
"Good dog," he said. "Let's see if lanes heel."
He stepped into the grid. The wrong dog hissed.
[Combat Engaged: Ripple.]
"Registry pulls back," Aelira snapped, hand up; her squad retreated without complaint. She looked down at Evan. "Show me boundaries."
Evan nodded once. He stomped.
[Lane Override] — Engaged.
Grid Status: Synchronized (2 lanes).
Ally Buff: +10% speed/resistance (within grid).
Pipes under the street picked up his rhythm like they'd been hungry for it all day. The barricades hummed in sympathy. His storm threaded the corners and tied them together in his key. The wrong dog paced and found its loop now had edges.
It lunged.
Evan didn't move. He let it come. He gave it a step of his own and then asked the lane to lie.
The dog hit ground that went gentle for a heartbeat and stayed there, confused, its loop colliding with a loop it didn't own. Evan slid sideways, violet elbow kissed its neck, thunderstep rolled under its feet.
Vector Compression: 15% (redirect successful).
Damage Inflicted: Moderate.
The dog corrected. It blurred to his left—and discovered the left was a foot shorter today. Evan's Echo stepped into the stolen foot, took a bite off the wrong dog's rhythm and fed it back to him.
Echo Step: 2.2s (impact 60%).
It snapped at the copy and bit vapor. Evan's knee introduced itself to the thing's ribs.
"Again," Cairn called from behind the barricade, voice comfortable now that someone else was getting hit. "Cut decisions."
Evan spiraled a cleave.
[Vector Cleave] — Active.
Decision Pressure: +8%.
The wrong dog jumped away from the cut it hadn't seen yet, tripped on an elbow of street that used to be flat, and found itself under Evan's fist.
He didn't overcook it. He didn't Ascend. He didn't burn. He ended it with three ugly strikes like Cairn liked, and a thunderstep hum to make the lesson vibrate into the ground.
The creature disassembled like bad paper. Its flicker died. The air stopped apologizing.
Anomaly [Ripple] — Eliminated.
Reward: Minor XP.
Ghost Current (Phase III) — Practical mastery +5%.
Overflow stored: 4%.
Registry cheered in the quiet way bureaucrats do—relief first, notes second. Aelira only nodded, but her mouth did the thing it does right before a smile and right after a prayer.
"Captain Ghost," she said. "Do it again tomorrow."
Cairn clapped once. Loud. "You learned something before the bruise set. That's thievery. Good."
Evan rolled his neck and felt the grid listening. It was a low, obedient sound. He could get used to it. He would.
He left Grayline as the sun pretended to look warm. Hook Street exhaled bread into the lanes. The Slums tapped the only song they trusted. The Towers rang only once and managed to do it on time.
He cut through the ruins of the bakery because roads home are obligations. The pipes there had learned to hum without him. They did it quiet, a private thing. His storm sat down when he stepped in and didn't kick the walls for once.
The panel slipped into his eyes like a friend who doesn't knock.
Questline — Forge the Storm (Active).
Objective 1: Speed ≥ 1,500 (Progress: 1,316). Objective 2: Overflow ≥ 50% (Progress: 4%).Objective 3: Stabilize 3 Domains simultaneously (Current: 2 stabilized; concurrency 1).
Daily Training Report:— Lane Override: C+ (42% to B).— Echo Step: C+ (37% to B).— Vector Compression (micro): 15% ceiling reached; next threshold requires Gold-tier catalyst.— Vector Cleave: Stable, adaptive cutting unlocked (decision pressure scaling).
Temporary Buff (Community Sync): Pipe Choir — Civilian knocks within Hook/Slums add +2% momentum (cap 10%).
He lay back on the cold stone where ovens had been brave and stared up through the missing roof. The sky was a ceiling pretending it had a job. The city under it had started to remember the choreography of survival.
"Geometry," he said to nobody, to Cairn, to the rails, to Marra's ghost. "Fine."
He let Echoes stand at the door and the window and the spot where the counter had been, silent sentries he hadn't known how to make yesterday. He told the street outside to stay narrow while he slept. It agreed.
When sleep came, it did so like a negotiation he won on points.
Somewhere far off, the Registry slate coughed a new warning and chose not to find him yet. Somewhere closer, a child tapped three–two–three very softly, not alarm, just practice.
The lanes answered in his rhythm.
The storm, for once, did not argue.