"Infirmary," Meris said from nearby, her voice rough. The Verdant healer's sleeves were rolled up, forearms streaked with greenish residue. "Alive. Barely shocked. More frightened than harmed. The wards were confused, not fully turned."
"They were pulled," Nellie whispered. "Weren't they? Like the tug on the outer line."
Kethel nodded once. "But from inside the Hall."
Aiden's storm snarled.
"Splinter?" he asked.
"Too small," Kethel said. "But the same… taste."
Runa frowned. "Could it be a mistake? A flaw in the scribing?"
"Elowen does not make that kind of mistake," Veldt said sharply.
"Compliment noted," Elowen said dryly. Her gaze remained on the bruised rune. "Kethel?"
"The copy rig in the north lecture hall flickered earlier," Kethel said. "I felt it through the main lines. I suspected an echo, but not this quickly." Their fingers tightened on the staff. "Something is learning to ride piggyback on our own workings."
"So the more we use the wards," Myra said slowly, "the more chances it has to… hitch a ride."
"Not all workings," Kethel corrected. "Only the ones that touch both the Hall and the Marsh in their patterning."
Nellie swallowed. "Like training circles. And… and the projection rigs. And the—"
"Elly." A new voice cut in from the far side of the Yard.
Aiden turned.
A woman limped toward them from the direction of the infirmary. Short, compact, hair in a wild knot under a healer's band, sleeves shoved up to reveal tattooed vines twining down her arms.
He recognized her as Master Hara—the infirmary overseer who'd clucked over his first storm-burns like he was an interesting lab accident.
She didn't look intrigued now.
"Patient's stable," she said without preamble. "Pulse threads were twisted, but Meris untangled most of them. No permanent channel scarring."
Elowen inclined her head. "Thank you."
"I didn't do the hard part," Hara said. Her sharp gaze landed on Kethel. "The wards did. They stopped halfway."
"Because Raikos told them no," Kethel said.
Everyone looked at Aiden.
He flinched. "I didn't— I was in class."
"Not just now," Kethel said impatiently. "On the line this morning. The patterns remember refusal. The Hall is not a stone. It is an argument. You taught it one more way to say 'stop.'"
"That's not how it felt in my head," Aiden muttered.
"Of course not," Kethel said. "Inside your head is messy."
Myra made a choking sound that might have been a laugh.
Nellie's eyes shone. "So… because Aiden pushed back, the Hall… learned? It used that shape to stop the circle from going all the way wrong."
"On a small scale," Kethel said. "Barely. Do not assign him sainthood yet."
"I wasn't," Nellie said, flushing.
Myra elbowed Aiden. "Look at you, teaching walls things."
He barely heard them.
His gaze was locked on the bruised rune.
He could feel it now—a faint echo of the earlier tug, trapped in the ink and sap, trying to wriggle.
His storm rose in answer.
"Kethel," he said slowly. "Can I… feel it? Without touching it. Like on the map."
Kethel studied him for a long, measuring moment.
"Elowen?" they asked.
Elowen said, "If something in my Hall is learning to eat my students, I want to know if it has a face."
Veldt scowled. "He just spent an hour on the ward-map."
"And he is still upright," Elowen said. "Which is more than some of the older Wardens at his age could say."
Veldt subsided, annoyed.
Kethel nodded once. "Very well," they said. "Stormthread, inside the practice ring. The rest of you, perimeter. If he starts to glow in a way you dislike, hit him."
"That is my favorite instruction you have ever given," Myra said.
They moved quickly.
Aiden stepped over the scorched circle's line. The rune glimmered under his boot, dull violet threads writhing faintly inside the usual green.
The pup whined.
Aiden hesitated. "Stay," he told it gently, setting the cub just outside the ring.
It flattened its ears, unhappy.
"So am I," he said. "We'll compare complaints later."
Nellie, Myra, and Runa took up positions equidistant around the circle's edge. Elowen and Kethel flanked them. Veldt and Lirienne watched from just beyond.
Aiden took a slow breath.
The storm was already pacing.
He could feel the Hall's normal hum—stone, roots, runes. The brush of the outer lines like a distant heartbeat. The faint memory of the Warden out past the walls.
He pushed his awareness down instead.
Along his legs.
Into his boots.
Into the rune.
It felt wrong immediately.
Not like the Marsh.
Not that vast.
A splinter, Kethel had said. Too small. But it had the same sideways twist—trying to yank the ward into a shape it wasn't built to hold.
He felt where it clung to the circle—like mold in a crack.
"It's… hooked in," he said through his teeth. "Like it's using the training pattern as a… doorway."
"Can you feel where it came from?" Kethel asked.
He reached.
Not out through the wall.
Back through the pattern.
Through the practice circle's image in the Hall's memory—other days, other drills, other students standing here throwing safe, contained spells at straw.
A faint thread ran from that composite image outward.
North.
Toward the Marsh.
He followed it only far enough to taste the edge of fog.
The Warden's full presence was not there.
Just a shadow of its storm.
A distant, annoyed awareness.
Someone has been playing with my puppets.
His stomach tightened.
"It's using old connections," he said. "Anything that's touched the Marsh before. Training spells. Projection rigs. The Hollow. It's… dragging splinters back along them."
"And here," Kethel said, tapping the bruised rune, "it almost succeeded in turning the Hall inward on itself."
The wrongness tugged at Aiden's awareness again—inviting, wheedling, trying to yank the line into inversion.
He recognized the feeling now.
Not-ready, the Warden had pressed into his bones.
This was different.
Not testing him.
Testing the Hall.
The pup scratched anxiously at the circle's edge, letting out a sharp, unhappy yip.
Aiden exhaled.
"Can I… push it out?" he asked. "Like we stopped the tug. But… focused."
Kethel's eyes narrowed. "How?"
He thought of the refusal on the ward-map.
Of the way the Hall had hummed in approval.
"Not with storm," he said slowly. "Not like a strike. With… shape. Show it what 'out' looks like and ask the ward to agree."
"Ask," Elowen repeated, watching him.
"Wards respond better to cooperation," Nellie whispered, almost automatically. "You told us that," she added, glancing at Elowen.
Elowen's mouth curved the tiniest bit. "I did."
Kethel considered. "Try," they said. "If it bites, we cut it free."
"Comforting," Myra muttered.
Aiden closed his eyes.
He let his storm rise—but only to the point Elowen had drilled into him. Enough to light his marks, not enough to set his veins on fire.
He pictured the circle the way it should be.
Green-blue lines pushing threat outward.
Anchored to stone, to Hall, to Elowen's will.
Not open.
Not inverted.
He held that image.
Then, carefully, he nudged.
Not at the splinter.
At the ward.
We don't want this, he thought.
You don't want this.
Remember no.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the rune shivered under his boots.
The violet threads writhed—
—and recoiled.
Not far.
Not enough.
They clung like stubborn burrs.
Aiden hissed.
"It's holding on," he said. "I need—"
The pup yelped.
He felt it before he saw it—tiny storm flaring at the edge of the circle, lightning reaching for his marks like a hand.
He could have blocked it.
Shut it out.
Elowen would not be pleased if he just let unknown storm sources bolt in mid-ward.
But this wasn't unknown.
It was theirs.
"Fine," he muttered. "Come on, then."
He opened, carefully, to the pup.
Their storms brushed.
Not fully joined.
Just enough for the cub's small, fierce refusal to slot against his larger one, like a second palm on the same door.
NO, the pup's storm said, clear and simple and outraged.
The circle answered.
The rune flared green-blue.
Violet threads shrieked—
He felt them, in a way that had nothing to do with ears—tiny, furious, alien shapes being scraped out of their borrowed groove.
But as they went, one brushed him.
Not his storm.
His thoughts.
For half an instant, Aiden saw—
Fog under stone.
A hollow, somewhere deep in the Marsh, not the trial one.
Half-collapsed.
Full of bones that were not all beast.
Something huge curled around them, sleeping.
Waking.
An eye like a storm-ring opening in the dark.
FOUND YOU, a voice said, not through the wards, not through the marks, but straight across the space between.
Aiden's breath ripped out of him.
The violet threads tore free.
They streaked along the floor like spilled ink, racing toward the outer ring of the practice yard.
Kethel slammed their staff down.
A wall of old runes snapped up in their path.
The splinter hissed—Aiden could feel the shape of its frustration—and dissipated into greasy smoke that the Hall swallowed with a sound like disgust.
The rune under Aiden's feet burned bright green for a moment—
Then faded back to normal.
Silence hit the Yard like another wall.
Aiden opened his eyes.
His legs shook.
The pup collapsed into a panting heap outside the circle, fur crackling weakly.
Nellie was crying quietly without seeming to realize it, Verdant mark flickering.
Myra's knives were in her hands, because of course they were, even though there'd been nothing to stab.
Runa looked like she was one second away from trying to hit the Marsh itself with her hammer.
Kethel exhaled slowly. "Effective," they said. "Messy, but effective."
Elowen stepped up to the circle's edge. "What did it say?" she asked.
Aiden hadn't realized his hands were clenched tight until he tried to answer and they wouldn't move.
He forced the words out, throat dry.
"It… found me," he said. "Not the Hall. Not the line. Me."
Myra swore softly.
Nellie's hands flew to her mouth.
Runa's jaw tightened.
Kethel's eyes went colder than anything Aiden had yet seen from them.
"Elowen," they said quietly. "We are past splinters testing. The Warden is mapping paths. Through circles. Through echoes. Through him."
Elowen's gaze didn't leave Aiden's face.
Her voice, when she spoke, was steady.
"Then we are done waiting for it to choose the ground," she said. "If it is learning our lines through our boy, we will make sure the next lesson cuts."
The wind shifted over the Yard.
Somewhere beyond the walls, the Marsh moved.
Aiden's storm surged up, wanting to answer the voice that had said found you.
He held it down.
Not yet.
His knees buckled.
Runa caught his arm.
Myra stepped inside the circle without waiting for permission and slung his other arm over her shoulders.
The pup staggered in and head-butted his shin like an offended goat.
Nellie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and whispered, "I can… I can see the thread it tried to ride. I can block some of them if I know where they are."
Kethel stared at her for a long, considering second.
"Hara," Elowen called. "Keep the infirmary on alert. Meris, I want every training circle checked for contamination. Veldt, prepare a controlled excursion plan for the Marsh edge. Lirienne, gather your scouts."
"And us?" Myra asked.
Elowen finally looked at all four of them together.
Stormthread.
"Eat," she said. "Sleep. Then report back to the Inner Circle at twilight."
Myra blinked. "Twilight? But you said—"
"The Marsh does not care for lesson plans," Elowen said. "And the Warden has just told us it is paying attention."
She held Aiden's gaze.
"It has found you," she said. "Now we will show it that you are not alone."
The storm under his ribs answered that.
Not with fear.
Not with eagerness.
With something new.
Something the Hall had just learned alongside him.
A shape that meant:
No.
And also:
Come, then.
His legs still shook.
His head still rang with the echo of FOUND YOU.
His Cohort's hands were the only thing holding him upright.
But as they helped him out of the ruined circle and the Yard buzzed into urgent motion around them, one thought cut through the exhaustion.
If the Warden was done playing with splinters—
Then the next time it reached through stone, it would not be alone on the other side of the line.
They would be waiting.
Together.
And this time, when it tried to pull the Hall inside out, the Hall—and the boy it had noticed—would pull back.
Hard.
---