Registry didn't give medals. It gave thresholds and the promise of more work on the other side.
By noon the day after Hollowframe, the east artery was choked with carts, beams, and wire. Volunteers hammered ribs of pipe into the cobbles at exact intervals like they were pinning a living thing to the street. Scribes ran lines of chalk down alley mouths, then scraped them away, then redrew them because bureaucracy is a magic that works if you repeat it enough. The air smelled of hot iron and old fear.
Aelira stood on a crate with her slate already angry. Her braid was new-tied and mean. "Third trial," she said, the words carrying like bells done right. "Three-Domain synchronization across distance. Not just a yard—district spread. Hook Street, Slums, Foundry. Concurrent."
Cairn rolled his shoulders like mountains rearranging. Yellow arcs stuck to him in neat lines, discipline made lightning. "You'll be alone between posts," he said. "No iron to hide behind. No me to make pretty walls. If you drop a note, something eats in the silence."
Evan flexed his hands until violet crackled along his knuckles. His ribs ached. His nose still tasted like dried rust from yesterday's bleed. His panel ghosted at the edge of sight, hungry.
"Good," he said. "Let's carry it."
A scribe in a too-clean coat swallowed and read off. "Hook Street grid established at Mill Square. Slums grid at Barrel Court. Foundry grid at Pillar Lane. Controlled anomalies prepared for introduction on your mark." His voice tried to be calm and landed somewhere near apology.
Aelira's eyes were knives in sunlight. "No Ascension unless you're dying, Ghost. Registry wants control."
Cairn's mouth tilted. "But if you are dying—Ascend ugly."
The volunteers laughed even though it wasn't a joke.
Evan hopped off the crate and the street answered like a dog recognizing boots.
[Trial Accepted — Three-Domain Concurrency]Objective: Maintain Lane Override in Hook Street, Slums, Foundry simultaneously while eliminating active anomalies.Time Limit: 12 minutes.Reward: Forge the Storm Objective #3 complete.Failure: Domain collapse cascade; Captain removal.
He didn't look at the last line twice. He ran.
Mill Square first. Hook Street woke around him with flour dust and stubborn ovens breathing. Registry had a cage built in the center like a stage. Inside, seven glass birds flapped and cut the air wrong—Splinters, mirror cousins of the Shardpack, edges catching sun into weapon.
"Open it," Evan said, and stomped. Pipes around the square rattled his rhythm. Bread-heat warmed his forearms. The grid hummed awake.
[Lane Override] — ENGAGED (Hook Street)Stability: 41% (local)Ally Buff: +10% speed/resistanceOverflow: 49%
The cage clanged open. Splinters took the sky and cut it into chords.
Evan didn't chase up. He told down what to do.
[Vector Cleave] — Vertical ShearDecision Pressure: +12% (airshed)
Lightning slashed the square into lanes the birds didn't expect. Two hit nothing that turned to wall and became broken mirrors on cobble. He sprang, elbows and knees and thundersteps doing blue-collar work. The last Splitter tried to divide and met an Echo with orders.
[Echo Step] — 4 active (2.6s)Impact: 60% (within grid)
Hook Street cheered low and rude, the way bakers do when knives behave. He didn't stop for bows.
"Hold that hum," he snapped to a butcher who'd turned foreman. "If it falters—knock three, pause, two, pause, three. My rhythm."
"We will," the butcher said, voice built for laughter that wasn't available. "Run, Ghost."
He ran.
Barrel Court in the Slums boiled. Registry had dragged a sewage mouth open and convinced something that should never have opinions to crawl out. It looked like rope and fat and teeth—Gutterwight—and it hated dry ground. Kids clung to doors and hammered pipes until their knuckles looked like strawberries.
Evan arrived like thunder wearing boots.
[Lane Override] — ENGAGED (Slums)Stability: 39% (local)Network Link: Hook Street maintained (31% integrity)Overflow: 49% → 50%
The panel pulsed.
[Forge the Storm Objective 2 COMPLETE]Overflow ≥ 50% achieved.New Storage: Excess storm bleed routed into Domain lattice (cap increased to 8%).Advisory: High Overflow increases system sensitivity (divine residue detection +10%).
He didn't have time to celebrate. The Gutterwight lunged, a coil of wet stealing the street's dignity.
"Back!" he barked, and the Slums obeyed because the Slums survived by obeying good orders.
He split six Echos and told them to trip the wight with trash. One flipped a crate. One dragged a cart sideways by its axle. One hammered a pipe to draw weight.
[Echo Step] — 6 active (2.8s)Gutterwight slowed.Decision Pressure: +9%
Evan slid under its coil and punched his storm into the seam where sewage thought it could pretend to be muscle. Lightning boiled it from inside. It screamed like pipes coughing up a body.
Damage: Severe.Overflow: 50% → 53% (stored 2%).Stability (Slums): 39% → 46%.
"Keep it narrow!" he shouted to kids who shouldn't have to learn this. "Barrels in lanes, carts crossways. Make it pick steps!"
"We will," one boy yelled back and didn't sound like a child about it. Three–two–three banged in tempo with his pulse.
The Gutterwight tried to run back to the mouth. Evan cut choice again. Thunderstep rolled it off its own slime and he cleaved until it stopped caring about verbs.
Anomaly [Gutterwight] — Eliminated (controlled).
"Hold the hum," Evan told the Court and saw men and women nod like they'd been doing that their whole lives anyway. His ribs screamed. His storm clawed for more.
Two grids singing. One to go.
Pillar Lane in the Foundry hurt to look at. Heat shimmered wrong even before the cage opened. Registry had collected the last sparks of yesterday's Ashfall and taught them a new name: Emberwhelps—four-legged things made of coal and temper, small now but multiplying when ignored.
Aelira waited on a beam with Silver squad ready to cave a building if Evan failed. Her braid snapped like a flag that hated the wind. "You're late," she said. Slate numbers lied for her. He was early by two heartbeats.
"Open it," he said, and stomped.
[Lane Override] — ENGAGED (Foundry)Stability: 36% (local)Network Link: Hook (28%), Slums (38%) — maintainedGlobal Sync: 31% (all three)Overflow: 53% → 55% (stored 3%)
The whelps burst like a scatter of fireworks at ankle height. They set new sparks everywhere they stepped and tried to be bigger with every bite of air.
"No," Evan told them, and for once words worked like weapons.
He dragged iron into his calves and dirt into his toes and bread-heat into his chest until he was a man-shaped conduit. He slashed once in a shallow circle.
[Vector Cleave] — Ring CutRadius: 26mEffect: Oxygen shear; ember starvationDamage: Severe (whelps)
Three died. The fourth split and tried to be courageous. He made it a memory.
Anomaly [Emberwhelps] — Eliminated (controlled).
His panel chimed hard enough to feel in teeth.
[Objective COMPLETE — Stabilize 3 Domains simultaneously]Forge the Storm (3/3):— Speed ≥ 1,500 (Pending: 1,362)— Overflow ≥ 50% (Achieved: 55%)— Three-Domain Concurrency (Achieved)Reward: Path Ascension Opportunity (Silver → Gold) — QUEUED.Condition: Ascend only at safe locus (Registry node).Note: Ascension stabilizers not deployed in current combat zone.
Aelira's eyes flicked across his face like she was counting sins. "You did it," she said, like a judge reading a sentence with good handwriting. Then her gaze cut to the pipe ribs shaking in three places at once. "Now hold it."
The trial wasn't over. Stability had to be kept across distance for two minutes while Registry introduced noise. Evan's storm crawled high and angry. Sweat ran cold down his back and burned hot when the Foundry breathed on it.
"Introduce interference," Aelira ordered.
"Are you kidding me?" a scribe squeaked.
"Introduced," Aelira repeated, and the man obeyed the way men do when orders look like knives.
They turned on machines. Steam hammers. Fans. Whistles shrieked—off-tempo, wrong—beating against his rhythm with petty cruelty. Over at Mill Square, someone dropped a stack of sheet pans on purpose because bureaucracy had sent them an instruction to see if he could juggle. Barrel Court shook when a cart toppled ash. It was as if the city was trying to forget the lessons he'd just taught it.
Global Sync: 31% → 26% (falling).Overflow: 55% → 58% (stored 4%).Warning: Neural strain 68%.
He couldn't be present in three places. Fine. He taught the lanes to be.
He split Echoes and told them not to fight. He told them to hold.
One Echo stood in Mill Square with knees bent like a runner ready to go, arms out like a conductor. Another planted at Barrel Court, palms on pipe, head bowed as if in prayer. A third took Pillar Lane and leaned his back against a beam as if the wood needed someone to remind it of its job.
[Echo Step] — 3 Anchor Echos (autonomous): 3.2s → 5.0s (Forge Pressure passive)Function: Domain pulse relayEffect: Local sync +6% per anchor
The minutes stretched like cheap taffy. Noise tried to colonize the song. He bled out rhythm through his teeth and felt it ride copper.
"Stay with me," he told Hook Street ovens.
They thumped. Flour fell like soft snow.
"Stay with me," he told the Slums.
Three–two–three hammered like heartbeats learning to do it together.
"Stay with me," he told the Foundry.
Rails sang a mean harmony and pretended they'd written it.
Global Sync: 26% → 33% → 37%.Overflow: 58% → 60% (stored 5%, cap 8%).
The whistles blew themselves hoarse trying to shove him off the line. He shoved back with a cleave he didn't swing, a cut made of refusal instead of lightning.
Time ran out.
The machines fell quiet, as if embarrassed.
The panel flashed white and honest.
[Trial COMPLETE — Three-Domain Concurrency Held]Reward Granted: Path Ascension Opportunity — UNLOCKED (pending activation).Secondary Rewards:— Speed +24 (1,362 → 1,386)— Lane Override (B−)— Echo Step (B−)— Vector Compression cap +1% (→ 22%)Overflow: 60% (stored 5%)
The cheer rose in three places and met in the middle of him. Hook Street clapped with hands used to dough. The Slums whooped with throats that knew other uses. Foundry workers pounded wrenches against beams with the most pious rhythm they had ever made.
Aelira let herself smile like a shrine opening its door. Cairn, who had walked in silent sometime between the last whistle and the cheer, nodded once—heavy, proud, pretending not to be.
"Registry wants you at Node Seven for Ascension protocols," Aelira said, climbing down from her beam. "Stabilizers. Tethers. The parts that keep men from dissolving when the system eats them."
Evan swayed on his feet and swallowed the urge to grin like a man who'd gotten away with a robbery. "When."
"Tonight," she said. "We won't get a better window."
Cairn's yellow arcs made a soft sound that had to be approval because he was constitutionally allergic to saying the word. "Eat first," he said. "Sleep if the city lets you. You're no use to anyone if Gold turns you into glass."
Evan looked at the pipes and the ribs of the city they'd built today. He looked at the three grids still humming his note without his feet on them. He looked at the sky pretending to be innocent.
Then it started to snow ash.
Not Factory ash. Not from a furnace. Slow, fine, gray flakes that refused to obey wind. They settled on his arms and didn't melt. They settled on beams and refused to be brushed off. People reached for their hats like weather respected hats.
The panel twitched, then stabilized.
[System Notice] — Residue Accumulation Increased.Correlation to Divine-class signatures: 83%Advisory: Ascend at protected locus. Exposure during Ascension increases interference risk.
Aelira's smile left like a guest who recognized a different invitation. "We move now," she said. "Before the sky gets ideas."
Evan stared at the ash until his eyes hurt from not blinking. It clung to his arcs like the opposite of fire. His storm hissed and stayed leashed.
"Node Seven," he said, voice scraping bricks. "I'll take your tethers."
Cairn slapped his shoulder with a hand like a friendly wall. "And when you break them, I'll be there to tell you you're an idiot."
"Good," Evan said. He tasted flour that wasn't there and smoke that wouldn't leave and something else—the clean metal taste of change.
He jogged toward Node Seven with the city still humming inside him, three fires carried by one set of lungs. The ash fell slower where he passed, as if insulted. The bells in the Towers tried to ring on time and managed a beat and a half before they forgot what they were for.
The panel ghosted in one more time before the stabilizers swallowed him.
[Path Ascension Opportunity — READY]Eligible Forks (Gold Tier):— City's Spine (Gold): Expand Domain lattice control; sustain three+ grids without presence; convert fear → momentum (cap 20%).— Storm Magistrate (Gold): Punitive cleave; judgment strikes scale with citywide cadence; burn HP for verdict.Warning: Choice will alter Lane responses and public trust.Note: Divine residue interference probable (low). Proceed at protected node.
He didn't choose yet. Men who run fast learn which corners demand patience.
He passed Barrel Court and the kids banged three–two–three; he didn't look because looking would turn it into a moment he could drop. He passed Mill Square and the ovens breathed hot and the butcher lifted his chin in a nod you give to men who might not come back. He passed Pillar Lane and workers stole a hand to salute because their hands were the only religion they could be caught practicing.
The ash kept falling. The storm kept humming. The road to Gold felt like a door with his name on it and teeth behind it.
"Again," he told the city and the system and the ash, and for once all three seemed to agree on the word.