The Council sent people you couldn't argue with.
They arrived like weather shifted in the wrong season: armored wardens with faces taut as flint, technicians with cages of glass and wire that hummed when you breathed near them, and a woman in embroidered gray who introduced herself as Master Warder Halin — a person whose reputation alone read like a remedial spellbook for reckless cadets. She walked through the practice hall and made the frost on the pillars look like a poor experiment.
Dareth gave us the rundown in blunt, efficient sentences. "We will reinforce the academy perimeter with lattice wards. We will assign guardians on rotation. You will receive private training windows, and triad resonance supervision will be conducted twice daily. Master Halin leads."
That last part put Halin squarely in our orbit.
When she first said, "Show me," her voice was not asking. It was a clean command. Lira's jaw tightened in a way I'd learned to read as focused, Seris's grin became an expression of concentration rather than teasing, and I felt my center shift—less because of my pride than because we were being tested again.
The early days blurred into a kind of relentless ritual. Mornings were for classroom drills; afternoons for Council briefings and ward calibrations; nights for the new training windows. The academy smelled of hot wax and metal and the sharp tang of warding crystals. There were charts on the walls now, markers scratching up and down diagrams of resonance flux, and a scoreboard of sorts — a ridiculous thing to keep, but it made the wardens smile like children when numbers moved their way.
Master Halin was both patient and exacting. She had little tolerance for theatricality; what she wanted was clean lines, repeatable outcomes, and the kind of cold, methodical repeat that turned panic into muscle memory.
"Triad training is not about forcing unity," she told us on the second day, hands folded over a diagram of our bonded signatures. "It's about choreography under pressure. You'll be taught to divide, braid, and redirect. Your emotions are inputs. Control them as instruments — not as masters."
Seris snorted under her breath the first time. "Instruments are boring," she muttered, loud enough for Halin to glance up. Halin only raised an eyebrow.
"You will find them beautiful," she said simply.
And she was right, in a practical way: instruments gave us rules; rules gave us chance.
---
The first training cycle was about reading each other's edges.
Halins's method was deceptively simple. We'd stand in a stone ring she'd etched for us, the floors cool and practical. Each of us was assigned a role for the drill: one edged toward stabilizer, one pulse-driver, one distributor. We rotated through those roles until we could do it without thinking — until our muscles remembered the beat of the triad.
The stabilizer was always the hardest for me; being the center meant holding the braid steady while the other two pushed energy outward. Lira was a natural learner; her quiet patience made her hands the right speed to temper surges into something manageable. Seris was a storm — bright, immediate — she taught us to meet a flow with spark rather than resistance, which sometimes meant that when the braid wanted to snap, she'd redirect the excess into a harmless flare.
"What I want you to remember," Halin said during one session, "is that you are the safety net for one another. You don't have to be identical. You have to be complementary."
Weeks of drills stacked into a kind of competence. We rehearsed the triad braid so many times that when a junior warden walked into the hall unexpectedly, the three of us reacted as one reflex: a shared intake, a split-off of energy that flowed outward to the hall, a check that returned like a calm echo.
Master Halin watched, expression almost unreadable, then inclined her head. "Good," she said. "Not perfect. Good."
The Council's physical reinforcements took shape outside the dormitories. Men and women dug in lines around the fields, laying crystals at precise intervals and binding them with threads of warding light that hummed like a harp you could feel in your teeth. The wardens explained to us that the lattice would slow anything that moved by resonance. It wouldn't stop the thing forever, but it would give time for response teams to mobilize.
One night, Dareth led us out onto the terraces to watch the technicians set the last of the nodes. The Constellation Web above us gleamed faintly, lines crisscrossing like the measured hands of an instrument.
"You did well," Dareth said suddenly, and I felt something inside my chest ease. Not pride, exactly, but the warm, practical recognition that we weren't only subjects of observation anymore — we had partners.
Seris nudged my shoulder. "He's practically complimenting you—watch the air."
"Don't, you'll jinx it," I muttered.
He did not jinx it. Instead, he handed us a small slate each of wards to memorize — practical runes for use in the field. Halin took particular pleasure in testing us on those slates during late-night drills, and Seris made a game out of getting them right while trying to outpace my focus with gossamer jokes.
When the technicians ran tests on the new lattice and the wards sang like a choir, we all breathed easy for the first time in a long while. Not safe. Not by a long margin. But safer than before.
The private sessions were the hardest thing to describe.
There was an intimacy to rehearsal under pressure that made the three of us honest in ways we weren't in the searing public eye. In the practice hall, Master Halin gave us simulations — conjured echoes, small controlled resonances designed to mimic the thing's probing tendencies. They fed in bursts: half-truths of memory, a scent here, a taste there, an ache that mimicked a wound. Each time, the test increased, and each time we had to braid faster, smarter.
A memory-surge would come in the simulation as a precise pressure on one channel — an illusion of failure, of pain someone else had known. If Lira's channel responded by tightening her shoulders, Seris's might fling a bright arc to deflect it, and my role was to reroute the residual into an outward current. The choreography required trust, timing, and a willingness to let your partner's energy flow through you without losing grip of your own center.
One night, Halin paused us mid-drill.
"Enough technicals," she said. "Tonight, you will practice honesty."
That sounded theatrical until she explained herself.
"Emotional leaks make resonance messy," she said. "You can train until you bleed, but if you do not admit fear, envy, longing — the things that interrupt your weave — you will always have tears you cannot sew. So speak."
We stilled.
I expected Lira to be tight-lipped. She surprised all of us.
"I'm afraid," she said, voice small under the hall's high ceiling. "I'm afraid of being the thing I remember—someone who holds so much she breaks."
It landed between us like a bell struck.
Seris's eyes were bright, a mirror shard of something sharp and honest. "I'm afraid I'll stand back when I should step in," she said. "I'm afraid I'll be the spark that burns the net."
I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. "I'm afraid I'll keep trying to be the center without asking if I should be." My admission tasted like metal and relief.
Halin watched for a long second. "Honesty is tactical," she said, turning the phrase like a blade. "Use it."
We spent the rest of the night running drills, but the change was subtle and profound. When the mock surge came, we moved differently. Lira's hands were less rigid because she'd told us she was afraid. Seris's flare was more precise because she'd admitted she feared inaction. I found myself not insisting on center as default but seeking the shape that suited the problem.
We met each other with fewer assumptions and so fewer leaks.
---
Outside the sterile language of drills, the small, human things stitched us together.
We ate together, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly; we argued over whether a warding thread should be silver or blue; we stole moments to sit in a window alcove where the sun crawled across the floor. Seris taught me how to make a certain quick knot for securing wards that doubled as a loop for my bag; Lira showed me a marginal note in a book that explained an old resonance metaphor as if it were a poem.
One afternoon while the wardens ran perimeter checks, Seris and I found Lira under the old willow near the practice field, reading a battered copy of constellations. She looked up and closed the book, not surprised by our arrival.
"Master Halin said you were practicing honesty," I said, sitting down.
Lira smoothed the page. "She did. It's useful."
Seris flopped beside us, breathless from skipping a patrol checkpoint. "Honesty's overrated unless it's paired with action," she said. "Like, 'I'm afraid I'll be useless unless I try harder' and then does the thing."
Lira smiled slightly at that. "You're not useless."
"You're saying I'm useful because you're being kind," Seris said.
"Because you are," Lira corrected.
I watched them for a long moment: Seris with the restless light in her eyes, Lira with steady comprehension, and me with a lock of nervousness that felt softer than it had in weeks. The warding lattice hummed in the distance like a contented animal.
We'd shaped our fears into tools. It didn't make us invincible. It made us precise.
---
Then Halin took us out on a field exercise the Council had orchestrated as a test. We were to run a simulated perimeter breach using the new lattice and the reinforced wards. The technicians would trigger controlled disturbances that mimicked the thing's probing. Our job was to respond faster than the intrusions could anchor.
The exercise was a mess at first. Threads crossed where they shouldn't have; the lattice fluctuated; the technicians adjusted on the fly. It felt like being taught a dance while the music kept changing tempo.
And then the breach came right where Lira had practiced practicing—at the old shrine marker beyond the lower hedges. The simulation shivered with a realism that got my throat dry; the technicians had upped the warmth of the feeds and peppered in a memory-arc that smelled like smoke and an old argument I hadn't been present for, and for a moment I felt thrown.
We moved by now with muscle memory layered under new honesty. Seris threw a bright ribbon of fire-magic designed to arc the probe outward while Lira folded a stabilizing flow around the point of entry. My role was to be the braid: to split, anchor, and divert.
Under pressure, something clicked. We did not simply react; we anticipated. Seris's flare didn't just arc; it caught and redirected so that the ward lattice could drink the excess. Lira's stabilizer didn't clamp; it softened and channeled. My center did not collapse.
When the simulation ended, the technicians clapped like relieved parents. Halin gave us a look that almost resembled pride.
"You held," she said. "You did not overpower. You redirected. That is the difference between a victim and a bridge."
We left the field drained, sleeves dusty, cheeks flushed. For once our exhaustion tasted clean — less like shock and more like something earned.
---
That evening, after the drills and the ward checks and the endless small administrative etchings of life under watch, we returned to the practice hall and found a message pinned to the door.
It was a small slate from Halin with one sentence, in her precise hand:
Tonight, we refine the weave. Be ready.
We rehearsed into the deep hours — not for performance, but for resilience. We practiced guided breathing, intentional release, and the weave's minor maneuvers. Halin stood aside and corrected a posture, a grip, a timing until we were a metronome of motion and moment.
At the end, exhausted and quiet, I found Lira's fingers in mine and Seris's hand resting on my shoulder. We sat like that in the dim room, bodies close enough that warmth bled between us, no words necessary beyond the steady breath we shared.
A shield had been built, strand by strand. The Council's lattice hummed at the edge of the campus, the wardens kept watch, and teachers and technicians walked the grounds with mindful eyes. The thing that remembered had been met and repelled once. The lattice might discourage it for a while; the Council's guardians might intercept its scouts; and we had a rubric that worked.
But we also had something the lattice could not provide: the knowledge that we had deliberately chosen to hold each other. That we would stand in the center of what the world tried to rip open and braid the pieces clean again.
As the practice hall emptied and the moon slid across the high windows, I could feel the triad settle into an easier sync — not perfectly stable, not immune, but practiced, honest, and dangerous in a way that felt right.
Master Halin's last words for us before she let the lamps die were simple.
"Keep your instruments tuned," she said. "And don't let anyone else play your song for you."
We nodded.
Outside, the ward lattice thinned into darkness and then brightened again as the technicians ran another check.
We breathed.
For now, that was enough.
But none of us pretended the music would stay gentle.
At the edge of my awareness, the System blinked one message — nothing flashy, but weighty in its simplicity:
> [External signature persists. Eventual return predicted.]
We had time to train. We had time to choose.
And when it came back — and I knew it would — we would be waiting with instruments in hand, ready to play.