He bore down with nothing but muscle and stubbornness and the memory of three other people and one small storm looking at him like he mattered.
Aiden began shaking violently from strain alone.
Seconds stretched.
Sweat dripped from his chin onto the stone.
Kethel watched in absolute silence.
The pressure pushed harder.
Something in his stance started to give—
And Aiden did the unthinkable.
He didn't fight the weight.
He shared it.
Not to lightning.
To memory.
To Runa's endurance.
To Nellie's binding.
To Myra's ridiculous, impossible balance.
We, he thought wildly. Not I.
The pressure wavered.
Then settled.
Then lifted.
The fault-line faded.
Aiden collapsed fully to the stone, gasping, drenched in sweat, limbs trembling so hard he could barely keep his hands under him.
The cage runes dimmed to a gentle glow.
Kethel exhaled once.
Barely audible.
"You held without your storm," they said. "That is the threshold."
He couldn't speak.
Couldn't even laugh.
He just lay there shaking while the storm inside him slowly—hesitantly—settled back into place.
No longer roaring.
Listening.
[STORMBOUND DISCIPLINE: RANK I ACQUIRED]
[PASSIVE EFFECT: Storm Impulse -15% / Cohort Anchor +10%]
[WARNING: NERVOUS / MUSCULAR FATIGUE CRITICAL. REST REQUIRED.]
Kethel turned the staff.
"Lesson one complete."
From high above the Academy—
Nellie gasped awake, clutching her chest.
The thread had not stretched.
It had dropped.
Myra bolted upright in bed at the same moment, heart racing and hair a wild cloud.
Runa sat straight up, hand on her hammer before her eyes even opened, heart pounding once—hard.
And the pup—curled at Nellie's feet instead of Aiden's tonight for the first time in days—
Threw its head back.
And howled.
---
It wasn't loud.
Not really.
But the sound cut straight through stone and sleep and wards like a lightning line through stormcloud.
Nellie flinched, hands flying to her Verdant mark.
"My threads—" she gasped. "Something… dropped—"
Myra fell off the bed.
Not gracefully.
Sheets tangled around one ankle, she hit the floor, swore, then clawed her way upright anyway. "Aiden?"
Runa was already on her feet, braid swinging, armor half-pulled on over a sleep shirt.
She listened.
For footsteps.
For shouts.
For the familiar, low hum of Aiden's storm through the walls.
Nothing.
Just the pup's howl fading into a furious, scared whine as it bolted for the door, claws skidding on stone.
"Myra," Runa said. "Door. Now."
Myra yanked it open.
The pup didn't wait.
It shot into the corridor in a crackling streak of blue-white fuzz.
Nellie stumbled after it, one hand on the wall, the other clutching her satchel to her chest.
"I can't feel him properly—" she choked. "The thread's there but it's… it's numb—"
"Follow the pup," Runa said. "He'll take us."
He did.
They ran.
Down one stair, then another. Past sleepy students sticking their heads out of doorways. Past a scowling warden who opened his mouth to yell and then thought better of stepping in front of Runa moving at speed.
They hit the Verdant Hall corridor where the air always felt a little thicker with green.
The pup skidded to a halt.
Whirled.
Scrabbled at the sealed stair that led downward—the one students weren't supposed to touch.
Myra's eyes widened. "Oh, that's forbidden. That's extra forbidden."
Runa set her jaw. "Good."
Nellie pressed a hand flat against the door rune.
Verdant light flared under her palm.
The threads she saw there weren't the calm, anchored lines of classroom halls.
They were storm-tangled.
Heavy.
Frightened.
Aiden's resonance hung on them like sweat.
"He's down there," she whispered. "Hurting. But… held."
Myra banged on the stone. "Elowen! Kethel! Somebody open the ominous mystery door before I start picking at it!"
The stair rune pulsed once in answer.
Then the stone folded away like petals peeling back from an old, hard flower.
Cold air rolled up.
So did a familiar voice.
"Stand aside."
Elowen came first.
Her coat was unbuttoned, sleeves rolled, silver hair slightly mussed like she'd been moving fast. Her gaze swept over all three girls in one pass: Myra panting, Nellie shaking, Runa steady and furious, the pup vibrating with sparks at their feet.
Behind Elowen, Kethel emerged, staff dimmer than usual.
Between them walked Aiden.
Walked was generous.
He was upright, technically.
His eyes were open.
But every line of him shook—not with storm, but with simple, exhausted muscle failure. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. His cloak hung crooked where someone had thrown it around his shoulders after everything else.
His storm was there.
Quiet.
Dim.
Present.
Myra's knees nearly gave out in relief.
"Aiden," she breathed. Then louder, because that wasn't enough: "What in the actual storm did you two do to him?"
Nellie stumbled forward. Verdant light flickered instantly behind her eyes.
Runa caught her shoulder. "Check, don't drain," she murmured. "He needs what's left."
Nellie nodded quickly, tears already building.
She stepped into reach and pressed two fingers gently to Aiden's wrist.
Threads flared.
She hissed.
"Aiden—"
He looked at her.
Tired.
But there.
"Hey," he rasped. His voice sounded scraped raw. "You're… up early."
"Your thread dropped like a stone," she said, voice breaking. "Don't joke at me right now."
He flinched at the crack in her tone. "Sorry."
The pup launched itself at his chest.
He oofed as eight pounds of damp lightning hit him square in the ribs and clung there, snarling at everything and everyone that wasn't him.
Sparks crawled over his shirt.
They didn't bite.
They just… joined.
For a heartbeat, Nellie saw it clear as any diagram:
Storm.
Boy.
Pup.
Threads braiding tighter.
Kethel watched her watching.
"The discipline holds," they said quietly. "Good. I was not interested in repeating the fault-lines."
Myra rounded on them. "What are fault-lines? Why does he look like he wrestled a building? Why did the pup scream the entire dorm awake like someone had cut his soul in half?"
"Aiden learned to hold his storm when it cannot move and when it is gone," Kethel said. "He learned that he exists when neither answers. It was… inelegant." They inclined their head a fraction toward Aiden. "But effective."
Runa's eyes narrowed. "He could have died."
"Not in that chamber," Kethel said. "The cage would have preserved what remained."
"That is not comforting," Myra snapped.
"It was not designed to be," Kethel said.
Elowen lifted a hand.
Silence fell as fast as if she'd drawn a blade.
"He is alive," she said. "He is… more stable than yesterday. And you"—her gaze flicked over each of the girls in turn—"felt him change. That was the point."
Nellie wiped at her face, furious with herself for crying but unable to stop. "It felt like you cut him away from us," she whispered.
Elowen's expression softened at that. "No," she said. "We cut him away from one thing, so he could choose the others properly."
Aiden swallowed.
His gaze drifted, unsteady, to each of them.
Myra, vibrating with protective anger.
Nellie, shaking, still funneling tiny threads of soothing Verdant energy into his pulse without meaning to.
Runa, solid as ever, positioned unconsciously between him and Kethel like a shield.
The pup, glaring at Kethel like it would fight a Warden if necessary.
He felt his storm respond.
Not in fear.
Not in want.
In recognition.
"This was… my choice," he said hoarsely. "I said yes."
"You didn't exactly know what you were saying yes to," Myra shot back.
"I rarely do," he said. "Still counts."
Despite herself, she huffed a wet laugh.
Elowen stepped back from them, giving the cluster of four—and one small lightning beast—space.
"Stormthread," she said. "Take him upstairs. Feed him until he complains. Let him sleep until I send for you."
Myra saluted with two fingers. "Gladly."
Runa shifted her grip under Aiden's arm without comment.
He leaned into it.
Not because his storm demanded it.
Because his legs did.
Nellie stayed at his side, watching his threads like a hawk.
The pup refused to move from his chest.
Kethel watched them go.
"You finished the threshold work faster than I expected," they said to Elowen, once the echoes of their footsteps faded.
"No," Elowen replied quietly, eyes on the stairs. "He did."
Kethel's pale gaze slid toward the northern wall, where unseen fog still pressed.
"The Warden will feel that shift," they murmured. "It will test him again."
"Yes," Elowen said. "And next time it does…"
She looked up at the ceiling, at the web of Verdant and storm-threaded wards that hummed there.
"…it will find a boy who knows where he ends and it begins."
Far beyond the walls, out in the marsh, something vast turned its attention this way again.
The pressure brushed the wards like a fingertip against glass.
The Warden felt the difference in the storm it had marked.
It did not whisper not ready this time.
It did not whisper anything at all.
It waited.
And in a dorm room piled with cloaks and blankets and one snoring dwarf, three exhausted first-years, and a pup who refused to sleep anywhere but on Aiden's chest—
Stormthread slept.
Aiden's storm slept, too.
Not empty.
Not broken.
Just… quiet.
For now.