While Liam was beginning his silent war against his own past in the archives, Ronan's training began in the heart of the Gearhouse's thunderous workshop. His instructors were an unlikely pair: Captain Borin, the embodiment of rigid structure, and Greta, the avatar of straightforward, overwhelming will. The contrast was deliberate. Borin intended to show Ronan the two forces he was foolishly trying to emulate: absolute order and direct force.
"Your power is a scalpel, Weaver," Borin began, his voice cutting through the noise of a nearby steam-press. "It is meant for precision, for altering the course of events with a touch so subtle the universe itself barely notices. But you wield it like a sledgehammer. You see the most probable path to victory and try to force everything down it, creating ripples of chaos and consequence you don't account for. Your failure at Sub-station 7 was not a lack of power. It was a failure of art."
Greta stood beside him, her arms crossed over her massive chest, a grin on her face. "The Captain is trying to say you're clumsy, Ronan. You see the board, but you keep knocking over the pieces." She cracked her knuckles. "My training is simpler. I teach people to be the hammer. The Captain wants to see if you can be the artist."
Borin laid out the terms of the test. It was not a physical trial, but a challenge of finesse and control, a game played with the very fabric of probability. "Within the next twenty-four hours," the Captain declared, "you will orchestrate three specific, improbable events, in sequence. You will achieve them through subtle guidance alone. Any direct, forceful manipulation that causes significant backlash will be considered a failure."
He handed Ronan a piece of parchment with the three tasks written in his precise, architectural script.
1. Cause Cain to drop the 'Compendium of Pre-Shattering Metallurgy' from the upper shelf in the archive.
2. Cause the primary drive gear of the main workshop clock to slip by a single tooth without causing any lasting damage.
3. Cause me to spill my afternoon tea.
Ronan stared at the list, a slow whistle escaping his lips. Each task was a masterpiece of calculated difficulty. The first was a test of manipulating a person with high awareness. The second was a test of manipulating a complex, stable mechanism. The third, a test of influencing Borin himself—a Level 4 Sealbearer of Structure, a man whose personal reality was as orderly and predictable as a fortress.
"This is insane," Ronan muttered.
"This is the art," Borin corrected him. "Begin."
Ronan's first move was observation. He found a quiet corner in the Gearhouse, closed his eyes, and let his senses expand. He opened himself to the flow of [Probability Currents]. To him, the world was a vast, shimmering sea of threads, each one a potential future. He saw the major currents—Greta's training session later that day, the delivery of new steel ingots, the evening meal. But he also saw the infinite, smaller threads: a dropped wrench, a misspoken word, a flickering lightbulb.
His focus, however, was immediately drawn to other, more tantalizing threads. These were his own futures, branching away from the Gearhouse. He saw a thread shimmering with gold, a path that led to a high-stakes card game where he was guaranteed to win a fortune in Relic Shards. He saw another, quieter thread, leading him away from Terminus altogether, to a small, peaceful life where the Blank Page Legion was just a forgotten nightmare. He saw a third, blazing with power, a timeline where he embraced his desire for control and rose to become a formidable, unchallenged figure in the city's underworld. The temptation to reach out and pull one of those threads, to choose his own perfect destiny, was a physical ache. This was the core of his struggle: the power to see every path, and the hubris to believe he could master them all.
He shook his head, forcing the visions away, and focused on the first task. He located Cain's thread in the complex weave. The scout was in the archive, meticulously cataloging new acquisitions. The Compendium of Pre-Shattering Metallurgy was a heavy, awkward tome on a high shelf. The probability of him dropping it by accident in the next hour was less than one percent.
Ronan decided on a direct approach, a single, powerful nudge to get the first success under his belt. He gathered his will and focused on the thread representing Cain's immediate future. He envisioned the book slipping, Cain's grip failing. He pushed, pouring his energy into a single, decisive [Fate's Knot].
He felt a sharp, psychic snap, like a guitar string breaking.
In the archive, Cain reached for the heavy book. As his fingers closed around the spine, a floorboard directly behind him, which had been stable for fifty years, chose that exact moment to groan and buckle. Startled, Cain's grip faltered, and the massive book tumbled from his hands. It crashed to the floor with a sound like thunder. But the momentum of Cain's stumble carried him sideways, into the towering bookshelf next to him. With a deafening shriek of protesting metal and a cascade of tearing paper, the entire shelf tipped over, burying a decade's worth of carefully sorted records under an avalanche of chaos.
From his corner, Ronan opened his eyes, a sharp pain lancing through his skull. He heard the distant crash. He had succeeded in the letter of the task, but failed in its spirit. He had made Cain drop the book, but in his haste for control, he had brought down the entire library shelf. A cold understanding washed over him. Brute force created unforeseen consequences. This game was far more subtle than he had ever imagined.