The greenhouse glowed like a captive star against evening fog.
Arin spotted it from three blocks away—bioluminescent plants breathing soft blue through condensation-fogged glass, making the curved structure look less like architecture and more like something grown. Organic. Alive in ways the city's metal and stone could never manage.
He climbed the elevated walkway, boots ringing against suspended metal. The stabilizer had gone from uncomfortably hot to almost painful—a constant burn against his sternum that made him want to tear the thing off and throw it into the fog below.
He didn't. Because without it, he'd probably light up like a fucking beacon visible from every district in Caelum.
The greenhouse door was unlocked. Always was. Bram's theory: if someone wanted in badly enough to break glass, a lock wouldn't stop them. Might as well save the repair costs.
Warm air hit Arin the moment he stepped inside. Humid. Heavy with the scent of wet earth and something mint-sharp that cleared his head despite his exhaustion. The plants responded to his presence—glowvines brightening slightly, leaves turning toward him like faces seeking sunlight.
He tried not to think about what that meant.
"Arin. Over here"
Bram's voice came from deeper in the greenhouse.
Arin followed the sound, weaving between planter beds where sigil-roots pulsed with amber light and resonance-flowers bloomed in colors that didn't exist in nature. The path led to the central clearing—a circular space where floor tiles were etched with patterns older than modern Weave theory.
Bram stood near the far edge, arms crossed. He looked tired. More tired than Arin had seen him, with shadows under his amber eyes and tension in his broad shoulders that suggested he'd been working all day.
Lira sat on one of the low benches, still in her Warden uniform though she'd removed the gauntlets and unbraided her hair. She looked up when Arin entered.
"How was the Archives?" she asked.
"Survived it." Arin dropped his satchel near the bench. "Mael dragged me to this place called the Copper Thread after. Met his girlfriend Sylvie."
"I've heard about her," Lira said.
"She's good for him."
"That's what matters." Lira's eyes tracked Arin's movements with uncomfortable precision. "You look better than this morning."
"All thanks to Mael."
Bram gestured toward the center of the clearing. "Shirt off. Let me see the stabilizer."
Arin complied, pulling off his tunic and dropping it beside the satchel. The cool air felt good against his skin. The stabilizer sat against his chest—a thin disc of resonant glass about the size of a coin, held in place by a copper wire that hung from his neck.
Bram approached, amber eyes narrowing. He pressed fingertips against the glass.
"Fuck," he muttered.
"That bad?"
"It's running at maximum capacity. Feel this." Bram grabbed Arin's hand and pressed it against the stabilizer.
The glass was hot enough to leave marks. Not quite burning—not yet—but close. A faint heat shimmer rose from its surface like pavement in summer.
"It's compensating for increased pressure," Bram explained, releasing Arin's hand. "The Weave's pushing harder against your boundaries. Probably been building all day while you forced yourself to act normal at the Archives."
"So what do we do?"
"We fix the actual problem instead of relying on a bandage." Bram moved toward his workbench, retrieving something that looked like a tuning fork made of crystal. "This will hurt. Sorry in advance."
He touched the crystal to the stabilizer.
The resulting sound made Arin's teeth ache. Not loud—barely audible, actually—but wrong. Discordant. Like two notes that should never be played simultaneously fighting for dominance inside his skull.
Bram listened with the focus of someone diagnosing illness. Then lowered the crystal.
"You're leaking," he said. "Badly. The stabilizer's catching maybe sixty percent of your resonance. The rest bleeds through gaps faster than the device can compensate."
Lira stood. "Is that dangerous?"
"For him? Uncomfortable. For everyone else?" Bram's expression was grim. "Anymore and anyone with training will sense him coming from blocks away. Which would make hiding impossible."
"Great," Arin muttered.
"Sit." Bram gestured toward the clearing's center. "We're fixing this tonight."
*******
Arin lowered himself cross-legged onto cold stone. The resonance glyphs etched into the floor tiles pulsed in slow rhythm—like heartbeat, like breathing.
Lira positioned herself at the periphery. Watching. Silent. But her presence was grounding in ways Arin couldn't articulate.
Bram sat opposite him, arms resting on his knees. "Your Anchor nature isn't separate from you. That's the mistake. You're treating it like infection to be quarantined."
"Feels like infection."
"I know. But it's not." Bram leaned forward. "It's part of your resonance structure now. Trying to wall it off completely is why you're leaking."
Arin frowned. "How else am I supposed to handle it?"
"By integrating it." Bram's voice carried the patient weight of someone explaining simple concepts to someone who kept missing the point. "Imagine you're a house. Right now, you're trying to lock one room and pretend it doesn't exist. But the walls are thin. The presence bleeds through anyway."
"So what—I just open the door? Let it take over?"
"No. You make that room part of the house's foundation. Integrated. Load-bearing." Bram gestured around them. "The Weave doesn't recognize artificial divisions. It sees you as whole. So you need to be whole—accepting the change while maintaining your core."
"That sounds impossible."
"It is. Until it isn't." Bram's amber eyes glinted. "You're not fighting to stay the same, Arin. You're learning to be both things at once. Human and Anchor. Yourself and something more."
The words settled over Arin like weight.
"How do we start?" he asked quietly.
"By stopping the running." Bram's tone gentled. "First step: feel your full resonance. All of it. No hiding. No suppression. Just awareness."
Every instinct Arin possessed screamed against that idea. Hiding meant survival. Exposure meant unpredictable consequences.
But Bram was right. Hiding wasn't working. The stabilizer proved that.
"Close your eyes," Bram instructed. "Drop your barriers slowly. Let me see what you're really carrying."
Arin obeyed.
The moment he relaxed his mental walls—the ones he'd been maintaining for days through sheer willpower and desperation—the world exploded into sensation.
The Weave was everywhere.
Not metaphorically. Everywhere. Threads connecting everything—the plants to soil, soil to stone, stone to city, city to sky. Each thread hummed with information: growth, decay, movement, stillness, life sustaining itself through connections so complex they looked like chaos but weren't. Pattern beneath pattern beneath pattern.
And he could feel all of it.
Lira's presence burned like cold fire in his awareness—worry and determination and love threaded through with protective fury that made her feel larger than her physical form. Bram registered as calculation and concern and resolve wrapped around something older, something that tasted like time and patience.
Beyond the greenhouse, the city hummed. Millions of threads connecting millions of lives. Disturbances building in distant districts like pressure beneath ice. Fissures forming. The Beckoned stirring.
And beneath it all, something vast watching. Waiting.
Too much. Too much.
Arin gasped. His awareness started fragmenting—losing edges, bleeding into the connections, becoming part of the Weave instead of observer.
"That's enough." Bram's voice cut through like hot blade through butter. "Pull back. But gently. Don't slam the door."
Arin tried.
Pulled too hard.
His control snapped like overstretched cord. Resonance flared outward in a brief, wild pulse. The plants around them reacted immediately—glowvines brightening to near-painful intensity, leaves turning toward him, roots shifting beneath soil.
He jerked his eyes open, breath coming fast.
"Ysen's light," he gasped.
"That's what I mean about leaking." Bram's tone stayed level. "You're either completely open or completely closed. No middle ground. No regulation."
"I don't know how to—"
"That's why we're training." Bram stood, pacing. "You don't hold your breath until you pass out, then gasp. You regulate. Constant, controlled breathing. That's what we're teaching you."
Arin pressed palms against cold stone. "How long will this take?"
"Normally? Months. We have days." Bram's expression turned grim. "So we practice until it becomes reflex. Until your unconscious mind learns the position and holds it without thought."
"And if that doesn't happen in time?"
Bram didn't answer. Didn't need to.
They all knew what happened if Arin walked into that assessment unable to hide what he was.
***
"Watch," Bram said.
He lowered himself back onto the floor, mirroring Arin's cross-legged position. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Bram's resonance became visible.
Not physically—not exactly. More like Arin could suddenly sense it the way he'd sensed everything when his barriers dropped. But Bram's resonance was different. Controlled. It looked like perfectly still water with depth beneath—calm surface hiding complexity.
"I'm always partially open, though my reach won't be as deep or as wide as yours." Bram explained. His voice carried an odd double quality, as though speaking from two places simultaneously. "Just enough to sense threats. Not enough to broadcast location. It's like peripheral vision. You're not staring at everything, but you notice movement."
The demonstration lasted maybe ten seconds. Then Bram's resonance withdrew—not slamming shut, but flowing back into himself like water returning to its source.
He opened his eyes. Looking directly at Arin.
"Your turn," he said. "But smaller this time. Just the greenhouse. Nothing beyond these walls."
Arin closed his eyes again.
This time, he aimed for a crack instead of opening floodgates. Just enough awareness to sense the immediate area. Just enough to notice without being overwhelmed.
It worked.
Sort of.
He could feel the greenhouse's boundaries—glass walls holding back fog, floor beneath him, roof overhead. Could sense Lira watching, Bram's steady presence, plants breathing their slow vegetable existence.
Not overwhelming. Not consuming.
He held it for maybe thirty seconds before control slipped and awareness tried expanding again. He pulled back quickly and the sensation faded.
Arin opened his eyes, breathing hard.
"Better," Bram said. "Those thirty seconds felt different, didn't they?"
"Yeah." Arin wiped sweat from his forehead. "Aware. Like the Weave was under my control."
"That's the position. That's what you need to learn to live in." Bram gestured. "Again. Find it faster this time."
***
They practiced for two hours.
Arin opened partially, held for increasing increments, pulled back carefully. Each attempt taught him something—where the balance point sat, how much pressure it required to maintain, what signs indicated he was about to lose control.
Lira brought water at one point. Pressed a cool cup into his hands without speaking. Her touch was brief but said more than a hundred words of encouragement.
By the tenth attempt, Arin could hold partial openness for two minutes.
By the twentieth, almost five before exhaustion forced him to rest.
His head pounded. His body ached from concentration—muscles tight, jaw clenched, hands trembling. But there was progress. Measurable, undeniable progress.
"You're learning," Bram said after the twenty-fifth attempt. "Not fast enough, but learning."
"That's encouraging," Arin muttered.
"Truth is encouraging." Bram retrieved something from his workbench—a small crystal about the size of a fingernail, wrapped in copper wire. "Keep this in your pocket. When you close off completely or open too wide, it'll pulse. Feedback mechanism to train your unconscious mind."
He dropped the crystal into Arin's palm.
The thing was warm. Responsive. It pulsed once immediately—acknowledging his resonance, syncing itself to his patterns.
"This helps you learn the position," Bram continued. "But you have to use it constantly. Every waking moment. Walking. Eating. Working. Find the balance and live there."
"What about the stabilizer?" Arin touched the device still burning against his chest.
Bram examined it again—pressing fingers against glass, frowning at whatever he sensed. "Keep wearing it. It'll help with major fluctuations. But don't rely on it exclusively."
"Why not?"
"Because it's a training wheel." Bram's expression was serious. "In an ideal world, you won't need them. Eventually, maintaining partial openness will be as natural as breathing. But only if you practice without crutches."
Arin slipped the crystal into his pocket. It pulsed warm against his thigh—steady and present.
*******
They left the greenhouse together—Arin and Lira walking through evening streets where fog had thickened to near-opacity. Lamps glowed like suspended moons. The city hummed its constant background noise.
Arin practiced as they walked.
Finding partial openness. Holding it. Feeling the threads around him without being overwhelmed. It was difficult—attention splitting between walking, avoiding other pedestrians, talking to Lira, maintaining control.
The training crystal pulsed three times in ten minutes—each pulse indicating he'd closed off too much, retreated into habits of hiding.
"You're doing it now?" Lira asked, noticing his concentration. "While walking?"
"Bram said every waking moment." Arin stepped around a vendor packing up their stall. "Might as well start."
"How's it feel?"
"Like trying to juggle while learning to walk." But even as he said it, the crystal pulsed less frequently. He was finding the balance point more consistently. "But better than this morning."
They walked in silence for a while. Arin maintained partial openness, sensing Lira beside him, the city within ten meters around them, disturbances building in nooks and crannies he couldn't see but could feel through threads of resonance connecting everything.
"Two weeks," Lira said quietly. "Maybe less. We can do this."
Arin wanted to believe her. Wanted to find comfort in her certainty.
But the crystal pulsed again—warning that he'd closed off—and he had to consciously reopen, reestablish the position, maintain it through will and practice and desperation.
*******
Their apartment was dark when they arrived. Late enough that most residents had slept. The courtyard's lumipool reflected pale light across walls, creating shifting shadows that moved like living things.
Arin was exhausted. Every muscle ached. His head pounded with the special intensity reserved for overusing mental resources the body wasn't designed to handle.
But he needed to practice more.
He sat at the kitchen table while Lira made tea. Maintained partial openness. Sensed her movements even with eyes closed—kettle heating, cups clinking, the careful way she measured herbs.
The crystal pulsed less frequently now. Once every few minutes instead of constantly. He was learning. Slowly. Desperately. But learning.
Lira set tea in front of him. "How long can you hold it now?"
Arin checked internally—counting seconds, measuring strain. "Seven minutes. Maybe eight before I have to rest."
"That's progress."
"Is it enough?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't. Because neither of them knew what "enough" looked like. How much control he'd need to pass an assessment designed specifically to identify what he was.
They drank tea in companionable silence. Arin practicing after every twenty minutes. Lira watching. The crystal pulsing occasionally, reminding him to maintain the position, to breathe through the strain, to make this his new normal.
Eventually Lira stood up saying, "You should sleep. Rest is part of training too."
Arin agreed because his body was already making the decision for him. Exhaustion pressing down like physical weight.
He went to his room. Lay down in the dark. The crystal stayed warm in his hand—pulsing gently, providing feedback, training his unconscious mind even as consciousness faded.
He practiced as he drifted. Holding partial openness. Feeling the apartment around him, Lira in the next room, the city humming beyond walls.
Sleep came slowly.
But when it did, the crystal kept working. Pulsing when his sleeping mind closed off too much.