The room smelled like incense and something older than incense, like stone that had been wet and dried a thousand times. Yukari stood at her window with her hands clasped behind her back.

  Her coat hung off her shoulders. Dark grey, faded at the seams, slightly too big for the body she currently occupied. The sleeves almost covered her hands. She'd stopped noticing the mismatched button three reincarnations ago.

  Behind her, Aerion knelt on one knee and waited.

  "Rise," she said.

  He stood up. Tall and thin, with a face that might have been handsome except that it never showed anything. His eyes were grey—not the kind you see in rainy skies or old coins, just cold. His hand moved toward his side without him seeming to notice. He could feel his liver getting worse. Another few weeks and he'd need to do another swap.

  "The next Gauntlet opens in six months," Yukari said. "But I want candidates identified and assessed within three." She pressed two fingers to her temple. "I don't have six months of waiting in me. Not again."

  "You're dying again," he said.

  "Slower this time. The last one took three months. This one's been four."

  She turned to face him. Her face was smooth, young. Her eyes were thirty-nine years of accumulated exhaustion. "Seven candidates from the eastern districts. Four from the western. Two from Tanner's, maybe, if they don't fall apart before we get to them. Most haven't been trained at all. Their Strands are a mess."

  "Messy can be fixed."

  "Messy can also kill them. Seventy percent of untrained candidates don't make it through the Gauntlet. Fragmentation-types do even worse."

  "You were a Fragmentation-type."

  "I was a mistake." He said it like fact. "My father's Strand rotted his bloodline. Every child he had was born dying. I was the only one who lasted more than a few months."

  "Because you learned to swap."

  "Because you taught me."

  Swap. He would take a damaged organ, heal it inside his own body, then hand off his own broken piece to the patient. The moment it left his body, their sickness stopped. They got better. He survived a little longer. Then the rot came back, and he needed another patient, and the whole thing started over again.

  "The Tanner's district," Yukari said. "There's a boy. Thirteen. He's been creating fragments and they keep getting loose. They wander around the streets and his mother has been herding them away, but she can't keep doing it."

  "Fragmentation at thirteen?"

  "Full manifestation by fourteen if nothing changes. And if he doesn't get training before then, he'll tear himself apart." Her hand moved to her chest, pressing briefly against her sternum before she caught herself. "Or he'll make something he can't put back."

  "You want me to recruit him."

  "Assess him first. If he's worth the risk, bring him in for the Gauntlet." Her face went unreadable. "If he isn't, make sure he doesn't hurt anyone."

  Aerion understood what that meant.

  "I'm not an executioner," he said.

  "No. You're a healer." Her voice softened slightly. "You know what it's like to be young and dying. You know what it's like when your own power is the thing trying to kill you."

  She looked at him the way people look at things that have been through a lot.

  "Find me the ones who are still fighting. The ones who haven't learned yet that fighting doesn't always mean winning." Her voice dropped. "Give them a chance to be something. Before someone tells them what they're for."

  Aerion bowed. Low and formal.

  "I'll find them," he said.

  ---

  He was almost to the door when she spoke again.

  "Aerion."

  He stopped but didn't turn around.

  "Your mother asked me to make your suffering mean something. To make you useful." She turned toward the window. Her reflection looked twenty-two. Her voice didn't match. "I helped you because she carried you for three days and didn't stop. And I remember what it's like to be carried."

  Aerion's hand rested on the doorframe.

  "I know," he said.

  "Do you really?"

  "I've always known." He turned slightly, just enough that the candlelight caught the side of his face. "She chose suffering for me. She chose my life. I've never been angry at her for that."

  "Then why do you treat your patients like they're a chore?"

  "Because they are a chore." He said it plainly. "Every patient keeps me alive a little longer. Every swap is survival. I need them. That doesn't mean I have to feel good about needing them."

  "You could think about it differently."

  "How."

  "As a gift." Her voice was genuinely soft now. "Your curse heals them. Your pain keeps them alive."

  She pressed her hand to her chest again. The same spot. She probably didn't realize she was doing it.

  "Or that's what I tell myself," she added, quieter. "Every time I wake up in a new body and someone tells me to keep going. That's what I tell myself."

  He didn't say anything for a while.

  "Purpose," he repeated. "Alright. Maybe it is."

  He opened the door and walked out into the dark hallway.

  Yukari stayed at the window. Her reflection stared back at her—young, smooth-skinned, untouched by the years that lived behind her eyes.

  *Three more months,* she thought. *Maybe four. Then I'll fall asleep and not wake up, and they'll put me in another body, and I'll do this again.*

  *Or maybe the Academy will be ready by then.*

  *Maybe I can finally stop.*

  She closed her eyes.

  ---

  Three hours later, a boy named Abby would wake up to his mother telling him the factory had called.

  Three hours later, a girl named Nana would close her romance novel and feel sad about a duke who didn't know how to say he was in love.

  Three hours later, one of Abby's fragments would wander into an alley where a boy named Kael was sitting and waiting.

  Three hours later, things would start to change.

  ---

  # Chapter Two: Practical

  ---

  "Factory called," his mother said. She didn't look up from the table. "Three marks a week. You start Monday."

  Abby stared at his stew. It was mostly water. He was thirteen and small because they didn't have enough food most of the time, and his feet didn't quite reach the floor when he sat in the chair.

  "I don't want to work at the factory."

  "Wanting isn't a luxury you have right now." Her voice was tired more than anything else. "The Strand doesn't put food on the table. You want to eat, you work."

  "But my Strand—"

  "Your Strand is a problem." She finally looked at him. Her eyes were the same dark color as his but flatter, more worn out. "Three of your accidents are living in the Tanner's barn right now. Jason Polk's family complained about one following him home, crying the whole way. The landlord keeps raising the rent because those things wander all over the district."

  She pointed at him. Not in a mean way. Just in the way people do when they're making a point they've tried to make before.

  "You can't pull them back. They keep escaping. And I'm the one dealing with the mess."

  "I'm trying—"

  "Try harder. Be practical for once." She got up and took her bowl to the sink.

  ---

  That night Abby woke up to voices.

  He got out of bed and crept to the kitchen doorway. His mother was standing at the window with her fingers pressed against the glass. There was a shimmer around her hand, barely there, like the air above hot pavement.

  Outside, one of his clones was walking down the street. It shouldn't have been there.

  *How did it even get this far?*

  His mother's lips moved. The shimmer pulsed once, then twice. The clone stopped walking, turned, and went around the corner. Gone.

  *She redirected it. She's using her Strand.*

  He had never actually seen her use it before. She'd always told him it was useless, just a visual trick, nothing worth thinking about.

  He watched her press her other hand against the side of her head and squeeze her eyes shut. When she let go, her face looked like she'd been running for a long time. She grabbed the edge of the sink to hold herself up.

  *It hurts her.*

  He went back to bed before she heard him.

  ---

  He couldn't sleep after that.

  When her breathing evened out, he crept to her room. There was a lockbox under the floorboards. He'd found it when he was nine or ten but never had the guts to open it before.

  The lock was nothing special. A hairpin. Maybe thirty seconds.

  Inside: some coins, a letter that had turned yellow, and a notebook with his grandmother's handwriting on the cover.

  He read it by the light coming through the window.

  *Untrained Strands fully manifest at fourteen. Without control, the power turns against the user. The body rejects itself. Most don't survive.*

  He turned the page.

  *The Academy takes candidates at fourteen. The Gauntlet is the only real path forward for those who survive their manifestation. If the child can't pass, there is no other option.*

  *The boy needs to master his Strand before his birthday. Or we lose him the same way we lost his father.*

  Abby's hands shook.

  *His father.*

  His mother had always told him his father died in a factory accident before Abby was born. End of story. Nothing more to it.

  He kept reading.

  *Perception Redirect can buy time. It can steer the clones away from people and make the neighbors forget what they saw. But it can't stop what's coming. Only real training can do that.*

  *The clones are fragments. Pieces of the self, cut loose and given shape. They wander because there's nothing anchoring them. They come back because something inside them pulls toward their source.*

  *An untrained Strand creates without binding. The fragment escapes and follows its own instincts. It has something like awareness but it doesn't understand what it is or why it exists.*

  *They can be destroyed. A blade, or enough force, will break their form for good. They won't come back from that.*

  He stopped.

  *Know this though: the fragments feel things. They suffer. They reach out for warmth and they don't understand why they can't find it. Destroying one is killing something that wears your own face.*

  *The boy's mother couldn't do it. I couldn't. His father couldn't either.*

  *Maybe the boy will be harder than the rest of us.*

  *Or maybe he'll learn to call them home before it comes to that.*

  Abby sat there for a long time after he finished reading.

  The clones in the barn. The one that followed Jason Polk home crying. The whispering shapes in the ruins by the old mill.

  *They feel things. They hurt. And I made them.*

  He put the notebook back in the box and locked it and put it back under the floor.

  *Five months,* he thought. *I have five months to learn control. Then the Gauntlet in six—if I live that long.*

  ---

  # Chapter Three: Nana

  ---

  She showed up at the ruins on his fourth day.

  She was tall, taller than him by a lot, with black hair cut straight across her jaw and a burgundy vest over a cream blouse. Her boots were the kind that cost money once, now dusty from sneaking out through whatever back way she'd used. She had a satchel over her shoulder with a romance novel sticking out of it at an angle.

  She looked down at him from the edge of the broken stone. He was sitting in the dirt.

  The water clone he'd been working on fell apart, pulled itself back together badly, and stumbled toward the trees.

  "You're doing it wrong," she said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Your clones. They're sloppy and you don't have any control over them." She pointed at the one heading for the trees. "You didn't anchor it."

  "It doesn't stay anchored when I try."

  "That's because you're bad at this."

  He didn't like her very much right then. "Who are you?"

  "Nana." She pulled out her novel and sat down on a broken pillar like she owned it. "I have a Strand too. I've been watching you for three days. You're getting worse, not better."

  ---

  On the third day of training together, she brought food.

  Abby didn't notice right away because he was concentrating too hard on the wind clone in front of him.

  "Stop," Nana said.

  "I almost had it—"

  "You're shaking. Look at your hands." She dropped a cloth bundle next to him on the ground. "When did you eat last?"

  He thought about it. "Yesterday, I think."

  Nana stared at him. Then she looked at the bundle. "Eat."

  He unwrapped it. Bread. Cheese. Two apples. He hadn't seen that much food in one place in over a week.

  "Where did you get all this?"

  "My family has money. Don't make it weird." She opened her book and settled in. "Your clones fall apart faster when you're weak. You keep starving yourself and I'm going to have to do all the work."

  "So this is selfish," he said, already tearing into the bread.

  "Completely selfish. Eat faster, you're wasting training time."

  But she'd brought two apples. There was only one of him.

  ---

  Later that same day, something happened that neither of them talked about much afterward.

  A female fragment formed next to him while he was resting. She was small and unstable, barely keeping her shape, her face a softer version of his own with dark hair hanging in front of confused eyes. She reached toward the apple he was holding.

  He froze.

  "She wants it," he said quietly.

  "She?" Nana looked up from her book.

  "I know they're not— look, they're not nothing. They have some kind of awareness." He watched the fragment's hand extended toward the apple. "She wants it."

  Nana lowered the book all the way. "Give it to her."

  "She can't actually eat—"

  "Give it to her anyway."

  He held the apple out. The fragment's fingers touched it and went right through. The apple hit the stone.

  The fragment made a sound. Soft and small and confused. Like she'd been sure it would work this time and she didn't understand why it hadn't.

  "She doesn't get it," Abby said. "She wants something and she can't have it and she doesn't even know why."

  Nana didn't say anything. She reached into her bag and got out the second apple, the one she'd been saving for herself.

  "Try this," she said.

  She held it out and when the fragment reached again, Nana didn't pull back. She moved her hand into the fragment's space, let their hands overlap, the fragment's translucent fingers pressing against Nana's actual skin.

  The apple fell through again. But the fragment's face changed. Something like surprise crossed it. Then something like peace.

  Then she was gone. No noise, no fuss. She just dissolved.

  Abby stared at the empty air where she'd been.

  "What did you do?"

  "I don't know exactly." Nana's voice was different than usual. Quieter. "I just let her touch something real."

  They sat there for a while without talking.

  "Eat the rest," Nana finally said, picking her book back up. "You've still got a long afternoon."

  ---

  They met every other day after that. Nana criticized everything he did, called his clones names, and read romance novels between rounds of telling him what he was doing wrong.

  "Anchoring is the most basic thing there is," she said one afternoon. She'd actually put the book down, which she only did when she was serious. "You make the fragment and then you tie it to yourself with intention. Like a leash but mental."

  "I've tried that. It doesn't hold."

  "Because you're treating them like tools you want to get rid of." She pointed at a wind clone drifting past the broken column. "They're pieces of you. Part of your actual self. You have to want them to stay, not want them to behave before you dismiss them."

  "I do want them to stay."

  "You want them to stop being your problem. That's different." She tilted her head. "You push them away and then you're confused when they go."

  The wind clone was whispering. It sounded like wind going through a crack somewhere.

  "Have you ever seen one get destroyed?" he asked.

  Nana looked away toward the far wall. "Once. There was a boy my mother knew. They were at the Academy together, paired for their final assessment." She paused. "He had a Strand like yours. Fragmentation-type. He made simple clones—nothing like yours, no fire or stone or any of that. Just shapes. Faces. They wandered and he couldn't call them back."

  "What happened to him?"

  "He got better. He passed." She turned a page she wasn't reading. "But before that, one of his fragments walked into a river. He felt it dissolve. He told my mother it was like watching himself die from the inside." She glanced at him. "My mother was the one who taught him to anchor. She was a support-class, like me. Different specialization, but enough overlap that she could show him. He passed because of her."

  "Your mother went to the Academy?"

  "Graduated. Served for six years before she left." Nana's voice went flat in a way that said the subject was closed. "The point is, she taught me what she knew. And what she knew includes how to help someone like you stop losing pieces of himself."

  Abby was quiet for a moment.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "Don't thank me yet. You're still terrible at this."

  ---

  One afternoon they were both lying on the cracked stone resting and Nana sighed in this big theatrical way.

  "I need you to focus," Abby said. He was watching a wind clone scatter itself into three smaller pieces.

  "I am focused. I can focus on two things." She flipped a page. "The Duke of Thornwall just told the heroine he loves her. I've been waiting three hundred pages for this."

  One of his escaped clones wandered past. Female, quieter than the others usually were. She walked slowly and looked at him the whole time.

  "That one's been here before," Nana said.

  "A lot of them come back."

  "She looks like your mother."

  Abby kept his eyes on the ground. "Maybe."

  "You don't know?"

  "I don't pick what comes out. They're just pieces of whatever's in there." He watched the fragment settle near the far wall, patient. "I grew up with just her. She's most of what I know."

  Nana studied the fragment for a while. The fragment stood still near the wall and waited.

  "She doesn't run like the rest of them," Nana said.

  "No. She stays close."

  ---

  His mother caught him on the seventh day.

  He came home and she was in the doorway with her arms folded. Behind her, Nana was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea like she'd been there a hundred times before.

  "You've been sneaking out," his mother said.

  His stomach dropped.

  "She followed you home." His mother nodded toward Nana. "She told me everything. The ruins, the training, all of it. And she won't tell me what her Strand does."

  Nana raised her cup. "The tea is not good, by the way. Just so you know."

  "You told her?" Abby looked at Nana.

  "She needed to know. She's been redirecting your clones every night and wearing herself out doing it. She deserved the full picture." Nana set her cup down. "Also your tea is genuinely bad. What is this, bark?"

  His mother stepped to the side. "Both of you sit down."

  ---

  She didn't yell at him. He'd been expecting yelling.

  Instead she sat across from him and folded her hands on the table and looked at him the way she looked when she was deciding something.

  "How long?"

  "Two weeks maybe. A little more."

  "Is she actually helping?"

  Nana raised her hand. "He's still bad at it. But measurably less bad."

  His mother thought about that. "Good. Keep going."

  Abby blinked. "What?"

  "Train every day. With her. Do what she tells you."

  "You want me using my Strand? You've been telling me for years that—"

  "I know you found the box."

  The kitchen felt smaller suddenly.

  "The lock was simple. I figured you'd get to it eventually." She let out a long breath. "I just hoped you'd have more time before you had to know."

  "You knew. About fourteen. About what happens to people who don't learn to control it."

  "I've known since before you were born." She looked at the table. "Your grandmother tried to help your father. She ran out of time."

  *His father.*

  "You said he died in a factory accident."

  "I told you what seemed right at the time." Her voice got harder, but it wasn't really anger. "You didn't need to know that the same power you have ate him alive because he couldn't control it. You didn't need to know that I sat with him while he—" She stopped. "You didn't need to know that yet."

  She reached over and took his hand.

  "Every night since you were six years old I've been redirecting your fragments and making the neighbors forget and keeping the landlord from asking questions. Every night it takes something out of me. But someone had to buy you time." She squeezed his hand. "I told you to be practical because I wanted you to have something normal. A job. A future that wasn't about this." Her voice cracked at the end. "But I was wrong. The only future you have is the one your Strand gives you. And if you can't master it before fourteen—"

  "I read the notebook," he said quietly.

  She nodded. She reached into her apron and set a small cloth bag in front of Nana. "For helping him. There's more if he gets better."

  Nana picked it up and weighed it. "This is a year's worth of tea money."

  "Then you'll be drinking a lot of tea." His mother stood up. "He turns fourteen in five months. Gauntlet is in six. Five months to get control, one month to prepare for entry. If he can't anchor his fragments before his birthday, he won't live long enough to take the test."

  ---

  After Nana had gone home, Abby stood at the window and watched one of his female fragments drift slowly down the street below. His mother stood next to him.

  "That one looks like me," she said softly.

  "I know."

  "Does it bother you?"

  He shook his head. "They're pieces of what's inside me. You're most of what I know. You're in there, I guess."

  A cart went by on the street and the fragment dodged around it without really seeming to notice.

  "Your grandmother thought the fragments carry the real you," she said. "Who you are underneath. What you might grow into."

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "What do you think?"

  "I think you're my kid." She put her hand on his shoulder, brief and solid. "Whatever pieces come out, they're still ours. They're still you."

  ---

  # Chapter Four: The Hunter

  ---

  Kael was sitting on an overturned crate in the alley behind the tannery, picking at a thread on his sleeve.

  His clothes were nice. Clean white shirt, dark trousers, boots that hadn't worn through. He wore all of it like it was barely worth noticing. He was thirteen, and nothing seemed to hold his interest for very long.

  That was what he wanted people to think, anyway.

  He moved wrong. Too comfortable in his own body, too patient. Like something that had decided a long time ago that waiting was no trouble at all.

  He heard the fragment before he saw it. A shuffling sound. A small confused noise from the alley entrance.

  His eyes found it before his head turned.

  It stumbled toward him. Half-formed, barely holding its shape. A girl's outline, or the echo of one, soft features that belonged to some other kid somewhere. He recognized it. One of Abby's. He'd been watching them wander around the district for days, crying softly, reaching toward people who walked past too fast to notice.

  He stood up and stretched, easy and slow. The fragment made a questioning sound.

  Kael pressed his palm to its chest.

  His hand went dark, like ink dropped in water. The fragment's eyes went wide and then confused and then desperate, all of it happening in a few seconds.

  Then it came apart. Smaller and smaller until there was just a faint stain on the dirt.

  Kael breathed in slowly. His posture shifted. Something sharpened behind his eyes. The shadows under them, which had been there since morning, were gone.

  *Sweet,* he thought. *The quiet ones always were.*

  He sat back down.

  His Strand was absorption. He could take unanchored pieces of power, loose fragments, the overflow of untrained Strand-users, and pull it all inside himself. It made him a little stronger each time, a little faster. Each fragment was like a small meal.

  They were going to dissolve on their own anyway. Everything lost its shape eventually without something holding it together. Kael just made the process faster.

  ---

  "Kael?"

  He looked up. Rin was standing at the alley entrance with his satchel clutched against his chest, his thick glasses making his eyes look twice their normal size.

  "Done already?"

  "Done." Kael stood up and brushed dust off his trousers. "How's the tracking coming?"

  Rin's eyes went a little hazy for a second, the way they always did when his Strand activated. A faint shimmer appeared around the edge of his glasses.

  "Male. Thirteen years old. Fragmentation type, creation-focused." He blinked the shimmer away. "The fragment knew what was happening. At the end. It was afraid."

  Kael looked at his hand. "Mm."

  "The source is southeast. Half a mile. The residue trail leads toward some ruins past the Tanner's district."

  "Then we're wasting time." Kael started walking. "Let's go."

  Rin followed, his footsteps quick and a little anxious. "Maya wants a report."

  "Maya wants a lot of things."

  "She's scared about Jace. We all are."

  Kael didn't say anything to that. He stepped over a puddle without slowing down.

  ---

  Maya was waiting for them at the edge of the district.

  She was a dark-skinned girl with coily hair and white eyes, standing in front of a figure wrapped in a thin blanket, propped against the wall. Jace. His face was empty, not sleeping exactly, more like nobody was home. He was breathing, but that was about it.

  "Damn, took y'all forever!" Maya's voice came out sharper than she meant it to. "We got weeks. Maybe less. Maybe days! And y'all out here takin' your sweet time!"

  Kael shrugged. "I was eating."

  "You don't need to eat. Not anymore."

  "I choose to eat. There's a difference." He looked at Jace. "Still going?"

  "Barely." Her hands were shaking. She pressed them hard against her arms. "He's fading. I can see it. Every day he's a little less there and I can't — I won't lose him. Not like this."

  Rin adjusted his glasses. "The trail's getting stronger. He's close."

  "Then let's move. Now. Please." Maya gathered Jace up, her movements jerky and uneven.

  ---

  They passed the Tanner's barn.

  Three fragments were huddled in the shadow near the door. Whispering, in the way fragments did, like wind going through something small. Two were female-shaped, one male.

  Kael stopped for a second.

  He could feel the power in them from where he stood. Thin and faint, stretched by distance from their source.

  "His," Rin said quietly.

  "I know." Kael watched them. One of the female ones turned her head and made a soft sound in his direction, something between a question and a greeting.

  "They'll fall apart on their own in a few days. Week at most." He tilted his head. "The females are quieter. Less likely to cause trouble."

  Maya glanced back at them. Something moved across her face, quick and complicated, and then she buried it.

  "Come on," she said. "We're wastin' time."

  Kael stood there another second, watching the female fragment.

  "Sweet prey," he said under his breath. "Don't even know they're being hunted."

  He walked on.

  ---

  They found the ruins with no trouble.

  There was a boy in the middle of the cracked courtyard, thin and dark-haired and visibly exhausted. There was a girl with him, taller, sharp-featured, standing straight like she'd been told to stand straight so many times she just did it now. She had a book in her hand.

  The boy raised his hand. A shape came out of the air in front of him, watery and translucent, barely solid. Female-shaped, like the rest. She took two steps and collapsed into a puddle on the stone.

  "Anchoring is the most basic thing there is," the girl said. "You're not connecting to them. You're just pushing pieces of yourself out and hoping they hold together."

  "That's a disgusting description," the boy said.

  "It's accurate. Do it again."

  Kael leaned against a pillar and watched. Maya and Rin came up on either side of him.

  "The creator," Rin murmured. "Thirteen, probably fourteen soon. Fragmentation type, high potential, completely untrained."

  Kael kept watching.

  Rin's glasses flickered. He squinted at the girl.

  His face went red.

  "What?" Maya stepped closer. "What is it?"

  "Her Strand is—" He stopped. Started again, quieter. "Support class. Healing and restoration. Layered. Complex." He adjusted his glasses. "Full activation needs emotional connection. Close contact. Intimacy."

  Maya's breath caught. She looked at Jace, barely conscious against the wall. Then back at the girl.

  "How close?"

  Rin turned redder. "Physical contact triggers the strongest response. But it doesn't have to go that far. Kissing would work. Sustained touch. Close proximity over time." He pushed his glasses up. "With kissing, probably daily contact for a week, she could partially heal someone even in a coma state."

  Maya stared at the girl. Her white eyes were very still.

  *A week. Just kissing for a week.*

  Kael had mostly stopped listening. He was still watching Abby, watching the next clone form and wobble and collapse.

  *What a waste,* he kept thinking. *What an absolute waste.*

  He pushed off the pillar and walked into the courtyard.

  ---

  The boy saw him coming before he was halfway there.

  The boy stood up straighter. He looked at Kael the way you look at something you're not sure about.

  "You're Abby," Kael said. Not a question.

  "Who are you?"

  "Kael." He looked at his nails. "I've been eating your leftovers for about a week now."

  The boy's face changed. "What?"

  "Your fragments. The ones that wander out of here and get lost." Kael shrugged. "They aren't very filling. But they're better than nothing."

  He watched the information hit Abby.

  *The screaming,* Kael knew Abby was thinking. *The voices that stopped. The smaller number of clones every night.*

  "You," Abby said. Barely above a whisper.

  "They were gonna dissolve anyway. I just made it faster."

  "They feel things. They suffer. They—"

  "They scream." Kael said it the same way you'd talk about the weather. "Yeah. You get used to it."

  ---

  Something broke inside Abby.

  He thought about every fragment he'd lost. Every piece of himself that had wandered away and hurt and dissolved somewhere alone. Every night he'd listened and wondered.

  *They feel. They suffer. I made them.*

  And this boy had been eating them. And he was bored about it.

  Abby's hands closed into fists. He felt the thread inside his chest, the one that connected him to his creations.

  He didn't pull gently this time.

  ---

  Four shapes came out of the air all at once.

  Not the weak stumbling things from before. These were solid, fast, furious.

  The fire clone went first. Flames all over its body, eyes like something burning from the inside. It crossed the courtyard in two steps and swung at Kael's face.

  Kael twisted but not enough. The fire grazed his shoulder and left a red mark.

  The wind clone hit him from the side immediately after, a small tornado of force that kept him turning.

  The water clone moved to block the path between him and Maya without Abby seeming to tell it to.

  Then the ground shook.

  The stone clone rose from the earth behind him. It was huge, seven feet at least, grey armor over grey stone, a face that was roughly Abby's but harder and angrier, eyes like dark rock.

  Its fist came down.

  Kael threw himself to the side. The punch left a crater in the pavement where he'd been standing.

  "Rin! Tell me something useful!"

  Rin's lenses went bright white. "Fire burns out in two minutes! Water won't attack unless you go near Maya! Stone is the real problem—nearly indestructible but slow! The joints are where you can do damage!"

  Kael took a glancing hit from the fire clone, heat burning along his forearm, and absorbed it before he thought about it. Power flooded through him and his reflexes jumped.

  He grabbed the wind clone by the throat.

  The absorption was fast. Cold power pouring into him.

  The stone clone was still coming.

  "How do I break it?"

  "Can't absorb it directly, it's too stable! You'd have to damage the shell first and—"

  The stone clone hit him across the chest.

  He went into a pillar. Something in his ribs cracked. He tasted copper.

  "Kael!" Maya shouted. "Use the fire clone while it's still up!"

  He looked. The fire clone was low, flickering, almost done. But still alive.

  He ran at it. It hadn't expected that.

  He caught its wrist and held on.

  Absorbing fire was like drinking something that had been in an oven. It burned going down and then his whole body hummed with it.

  He turned back to the stone clone.

  "Left shoulder joint!" Rin called. "There's a flaw in the armor, visible when it raises its arm!"

  "I can't hit hard enough—"

  "Use what you just took in!"

  Kael looked at his hands. Still radiating heat. Faster than before. Stronger.

  *Still not enough.*

  The stone clone was already moving again.

  "Kael!" Maya's voice cracked. "I can draw it off—"

  "Don't!" Rin cut through. "The water clone will redirect and you'll have two on you—"

  "He's gonna die out there, Rin!"

  ---

  Nana had been watching the whole fight from the edge of the courtyard.

  She had used her Strand maybe a handful of times. Small things, controlled exercises in private.

  But watching the stone clone close in on Kael, watching him roll across the ground with broken ribs, she felt something push up in her chest.

  *Fire. I've made fire before.*

  She raised her hand. Flames gathered at her fingers, shaped themselves into something like an arrow.

  *Just enough to distract it.*

  Her eyes went to Rin.

  The boy with the glasses. His lenses were glowing brighter with every piece of information he called out.

  *Every word he says keeps Kael alive.*

  Her hand shifted. The arrow wavered.

  *Without that information—*

  She was already moving before she finished the thought. Across the broken stone toward Rin.

  He saw her coming. His eyes went wide behind his bright lenses.

  "Wait—"

  She grabbed his glasses and threw them. They hit the stone and broke.

  Rin stumbled backward with both hands over his face. "I need those, I can't see without—"

  "Good," Nana said flatly. "Then you can't help him."

  She turned back toward Abby, ready to fight alongside him—

  And then Maya's white eyes found hers.

  ---

  The world tilted.

  Her thoughts scattered. Her will stretched like taffy being pulled too far.

  *No—*

  She felt Maya arrive inside her like someone stepping through a door. Smooth. Practiced.

  *I'm sorry,* said a voice in the place behind her eyes. *I'm so sorry. He's dying. I don't got another option.*

  Nana pushed back. Hard. But Maya's Strand was older and better trained and Nana was already too off-balance from the surprise.

  Her body moved without her.

  Her hands moved without her.

  Her mouth said things she hadn't said.

  She wasn't unconscious. She was awake. She was watching. She felt everything.

  *GET OUT,* she thought, as loud as she could. *GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.*

  Maya didn't listen.

  ---

  "Nana!"

  Abby's voice came from somewhere muffled, like he was shouting through a wall.

  He'd seen it happen. He'd watched Nana freeze, go white-eyed, go slack. He knew what it was immediately.

  Maya. The dark-skinned girl with the coily hair, standing behind her fragments.

  He couldn't get to Nana. The stone clone was still between him and everything, and the water clone was still blocking the exits, and his fragments were tired now, running down.

  "Stop." The voice came from Nana's mouth but wasn't Nana's voice. "If you attack me, you attack her. She's conscious. She isn't being hurt."

  Nana watched her own body cross the courtyard toward where Jace lay against the wall. Watched her own knees bend. Felt her own hand press against the unconscious boy's face.

  Nothing happened.

  Maya pushed harder. Nana felt her own power respond, reach toward Jace—and find nothing to hold onto.

  "It isn't working," Maya said through Nana's mouth. "The connection isn't taking."

  "Try kissing him." Rin's voice, shaky, squinting without his glasses. "The analysis said physical contact, direct intimacy, that's the strongest trigger."

  Nana felt the hesitation in Maya. She felt Maya decide.

  *Don't,* Nana thought. *Please don't do this.*

  She felt her own face tilt. Felt her own lips press against a stranger's mouth.

  Jace was unconscious. His lips were cool, and his breathing was slow and shallow. And Nana was fully aware of all of it, forced into it, unable to stop any part of what was happening.

  Maya held the kiss. Seconds turned into something that felt much longer.

  *Please,* Maya thought, and Nana could feel it, the desperation bleeding through. *Please please please work.*

  The Strand reached. It found nothing.

  Maya broke away. "Rin. Why isn't it working?"

  Rin stepped forward. The shimmer came back around his squinting eyes. He looked for a long time.

  His face went the color of old paper.

  "I think I—" He stopped. Started again. "The Strand is more complicated than I read it. It isn't just physical. It's emotional. Mutual. She has to actually feel something for it to work."

  Nana, in the place Maya couldn't reach, almost laughed.

  *Of course. Of course it does.*

  "It needs connection," Rin went on, his voice barely above a whisper now. "Real connection. Affection. Something like love. Or close to it. I analyzed the mechanics but I missed the core requirement. I missed the most important part."

  "So that's it." Maya's voice through Nana's mouth was hollow. "I took her body. Used it. Kissed someone through her lips without asking. And it doesn't even work because she doesn't love a stranger."

  "I didn't know—"

  "Stop." The word came out broken. "Stop apologizing. Apologizing doesn't change what happened."

  Nana watched Rin's face fall apart. She watched tears build up behind his broken glasses.

  Maya's guilt poured through the possession.

  *Good,* Nana thought. *Sit in that. Remember it.*

  Then she felt something else.

  Power. Old and dark and close, coming from the edge of the ruins.

  A man appeared.

  ---

  He was tall and thin and pale, in dark robes that moved like there was a wind that didn't exist. His eyes were grey and still.

  He crossed the courtyard without hurrying.

  His hand pressed against Kael's chest before Kael had time to step back.

  Dark energy moved between them. Kael felt the stolen fragments drain out of him. Not all of them. Just enough to matter.

  "You've been eating this boy's fragments." The man's voice had no inflection in it. "I can still feel them in you."

  Kael didn't step back. "They were going to waste."

  "They weren't yours."

  "They weren't anyone's. They were lost. I put them to use."

  "You grew stronger while they screamed."

  "They screamed because they were made wrong. That's on the creator, not me. I just cleaned up after him."

  The man's grip went harder. Colder.

  "You've consumed dozens. You had the strength from that to protect, to help. Instead you hunted the same boy whose power you were feeding on."

  "I didn't take anything that wasn't already lost."

  "And that makes it right in your head."

  Kael met the grey eyes and didn't answer. Didn't look away either.

  The man studied him for a long moment. Then he let go.

  He turned toward Nana.

  "Get out of the girl," he said. "Now."

  Nana's stolen voice: "If I leave him now he dies! I still need—"

  "You need nothing from her." No rise in his voice at all. "Her Strand requires genuine emotional connection. You violated her for nothing. You got nothing and you hurt someone for it."

  Maya's control flickered.

  "Please, I just need more time, I swear—"

  "Now." The shadows moved around his hand. "Or I take you out myself."

  The possession broke.

  It was like being pulled through something narrow at high speed. Pain and darkness and the overwhelming sensation of being suddenly, completely alone in her own body.

  Nana fell.

  Strong hands caught her before she hit the stone.

  ---

  # Chapter Five: The Aftermath

  ---

  Nana woke up to the sound of footsteps.

  Her whole body hurt in the specific way that things hurt when they've been used by someone else without permission.

  But she was herself. Just herself. Nothing else in there.

  She opened her eyes.

  A face looked down at her. Pale, sharp jaw, grey eyes that gave away absolutely nothing.

  The man who had made Maya leave.

  He was carrying her. His robes smelled like stone and incense.

  "You saved me," she said. Her voice came out raspy.

  "Rest. You've been through something difficult."

  She looked at his face properly. The sharp angles. The pale eyes. The way he held every single feeling at a distance, like he'd practiced that too.

  She'd read this scene a hundred times. Not literally the same scene, but close enough that it felt familiar. The mysterious stranger who showed up exactly when everything was falling apart. The powerful man who carried so much inside him that he'd learned to carry none of it on his face.

  "The Duke of Thornwall appeared from the shadows," she murmured, half to herself. "Eyes cold as winter."

  His expression didn't move. "You're disoriented. The possession—"

  "I'm completely oriented." She was sure about that. "I was awake for all of it. I remember every second." She reached up without meaning to and touched his jaw. Cool skin. Sharp angle. He didn't react. "And then you showed up. And you made her leave."

  She smiled. She hadn't meant to do that either, but there it was.

  "You're just like them," she said. "The ones in the books. The ones who don't know how to let anyone see them."

  "You're projecting—"

  "I know what projecting is." Still faint but sure. "I'm doing it anyway."

  She let her hand drop. Let her eyes close. Let the exhaustion have her.

  But the smile stayed.

  *I'll figure you out,* she thought, before the darkness came in. *That's a promise.*

  ---

  Abby walked alongside the man, close enough to watch the whole thing happen.

  Close enough to see Nana's hand reach up to the healer's face.

  Close enough to hear what she murmured.

  Close enough to see her smile before she passed out again.

  He stared.

  He knew those books. Nana talked about them constantly, quoted them, explained the tropes so many times that he could basically recite them himself.

  *The mysterious stranger who appears at the worst moment.*

  *The powerful man with all that hidden pain.*

  *The cold exterior that's really a wall around something warm.*

  *She's doing it,* he thought. *She's putting him in the story right now. While he's actually holding her unconscious body.*

  He looked at the man's face.

  Nothing. Completely blank. He walked like nothing unusual had happened. Like Nana hadn't just touched his face and smiled at him like he'd stepped off the cover of one of her novels.

  *He has no idea,* he thought.

  ---

  # Chapter Six: The Cost

  ---

  The Academy's healing room smelled like copper and clean stone.

  Maya stood in the corner with her arms around herself and watched. Aerion had told her to stand there. Not asked, just told. So she stood there.

  "Watch," he'd said. "You wanted to use someone's body to heal him. Now watch what healing actually looks like."

  Jace was on the table. Pale, still, barely breathing. His kidneys were failing. His liver was starting to go under the pressure of everything his body was no longer filtering.

  Aerion took off his robe.

  His torso was covered in scars. Not scattered randomly. Regular, deliberate lines across his abdomen and sides and chest. Each one was a swap. Each one was a person who was alive because of what he'd done to himself to save them.

  Maya started counting and stopped when the number got to be too much.

  "This is what you tried to take," Aerion said, still not looking at her. "This is what you tried to use without asking."

  He put his hand on Jace's chest. Closed his eyes.

  For a while nothing visible happened.

  Then his breathing changed. Deeper and slower. His skin went grey. Sweat appeared along his hairline.

  "His kidneys are past saving. Mine work well enough for now." He said it like he was reading a list. "His liver is stressed but not gone. Mine is clouding from the last swap. I'll take his. It'll heal inside me. The corruption'll reach it eventually, but I have time."

  A faint dark light moved under his skin, flowing between his hand and Jace's chest.

  It went on for almost an hour.

  When he finally sat back, his skin was the color of ash and his hands were shaking. He sat on the edge of the table and breathed.

  Jace's color had already started to come back. His breathing was deeper.

  One of the healers came in, checked everything, and looked up. "He'll make a full recovery."

  Aerion nodded once. He reached for his robe, winced, and pulled it on carefully.

  ---

  He turned to the basin and started washing his hands.

  "The boy. Rin." Still not looking at her. "How old?"

  "Thirteen."

  "Thirteen." He scrubbed. "A child who can read the surface of a Strand, no depth, no understanding of what drives it. And you built your plan around his analysis."

  "He's been right before! His Strand is strong and he—"

  "He read the mechanics. He didn't read the meaning underneath the mechanics." Aerion turned. His grey eyes were worse up close. "You violated a girl based on a thirteen-year-old's incomplete read. You kissed an unconscious boy through her body. And when it failed, you kept going because you were desperate."

  Maya flinched. "I was trying to save—"

  "I know what you were trying to do. That isn't the part I'm arguing with." His voice cut. "I've saved hundreds of people. I'll save a hundred more before this body gives out on me. Every one of them cost something. I've never once paid that cost with someone else's body."

  He stepped closer. She stepped back. The wall stopped her.

  "The girl. Nana. Do you actually know what her Strand is?"

  Maya shook her head.

  "Buffer class. The rarest support classification that exists. She doesn't heal damage. She amplifies. Makes bodies stronger, faster, more resilient. Makes other Strands more effective." He paused. "Put her beside a trained fighter and you get something almost unbeatable. Put her beside a skilled healer and you could cut recovery time to almost nothing. The Academy's been looking for a Buffer for twenty years."

  Maya felt cold.

  "She isn't a healer. She's a force multiplier. And your child analyst had no idea what he was actually looking at."

  "I didn't know! The kid said—"

  "He's a child." His voice went flat again. "And you made an adult decision based on a child's word. That's on you, not on him."

  ---

  He turned back to the basin.

  "She's developed an attachment to me," he said, quieter now.

  Maya blinked. "What?"

  "The girl. Nana." He watched the water run. "She touched my face when I was carrying her. She said I was like a character from her books. She smiled at me."

  "She likes you?"

  "She's projecting a fictional archetype onto me because she went through something traumatic and I appeared at exactly the right moment and I fit a pattern she already has in her head." He said it like he was taking apart a clock. "It isn't real. It'll fade. And in the meantime, she's a potential student here."

  He turned. Something in his eyes had gone darker than before.

  "You knew," he said.

  Maya's stomach dropped. Her hands started shaking again.

  "You heard her talk in the ruins. You saw how she looked at me when I caught her. You knew she was vulnerable. You knew she'd fixated on me. And you still made the decision to possess her. You still planned to use her Strand by forcing some kind of emotional connection between her and your boyfriend."

  "I didn't know what her Strand was! I thought she was just a healer—"

  "That isn't the point." His voice went very quiet. "You knew she might end up at this Academy. You knew the Academy would want her. And you were willing to damage her, compromise her, use her up, for your own purposes."

  His hand closed on the edge of the basin. The stone cracked under his fingers without him seeming to notice.

  "Twenty-three years. Twenty-three years of taking other people's sickness inside myself. I have never once used someone who came to me helpless. Not a patient. Not a student. Not a desperate person who had nowhere else to go." The quiet got quieter. "And you walk in here with your child analyst and your borrowed body and your righteous desperation, and you treat people the same way the disease treats Jace. Something to consume until it's better for you."

  He looked at her.

  "You make me angry, Maya."

  Her whole body was shaking now. She pressed her arms harder against herself.

  "I wasn't trying to hurt anyone—" Her voice came out louder than she meant. "I wasn't! I never wanted—"

  "But you did."

  "I know! I know I did!" The words cracked open. "I know what I did to her! I can still feel her in there, fighting me, hating me, and I couldn't stop — I couldn't—"

  She pressed her palms against her eyes.

  "I wanted him to live. That's all. That's all I wanted. Was that wrong? Was wanting him to live wrong?"

  Aerion didn't answer.

  "Tell me it was wrong. Tell me I'm a monster. I don't care anymore. Just tell me something, because I've been going over it and over it in my head and I can't — I can't find where I should have done different. I can't find it! And that scares me more than anything."

  She lowered her hands. Her eyes were red. Her voice was raw.

  "I violated someone to save someone else. And I'd probably do it again." She choked on the words. "That's the worst part. I'd do it again if it meant Jace lived. What does that make me?"

  Aerion looked at her for a long time.

  "Human," he said finally. "Broken and desperate and human. But that doesn't make it right. And it doesn't undo what you did."

  She nodded. The tears were coming now. She couldn't stop them.

  "I know," she whispered. "I know it doesn't."

  ---

  Maya stood there long enough for the shaking in her hands to mostly stop.

  "Where are the others?" she finally managed. "Abby? Nana?"

  "The boy is with Yukari. She's assessing him."

  "And Nana?"

  "Somewhere in the building. She was unconscious when I brought her in. She should be awake by now."

  "And Kael?"

  "Not my problem. The fragments he took were already lost before he got to them. I took enough of what he'd absorbed to make a point. Beyond that he's on his own."

  She nodded. She looked at Jace. He was breathing steadily, the color back in his face.

  "Thank you," she said. "For saving him."

  Aerion didn't answer.

  She went to the door. Stopped. Looked back.

  "Will I see you again?"

  "No." He still had his back to her. "I don't teach. I don't stay. I fix what I can and I wait for whoever needs me next."

  "What about Nana?"

  "Not your concern anymore." His voice went hard at the edges. "She's here now. Yukari decides what comes next. And if you approach her again. If you try to use her for anything. I will find out."

  Maya left.

  ---

  In the empty room, Aerion stood over the basin and watched the last of the pink water drain away.

  His side ached where the clouding liver was settling in. His kidneys were adjusting to the new ones, Jace's damaged ones healing slowly inside him. Functional. Not great.

  *Another swap. Another few months bought.*

  He thought about Nana's hand against his face. The dreamy certainty in her voice. *You're just like them.*

  He thought about Maya's desperation. Rin's mistake. Kael's complete and total indifference to anything that didn't serve him.

  *Just children,* he thought. *All of them. Playing with things they don't understand yet.*

  He pressed his hand against his side and felt the corruption where it had spread since the last swap. Slow. Inevitable.

  *And I'm the one who comes afterward. The one who absorbs the damage. The one who fixes things and then carries what the fixing costs.*

  *Over and over until I can't anymore.*

  He closed his eyes.

  Somewhere in this building, Yukari was deciding whether a boy named Abby was worth the risk. A woman who had died and been brought back more times than anyone should have to bear.

  Somewhere, Nana was waking up in a room she didn't know, already writing a story about a man she'd known for twenty minutes.

  Somewhere, Maya was sitting beside a boy who would live, trying to make the math work out in her head.

  And somewhere, Kael was walking back toward whatever life he'd come from. Diminished a little. Not changed.

  *Purpose,* Yukari had said.

  Aerion opened his eyes.

  *Chain,* he thought. *It's a chain. The only real question is whether I'm the one holding it or the one it's wrapped around.*

  He still didn't know the answer.

  ---

  # Chapter Seven: Assessment

  ---

  Abby sat in a chair that was too big for him and tried not to shake.

  The room was small and dark. One window, covered by a heavy curtain. One desk, covered in papers. And behind the desk, a woman who looked barely older than him but moved like she'd been tired for a very long time.

  Her coat was grey and faded, the sleeves too long for her arms. One button didn't match the others. There was a strip of cloth around her wrist, frayed at the edges, like she'd forgotten it was there.

  She looked twenty-two. Maybe twenty-three. But when she looked at him, her eyes were something else entirely.

  "You're Abby," she said. Not a question.

  "Yes."

  "Your mother has been redirecting your fragments for seven years. Every night. Every time one slips loose." Yukari leaned back in her chair. Her hand drifted to her chest, pressed briefly against her sternum, then fell. "That's a lot of work for someone with no training. She must love you very much."

  Abby didn't know what to say to that.

  "Your grandmother's notes say your father died from an uncontrolled manifestation. Same Strand type. Same age range." She didn't look at any papers. She knew this already. "You have five months before your fourteenth birthday. Six before the Gauntlet. That's not enough time for conventional training."

  "I've been practicing. With Nana. I can anchor them sometimes—"

  "Sometimes isn't enough." She stood up and came around the desk. Her coat shifted. Underneath, she was thinner than she should have been. "In five months, your Strand will finish manifesting. If you can't control it by then, it will tear you apart from the inside. Your father lasted three days after his fourteenth birthday. You might last longer. You might not."

  Abby's hands closed around the arms of the chair.

  "The Gauntlet is designed to test whether you can survive your own power," Yukari went on. "It's not kind. It's not fair. It kills more candidates than it passes. But it's the only path to the Academy, and the Academy is the only place that can teach you what you need to know."

  She stopped in front of him. Close enough that he could see the faint shadows under her eyes. The slight tremor in her fingers.

  "I'm going to be honest with you, Abby. I don't have time to be anything else." Her voice was flat. Not unkind. Just exhausted. "You have potential. More than most. But potential doesn't mean anything if you're dead."

  "What do I do?"

  "Train. Every day. With Nana, with anyone who can help. Learn to anchor your fragments before they escape. Learn to call them back when they do." She paused. "And stay away from the boy who was eating them."

  "Kael." Abby's voice went hard. "I know what he did."

  "He'll come back. Boys like him always do. They smell potential and they want to be close to it." Yukari's eyes went cold for a moment. "If you see him again, walk the other way. You're not ready for him yet."

  "Will I ever be ready?"

  She looked at him for a long moment.

  "That depends on you," she said. "And on whether you can hold onto yourself when everything inside you is trying to break free."

  ---

  She turned and went back to her chair. Sat down slowly, like even that took effort.

  "The Gauntlet is in six months. If you pass, you enter the Academy. If you fail—"

  "I die."

  "Yes." No hesitation. No softening. "But you're already dying, Abby. You have been since you were born. The only question is whether you die from your Strand or whether you learn to make it part of you."

  She picked up a paper from her desk. Looked at it for a moment without seeming to see it.

  "I was created thirty-eight years ago," she said quietly. "A cult wanted a savior. They got me instead. I've died six times since then. Each time, they put me back. Younger. Fresher. Ready to work again."

  Abby stared at her.

  "The body changes," she went on. "The memories don't. I remember every death. Every time I closed my eyes and didn't wake up. Every time someone told me I was too important to let go." She set the paper down. "I'm telling you this because you need to understand what survival costs. It's not just about staying alive. It's about what you carry with you when you do."

  He didn't know what to say.

  "The Academy needs people like you. Like Nana. Like Aerion." She said the last name like it hurt. "People who can do things that no one else can do. But we don't promise that you'll be happy. We don't promise that you'll be whole. We promise that you'll have a chance."

  She looked at him.

  "That's all I can give you. A chance. Take it or don't. But decide now, because I don't have time to talk you into wanting to live."

  ---

  Abby stood up.

  The chair scraped against the stone floor.

  "I want to live," he said. "I want to learn. I want to stop making things that suffer."

  "Then we have an understanding." Yukari reached into her desk and pulled out a small token. A metal disc with a symbol on it—a spiral that turned inward. "Take this. On the day of the Gauntlet, bring it to the eastern gate. It will get you in."

  He took it. The metal was cold.

  "What about Nana?"

  "She'll be assessed separately. Her Strand is rare. Valuable. If she passes her own tests, she'll enter the Academy alongside you." Yukari's voice changed slightly. "She'll need someone who understands what it's like to be used. You might be good for each other."

  "She was used," Abby said slowly. "By Maya. Because of me."

  "Because of Maya's desperation. Not because of you." Yukari stood up again. The movement seemed to cost her something. "Guilt is a waste of energy. Use it to get stronger, or let it go. Those are your only options."

  She walked to the door. Her hand was on the frame when she stopped.

  "One more thing." She didn't turn around. "The fragments you make. The ones that look like your mother."

  Abby's chest went tight.

  "They stay close because they're carrying something you haven't let go of yet. Something you're still holding onto." She paused. "When you can anchor them, you'll understand what it is. And then you'll have to decide whether to keep it or let it go."

  She opened the door.

  "Go home. Train. Come back in six months ready to fight for your life." She glanced back at him. "That's all any of us can do."

  # Chapter Eight: Five Months Later

  ---

  The stew had extra potatoes. Abby noticed because his mother only did that when she was nervous.

  Nana sat across from him, eating like everything was fine. She'd grown three inches in five months—nearly six feet tall now, all long limbs she hadn't figured out what to do with yet. She'd been coming to dinner twice a week since training started. She knew where the bowls were. She knew which floorboard creaked. She knew that Ms. Mitsuri's left eye twitched when she was holding something back.

  Right now, that eye was twitching a lot.

  "The Gauntlet is next week," Ms. Mitsuri said. "Both of you. Same day."

  "Yes, ma'am," Nana said.

  "Abby's anchoring has improved. Four stable fragments. Five if he pushes." Her voice was careful. "That's better than I expected."

  "I'm a good teacher." Nana smiled, but it was too bright. She knew something was coming.

  Ms. Mitsuri's eye twitched again. Then she looked at Abby.

  "Unlike some people," she said, "Nana has actually grown in the last five months."

  Abby's face went hot. "Mother—"

  "Six feet tall." She shook her head. "Meanwhile, you're still the same height. Maybe you shrank. It's hard to tell."

  "I haven't shrunk—"

  "Did you know height is partly determined by nutrition?" Her voice was light, almost teasing. "Maybe if you ate more vegetables instead of pushing them around your plate, your body would get the message."

  Nana snorted into her stew.

  "You're not helping," Abby said.

  "I'm not saying anything." But she was smiling now, some of the tension gone from her shoulders.

  Ms. Mitsuri reached across and ruffled Abby's hair. He tried to duck away, but she was faster.

  "Stop," he said, batting at her hand.

  "You'll grow when you grow. Or you won't. Either way, you'll have to look up at Nana for the foreseeable future."

  "I already look up at everyone."

  "That's not true." Nana leaned over. "You look up at me more than most people now."

  Abby slid down in his chair. "Can we please talk about something else."

  "We could," Ms. Mitsuri agreed. "But watching you get embarrassed is one of the few pleasures I have left."

  She let the moment sit, then her expression sobered.

  "Speaking of uncomfortable things," she said, her eye twitching again. "Let's talk about the man who works at the Academy."

  Nana's face turned pink. Abby found his stew very interesting.

  "The tall one," Ms. Mitsuri said. "Pale. Grey eyes. Looks like he hasn't slept in a decade. The one who carried you out of the ruins."

  "Healer Aerion," Nana said quietly.

  "Healer Aerion." Ms. Mitsuri folded her hands. "You've mentioned him forty-seven times in five months. I counted."

  Nana's mouth opened. "Ms. Mitsuri, I can—"

  "You called him 'the Duke of Thornwall' three times. You said his eyes were 'winter made into a person.' You said he had 'the kind of pain that makes a person beautiful.'" Her voice stayed calm. "You said, 'He doesn't know yet, but I'm going to save him.'"

  Abby made a sound. Almost a cough. Almost a laugh.

  Nana's eyes snapped to him.

  *He told her. He told her everything.*

  Her foot found his ankle and stomped down hard.

  Abby grabbed the table edge and made a sound like a kettle about to whistle.

  "Something wrong, dear?" Ms. Mitsuri asked without looking away from Nana.

  "Nothing," he managed. "Just. Cramp."

  Nana smiled sweetly. "He gets those. Stress, probably."

  *Traitor,* Abby thought. *I didn't tell her anything. She counted on her own.*

  Ms. Mitsuri watched them. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.

  "You two," she said. "Five months of training and eating at my table, and you still act like children."

  "We're fourteen," Nana corrected.

  "Old enough to know better than to kick your friend under my table." She looked at Nana. "And old enough to know when you're telling yourself a story instead of facing what's real."

  Nana's smile faded.

  ---

  Two months ago, Abby had smiled for the first time in a long time.

  They were at the ruins, and he was working on something new.

  "Watch," he'd said.

  Nana had been reading, but something in his voice made her look up.

  He held out his hand. A fragment began to form—not water, not wind, not fire, not stone.

  All of them.

  The shape flickered between elements, then settled. Fire crackled along arms wrapped around stone. Water moved through the chest in protected channels. Wind circled the legs. The face was Abby's, but harder—no softness, no expression. Just angles and edges and eyes that burned.

  It looked like a soldier.

  It stood for five seconds. Then it collapsed.

  But Abby was smiling.

  "Did you see that? Five seconds. Two seconds longer than last week."

  Nana set her book down. "You're combining them. All four elements."

  "Three, mostly. Stone and fire don't like each other. But wind works with everything." He was still looking at where the fragment had been. "If I can stabilize it, it could fight and protect at the same time."

  He stopped.

  "It could be different." His smile faded. "The other fragments are emotional. They come from feelings. They're pieces of me I can't control."

  He looked at his hands.

  "But this one isn't like that. It's built. Intentional. It doesn't feel things. It's just purpose."

  "A weapon," Nana said slowly.

  "Or a soldier. Something that doesn't suffer." He flexed his fingers. "The emotional fragments have a cost. They hurt. This one doesn't. It just needs to be held."

  He reached out again. The form started to build.

  Fire wrapped around stone. Water in the chest. Wind through the legs. The face formed last—Abby's face, stripped of everything soft.

  The fragment stood. Four seconds. Five. Six. Seven.

  It turned its head and looked at Nana with no recognition. No warmth. Just a soldier waiting for orders.

  Then it collapsed.

  But Abby was still smiling.

  "I'm going to get it," he said. "Before the Gauntlet."

  "You're going to need help."

  "I know."

  "And you're going to listen when I tell you what you're doing wrong."

  "I know."

  "And you're going to stop being stubborn about the anchoring technique, because your way is sloppy."

  Abby's smile turned into a grin. "We'll see."

  She hit him with her book.

  ---

  Now, sitting at Ms. Mitsuri's table, Abby thought about that smile. About what it had felt like to build something that didn't hurt.

  He wasn't there yet. The warrior fragment still collapsed after seconds. Six was his best. He needed thirty. Maybe more.

  But he was close.

  "Earth to Abby." Nana's voice cut through. "Your mother asked you a question."

  He blinked. Ms. Mitsuri was watching him.

  "Sorry. What?"

  "I asked if you're ready." Her voice was careful. "For next week. For everything that comes after."

  Abby thought about the warrior fragment. The way it had looked at Nana without seeing her.

  "I think so," he said. "I'm still working on something. But I think I'll have it by then."

  Ms. Mitsuri nodded. She didn't ask what.

  "The Gauntlet isn't about being the strongest," she said. "It's about surviving yourself. Holding on when everything inside wants to break free."

  "I know."

  "Do you?" She looked at him the way she had when he was small and had nightmares about fragments wandering through his room. "Your father was strong. Stronger than anyone I'd seen. It didn't save him. What saved him—for a while—was control. Knowing when to stop pushing."

  Abby's hands tightened around his spoon.

  "I'm not pushing too hard."

  "You're pushing exactly as hard as you need to. But I also know what happens when it's not enough." She glanced at Nana. "That's why she's here. Because the only people who survive are the ones who have someone watching their blind spots."

  Nana straightened. "I'll watch him."

  "I know you will." Ms. Mitsuri's voice softened. "That's why I haven't thrown you out for talking about that healer forty-seven times."

  Nana's face went pink again.

  "Speaking of which," Ms. Mitsuri continued, "we should finish that conversation."

  "Ms. Mitsuri—"

  "I read the same books you do." She leaned back. "Mysterious stranger with a tragic past. Cold exterior hiding a wounded heart. The woman who sees through it and heals him with her love." She held up a hand. "It's a fine story. But you're projecting it onto a real person who has given you no indication he wants to be part of it."

  Nana's mouth opened. Closed.

  "He saved you," Ms. Mitsuri said. "He did his job. And you've turned that into a fantasy where you're the one who saves him."

  "It's not—"

  "I'm not finished." Her voice was firm but not unkind. "You're young. You went through something terrible. A man appeared at exactly the right moment. That's not love. That's gratitude wrapped in trauma dressed up like romance."

  The kitchen was quiet.

  Nana's hands had gone tight around her spoon.

  "The feelings are real," she said quietly. "I think about him every night. About what it would mean if I could use my Strand on him—if I could amplify his healing, give him something back."

  "He doesn't need you to save him. And even if he did, that's not how love works. You don't love someone because you want to fix them. You love them because of who they are."

  "I know who he is. I see past the walls."

  "You see what you want to see." Ms. Mitsuri leaned forward. "But here's the last thing I'll say about it."

  Nana looked up.

  "I'm grateful. You've given my son a chance he wouldn't have had. You've trained him and fed him and believed in him. I will never be able to repay that."

  She reached across and put her hand over Nana's.

  "So when I tell you to stop projecting your fantasy onto a man who doesn't know you're doing it, it's not because I don't like you. It's because I do. And you deserve better than to waste your heart on someone who exists more in your head than in reality."

  Nana's eyes were bright. She blinked quickly.

  "Thank you for dinner," she said, voice rough. "I should—"

  "Not yet." Ms. Mitsuri didn't move her hand. "Finish your stew. You need your strength."

  She looked at Abby.

  "Both of you do."

  ---

  They finished in relative silence. After the bowls were cleared, Ms. Mitsuri walked them to the door.

  "Next week," she said. "You walk into that Gauntlet together. Watch out for each other. If one of you falls, the other keeps going."

  "Ms. Mitsuri—" Nana started.

  "I mean it." Her voice was hard. "The Academy needs people like you. People who know what it costs." She paused. "My husband didn't have anyone to watch out for him. He didn't have a chance."

  Abby had never heard her talk about his father like this.

  "You have both," she said. "Don't waste it."

  Nana nodded. "I'll bring him back. After the Gauntlet. I'll bring him back here."

  Ms. Mitsuri looked at her for a long moment. Then she reached out and touched Nana's shoulder—brief, almost awkward.

  "I know you will," she said. "That's not what I'm worried about."

  She closed the door behind them.

  ---

  Outside, the street was dark. Nana stood on the steps without moving.

  "Your mother," she said finally, "is a lot."

  "She counts everything."

  Nana laughed—small, tired, real.

  "The Duke of Thornwall. She remembered that."

  Abby winced. "I might have mentioned it once."

  Nana's foot twitched. He stepped backward.

  "Don't."

  "I haven't done anything."

  "Your foot was thinking about it."

  She looked at him, and there was something almost like normal underneath the embarrassment.

  "She's right," Nana said. "About all of it. I've known since the beginning."

  "Then why—"

  "Because it feels better than the alternative." She wrapped her arms around herself. "Because the alternative is admitting that a man saved my life and walked away, and I'll probably never see him again, and I made up a story because the reality was too empty."

  Abby didn't say anything.

  "I'll stop. The projection. The fantasy." She paused. "But I can't turn off the feeling that my Strand is supposed to matter. That there's someone out there who needs what I can do."

  "That's not wrong."

  "No. But maybe the person isn't him." She shrugged. "I don't know yet."

  She looked at him sideways.

  "You're doing it too. The purpose thing. You're not just trying to survive. You're trying to make something that doesn't suffer."

  Abby thought about the fragment that had looked at Nana without seeing her.

  "The emotional ones hurt," he said quietly. "Every time I make one, I can feel it wanting something. They suffer."

  "And the warrior one doesn't?"

  "It just waits. It doesn't feel anything." He looked at his hands. "I don't know if that's better or worse. But it's different."

  Nana was quiet.

  "Maybe that's what you need for the Gauntlet," she said. "Something that doesn't feel."

  "You sound sure."

  "I've watched you train for five months. You don't turn back."

  She picked up her bag. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow we're practicing the wind-stone combination. You're still sloppy."

  She turned and walked into the dark.

  Abby watched her go. Then he turned back toward the door.

  A man was standing there.

  Tall. Thin. Pale. Grey eyes that looked like they hadn't slept in years.

  Abby's breath caught.

  "Healer Aerion," he said.

  Nana's head snapped toward him. She'd only taken a few steps, and now she turned back, her whole body rigid.

  "Don't call him that." Her voice was sharp.

  "What?"

  "Healer Aerion. That's his rank. His job." Her jaw was tight. "You don't call someone by what they do for you. You call them by their name."

  Abby looked at her, then at the man. Aerion's face didn't change. But something moved behind his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," Abby said. "That was rude. Aerion."

  The man nodded once.

  "May I come in?" His voice was flat. "I need to speak with your mother. And with you."

  ---

  Ms. Mitsuri opened the door wider. Her face changed when she saw him—surprise, then caution.

  "Aerion," she said.

  Not Healer Aerion. Just Aerion.

  He stepped inside. His grey eyes moved around the room without seeming to focus on anything.

  Nana hadn't moved from the edge of the room. Her hands were tight at her sides. She was staring at him.

  A faint shimmer appeared around her shoulders. Barely visible. Like heat rising from stone.

  Abby saw it. He'd seen it before, when she was training hard, when her Strand was working.

  But they weren't training.

  "Nana," he said quietly. "Your Strand."

  She didn't hear him. Her eyes were fixed on Aerion.

  The shimmer brightened. It spread from her shoulders down her arms, curling along her spine. The color deepened—not the soft gold of training, but pink. Warm pink at first, then darker, bruised.

  The air around her felt heavier. Like something was pressing outward, trying to reach him.

  Aerion turned his head. He looked at her.

  His expression didn't change. His grey eyes moved over her face, then down to her hands where the glow was brightest.

  "Buffer-type," he said. Not a question. "Emotional amplification. Uncontrolled."

  Nana blinked. The glow pulsed—brighter, darker, spreading like it was responding to his attention.

  "I—" She stepped back. Her face was hot. "I didn't mean to—"

  Aerion pressed his fingers to his forehead. A small, tired gesture.

  "The combination," he said, turning to Abby. "Show me."

  Just like that. No acknowledgment of what was happening to her. He'd noted her Strand, categorized it, dismissed it in a breath.

  Nana's hands were shaking. The pink glow didn't fade. It deepened—the color of embarrassment and hurt and longing pressed together. The warmth radiating from her skin felt like shame made visible.

  She pressed her arms against her sides, trying to hide it.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't—I don't know how to—"

  "You should learn control," Aerion said without looking at her. "Before the Gauntlet. An untrained Buffer is a liability."

  *Liability.*

  The glow pulsed—sharp and dark, almost red. The color of wounded pride.

  Ms. Mitsuri moved quickly. She crossed the room and put her hand on Nana's shoulder.

  "Sit down," she said. "You look like you need to."

  Nana sat. The glow didn't fade. It clung to her skin, pulsing weakly—a stain she couldn't wipe away.

  She'd spent five months imagining this moment. Aerion walking into a room. Seeing her. Realizing she was more than the girl he'd saved.

  And now he was here. And he'd looked at her Strand like it was a problem to catalogue. And he'd turned away.

  *He's not a story,* she thought. *He's not going to look at me the way they do in books.*

  The glow stayed, dim and aching, as Abby led Aerion to the yard.

  ---

  They went to the small yard behind the house. Aerion stood with his hands folded. Nana stayed near the door, sitting on a low stool, her hands pressed between her knees. The glow had faded slightly, but it hadn't disappeared. It lingered like the last light of a sunset that refused to die.

  Ms. Mitsuri watched from the window.

  Abby took a breath.

  He reached inside himself. Not for the emotional fragments. He reached for the warrior.

  Fire. Stone. Water. Wind. Four threads, pulled together with intention.

  He brought them together.

  Fire wrapped around stone for the arms. Water moved through the chest. Wind circled the legs. The face formed last—Abby's face, stripped of everything soft. Just angles and edges and eyes that burned without warmth.

  The fragment stood. A soldier made of elements.

  Three seconds. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

  It turned its head. It looked at Aerion without recognition. Then at Nana without warmth. Then at Abby without anything at all. It just waited.

  Then the wind slipped. The water surged. The fragment collapsed.

  Abby fell to his knees, breathing hard. His body ached—but differently than with emotional fragments. This was exhaustion, not loss. The warrior fragment didn't take pieces of his soul when it fell. It just tired him out.

  Aerion was quiet for a long time.

  "How long have you been working on this?"

  "Two months."

  "And the longest you've held it?"

  "Seven seconds. Tonight was the first time."

  Aerion nodded slowly.

  "It's dangerous," he said. "Combining elements puts strain on your core. If the fragment collapses wrong, it could take pieces of you with it."

  Ms. Mitsuri made a sound from the window.

  "But," Aerion continued, "it's also impressive. Most Fragmentation-types never learn to combine. They stay with single elements. What you're doing is something new."

  He looked at the place where the fragment had stood.

  "This one is different. Your single-element fragments have emotional resonance. They suffer. This one doesn't."

  Abby nodded. "I built it. I didn't pull it from inside me."

  "Intentional construction versus emotional projection." Aerion's grey eyes sharpened. "Your father couldn't do this. Your grandmother couldn't. This isn't something that runs in your bloodline." He paused. "This is something you're making. Something that didn't exist before you."

  Abby stayed on his knees.

  "Yukuri will want to see you. Before the Gauntlet. She'll want to understand what you're becoming."

  "What I'm becoming?"

  "A Fragmentation-type who can build instead of just project." Something like interest crept into his voice. "If you can stabilize this, you won't just have clones that feel your pain. You'll have soldiers that don't feel anything at all."

  He turned toward the door. His eyes passed over Nana without stopping.

  "Three days. Come to the Academy's eastern gate. Ask for Yukari."

  He stopped at the threshold. His gaze returned to Nana—still sitting on the stool, still faintly glowing, still pressing her hands between her knees.

  "Buffer-type," he said again. "Emotional amplification."

  Nana looked up. The glow pulsed once—dim and bruised.

  "Yukari will want to assess you too. Come with him. Three days."

  He didn't say anything else. He just walked out into the dark.

  ---

  Nana sat frozen. The pink glow had faded to almost nothing—a faint shimmer around her fingertips.

  Ms. Mitsuri came out from the back room.

  "Aerion," she said quietly. "In my house. Asking about my son."

  She looked at Nana.

  "How did you know where to send the letter?"

  "I asked around. The Academy has a forwarding address for candidate assessments." Nana's hands were shaking. "I wrote to Yukari's office."

  "You did that for him."

  "I did it because he was going to get himself killed." Her voice cracked. "Not because— I didn't—"

  She stopped.

  "He didn't even look at me," she said. "I've been thinking about him for five months. And he walked in here and looked at me like I was a problem."

  The glow pulsed again. Darker.

  "Like I was a liability."

  Abby shifted.

  "He didn't—" he started.

  "Don't make excuses for him. And don't call him by his title again." Nana turned to face him. Her eyes were bright, but not with romance. With something sharper. "You called him by his function. By what he does for people. By the thing that's been killing him for years."

  Abby stepped back.

  "Every time someone says 'Healer Aerion,' they're reminding him that's all he is to them. A tool." Her voice shook. "He's a person. He has a name. And maybe if more people used it, he'd remember that."

  Ms. Mitsuri was quiet.

  Abby looked down. "You're right. I'm sorry."

  Nana's shoulders dropped. The glow faded—still there, but softer.

  "I know you didn't mean it. But words matter."

  She looked at the door where Aerion had left. The last traces of pink disappeared into her skin.

  "He's not a story. I know that now. Ms. Mitsuri was right." Her voice went quiet. "But he's also not a tool. He's just a tired man who saves people and doesn't know how to stop."

  Ms. Mitsuri put a hand on her shoulder.

  "He's a man who carries a lot. That doesn't make him a story. That just makes him tired."

  Nana's eyes were bright.

  "I know," she whispered.

  Ms. Mitsuri squeezed her shoulder.

  "Stay here tonight. Tomorrow you can both practice like you planned."

  Nana nodded. She didn't trust her voice.

  Ms. Mitsuri squeezed her shoulder again, then went inside to prepare the spare room.

  Abby watched them. His mother—who rarely touched anyone—was holding onto Nana like she mattered.

  *Maybe she does,* he thought. *Maybe that's what family is.*

  He thought about the Gauntlet. About the warrior fragment. About what Aerion had said.

  *Something that didn't exist before you.*

  He didn't know if it would be enough. He didn't know if he would survive.

  But for the first time, he wanted to find out.

  ---

  On the night before he was supposed to go to the Academy, Abby went to the ruins alone.

  His mother knew where he was going. She'd nodded once and pressed a coin into his hand. For luck.

  He stood in the center of the cracked courtyard and closed his eyes.

  *Seven seconds. That's not enough.*

  He reached inside himself. Not for the soft parts. For the place where intention lived—the place where he could build instead of feel.

  Fire first. Stone next. Water third. Wind last.

  He pulled them into shape.

  The warrior formed slowly. Fire wrapped around stone for the arms. Water moved through the chest. Wind circled the legs.

  The fragment stood. Its face was his face, stripped of everything soft. No expression. No warmth. Just angles and edges and eyes that burned without feeling.

  Three seconds. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

  *Hold.*

  Eight seconds.

  Nine.

  The fragment turned its head. It looked at him with no recognition. No reaching. No suffering. Just a soldier waiting for orders.

  Then the wind slipped, the water surged, and the whole thing collapsed.

  Abby fell to his knees, breathing hard. His body ached—but clean pain. The pain of work, not loss.

  *Nine seconds. Three more than yesterday.*

  He opened his eyes.

  Another fragment stood in front of him. Female, soft-featured, dark hair. The one that looked like his mother.

  She reached out her hand.

  He reached back. His fingers passed through hers, but she didn't dissolve.

  "I see you," he said quietly. "I'm going to take care of you."

  The fragment made a soft sound. Something like acknowledgment. Something like love.

  Then she faded—called back into him. Back where she belonged.

  *Two kinds now,* he thought. *The ones that feel. And the ones that fight.*

  He wasn't sure which would save him.

  But he had both. And tomorrow, he'd find out if either was enough.