The yard smelled of oil and summer dust, bright, ordinary, the sort of space where students learned to make mistakes without dying.
A teaching golem clanked through its routine at the center, arm raised to demonstrate balance, wrist runes pulsing like a careful heartbeat.
Students gathered in a loose ring, professors watching from the shaded halls.
Then the routine hiccuped.
A joint let out a metallic shriek, and the golem's arm stuttered into a wild, uncontrolled sweep.
A row of crates toppled, a tutor's demonstration table splintered. Screams folded into shouts.
For a breath, the machine moved like a thing with a mind all its own.
Damage was limited, no one hit by the sweep was gravely hurt, but the spectacle was public.
Gasps and worried cries rippled through the crowd.
Students from both academies scrambled forward to help contain debris and keep bystanders safe.
Aurelia's first thought was oddly domestic, she'd left her sword back at the dorm. She smiled despite the situation. Back to the old way, then. Pure Aether manipulation.
No steel, no ceremony, just the current and me.
"Why aren't the professors stepping in?" Lysandra hissed, eyes narrow.
The question rode the chaos, teachers milled but didn't move toward direct assault.
Kael's voice was level, practical. "Maybe it's a controlled stress test," he said. "See how students respond." He didn't wait for confirmation.
With a quick inhale, he wove water from a trough into the air, thin spears of ice and spray, and hurled them in a volley at the golem's joints.
The projectiles struck with a soft clack and slid off as if the golem wore a skin of stone. Not even a nick.
Kael's jaw tightened. "Tougher than it looks."
Aurelia scanned the teaching frame, the hinges, the exposed anchors, and the faint runic seams at its wrists. Every machine has a weak line. If you listen long enough, it tells you where it fears to be opened.
Aurelia's voice cut through the chaos. "Everything has a weakness. Ardent, Victoria—find it."
The two nodded, already moving. Ardent's eyes tracked the runes glowing across its chest, while Victoria scribbled furiously on her slate, noting the rhythm of its movements. "Hold out until we can pinpoint something," Victoria called.
Aurelia dodged another crushing strike, the ground cracking beneath the golem's fist. She thrust her arm forward, wind blasting from her palm, forcing the construct back a step.
Lucien, never one to let a scene be without his flourish, smirked and snapped his fingers.
Illusory swords of light wavered into being and leapt at the golem's moving parts, clattering like bright insects.
"Showmanship always helps morale," he said, voice loud enough that it sounded like a joke even when he put real heat into his conjures.
Lysandra's eyes flashed. She traced a finger through the air, and a bow of living flame unfurled.
She loosed molten arrows, each one a streak of concentrated heat that arced beautifully toward exposed rivets.
Tavian, hands steady, drew his revolver without drama.
His fingers moved in a practiced rhythm, and one by one elemental rounds spat from the barrel: a blue tracer that chilled everything it touched, a green round that fizzed with raw Aether, a copper-tinted shot that sang on impact.
For a moment, it looked like chaos would break into triumph, the combined spells, the volleys, the coordinated strikes.
Then the golem answered in a way no one had expected.
A slab of the courtyard's facing rose like armor, a sudden wall of stone, forged up around the golem by a mechanism in its chest.
The elemental bullets thunked harmlessly, and the fire-arrows sizzled and ran off.
The chest runes flared and, in response, a column of flame burst outward from its midsection, a controlled, raging plume that vaporized the light-swords and scorched a singed halo into the air.
The yard filled with heat and the smell of scorched rune-ink.
Aurelia's smile faded into frustration. Great, it can even use Aether to conjure spells with those runes inscribed onto it.
Ardent's voice cut through the smoke, sharp, urgent. "Its chest runes are the hub. Force it to answer too many things at once, and the bindings will tear."
Victoria, slate clutched to her chest, pointed at the pattern of glowing seals. "It's reactive. Hit it with one element, and it answers with another. If we make it juggle everything, the runes will overload."
Aurelia nodded, eyes hard. Then we make it burn through everything it has. She set the plan with a single breath. "Pressure and chaos. Keep it from settling."
They tightened into formation. The yard shook as the golem's next blast scorched stone, students shouted, ducked, and pressed forward anyway.
Aurelia sent a gust of wind that buffeted the construct off-balance. "Lucien, light, keep up the pressure!" she called.
He grinned and answered with a scatter of radiant blades that hammered the golem's stone wall.
"Lysandra, fire, full volley!" Lysandra's bow flared, flaming arrows raked the armor and forced the machine to spew counter-jets of water that hissed into steam.
"Tavian, mix it up, don't let it find a rhythm!" Aurelia barked.
He snapped back, "Don't tell me how to shoot!" and then unleashed a staccato of elemental rounds: ice, lightning, acid, earth.
Each hit forced the golem to shift, its runes flaring brighter, struggling to route the opposing currents.
Arthur moved like a metronome in the chaos, steady, decisive.
His sword pulsed a fierce red Aura as he closed the distance and struck at the golem's flank, the blade bit into plating and left a smoking gouge.
The strike didn't just dent metal, it forced a local overload, a tiny fracture that made the adjacent runes hiccup. "Keep hitting that node!" he called, voice calm over the din.
Kael drove a spear of wind-sculpted water into the newly opened seam.
Ardent and Victoria barked adjustments, pointing to the next weak junction.
The construct roared as its systems tried to answer every assault at once: stone walls rose and collapsed, steam billowed, arcs of lightning crawled along plating.
The machine trembled, and the runes around its chest began to pulse out of sync.
"It's working, the bindings are slipping!" Ardent shouted.
"Now!" Victoria cried.
Aurelia drew the Aether into her like a held breath and shaped it into a single, pushing tide. "On my mark!" she cried.
Lucien's blades became a spear of light, Lysandra's fire a comet of heat, Tavian's rounds smashed in a scatter of impact, Kael's water cut like a blade, everything converged. Arthur stepped in at the last beat, his aura strike gouging the last seam wide enough for Aurelia's surge to reach the chest runes.
Aurelia thrust both palms forward and drove the collected Aether straight into the golem's chest.
Light shattered along the seams; runes cracked open like glass.
The construct convulsed, a thunder of grinding metal and failing gear, and then it gave, collapsing in a great, shuddering fall that sent dust and hot steam across the yard.
For a long heartbeat, there was only the rasp of cooling metal. Then the students whooped, half in relief, half in disbelief.
Smoke curled up from the wreckage, and the smell of singed wiring and burning oil hung in the air.
They stared at the ruin, breathing, shaking, alive, knowing they'd just pushed a machine past the edge of what it could hold.
Aurelia slicked a damp strand of hair back from her forehead and let out a small, breathy laugh. "So, do we pay for this, or is it the Spire's insurance?" Her fingers kept rubbing at the smear on her cheek where the smoke had settled.
Kael waved a hand, steady and amused. "If it wasn't a test, it's their problem. We didn't build the thing."
Lucien gave the golem's inert head a careless kick. "Probably junk anyway."
The clang made Ardent's face go a shade red. He snapped, "Hey, respect the work!"
Lucien's smirk widened. "Funny, coming from the guy who helped tear it apart."
Ardent flustered, words tumbling over themselves. "Because it was a test! I had to! That doesn't mean it wasn't crafted well."
Professor Dareth clapped once, the sound sharp enough to call attention, "Well done. That was precisely the point, stress scenarios. Tests are supposed to fail in controlled ways, you responded. Class dismissed."
Lysandra scowled, folding her arms. "That was not a test. That thing nearly—"
"—and you did what you had to," Kael cut in, his voice smooth as water as he laid a hand on her elbow. "We got through it. That's what matters."
Aurelia watched Dareth as the others clustered and laughed, as fist-bumps were passed and swords were sheathed.
His smile stayed professional, but something in the set of his jaw as he said it, something in the way the words landed, made her frown inwardly.
He's saying it like he wants them to believe it. Like he needs them to believe it.
The thought was a small, cold thing in her chest, she folded it away, not speaking it aloud.
Students milled and dispersed, chatter rose into the evening like steam.
Dareth let his shoulders ease and leaned back against a stone pillar, patting off dust from his palms.
From the shadowed archway, Headmaster Agnes stepped forward as if detached from the bustle.
He moved with measured calm, hands clasped behind his back.
"Lucky," Dareth said as Agnes joined him, voice low. "They bought it—called it a test. You made the right call, keeping the alarm quiet."
Agnes's smile was easy but not untroubled. "We kept it from worrying the younger ones. If word spreads, rumor becomes panic." He glanced at the dark hulks of the golem's limbs. "But the malfunctions are real. We've had more than a fluke show up this week, and we still don't have a cause."
Dareth rubbed his temple. "Could it be the core? The Heart? If the anchors are shifting—"
"Possibly," Agnes said, clipped. "Possibility and proof are different things."
Magus Serel's footsteps cut across the yard. She arrived with that cool efficiency of someone who catalogues threats for a living. "Ever since the Arcane students arrived," she said bluntly, "we've been seeing odd readings and unexplained resonance elsewhere."
Dareth's jaw tightened so visibly that the tendons in his neck stood out. He straightened, shoulders rigid.
"These are our guests," he said, voice sharp. "Arcane's pupils are not scapegoats. We run a school, not a court. If we start pointing fingers without proof, we do more harm than good."
Serel's expression didn't soften. "I never said blame outright. I said we follow leads. Patterns emerge from coincidence if you don't look for them. If there's any chance the anomalies are linked to recent arrivals, we must test that hypothesis."
The two of them circled the argument like wary hawks. For a moment, the yard held the same taut silence as before the golem fell, only now it was human tension, not machinery, that made the air thin.
Kestrel moved between them, palms open in the air. His voice evened the edges of the exchange.
"Dareth is right about one thing: we owe the students and both academies fairness. But Serel is also right to insist that we gather facts. Suspicion without evidence breeds panic, ignoring patterns without study is negligence. We will do both, protect our people and pursue the cause."
Agnes' eyes swept the scattered crowd of students and the dark hulks of the downed construct. "Begin with the core study. If Halvane's annotations are in the anchors, we need full access to the founding records. Call the central office. Request the sealed file on Edrin Halvane and the early core project. Flag it urgent."
Dareth sagged a fraction as if someone had shifted a weight from his chest. Kestrel made a small, satisfied grunt. Serel inclined her head once, not pleased but appeased.
Agnes' hand rested a moment on the rolled book that had been brought up from the maintenance quadrant, the paper felt suddenly heavier with consequence.
An archivist who'd been quiet all afternoon straightened. He had been cataloging logs and photographs, and his face went pale when he saw the headmaster's instruction.
"The central office, there's a sealed accession," he said softly. "We didn't have clearance. It's been restricted since the Heart was stood up. If they're requesting it now, and flagging it urgent—"
"Then we go by their orders," a senior official finished. "But discreetly. No alarms. No leaks."
The archivist tucked the folded ledger under his arm and moved toward the nearest comms hatch, fingers working with a steadiness that belied his unease.
As the machinery of the Spire's administration began to hum into action, the conversation in the yard thinned into more minor duties and whispered plans.
No one noticed, at first, the way the golem's scattered runes still twitched faintly beneath the rubble, just an after-echo of the evening's storm.
But in a locked room under the Spire, a central clerk typed the words that made several throats catch when a notification pinged across the conservators' messages:
SEALED FILE: HALVANE — ACCESS REQUIRED. PRIORITY: URGENT.
The message carried with it the quiet, final note of something about to be unlatched.
-
The memory arrived like a cough of cold air.
Aurelia blinked and saw them, the cramped, sweating lab lit with lanterns, Halvane's hands trembling as he slid the crystalline heart into its cradle. "It—it actually works!" he cried, voice thin with disbelief and triumph.
Around him, other engineers let out a ragged cheer.
The room went bright as if someone had lit a thousand lamps at once, streetlamps down in the city guttered into steady flame, machines around the Spire took on a smooth, humming life.
For a single shimmering instant, the whole place looked like a living thing waking.
Then the vision snapped away, torn by white static and gone.
Aurelia came back to the corridor, pulse stammering.
Lysandra's voice, bright and practical, brought her out of it. "Tomorrow we go into the Heart's outer chamber for instrumentation and study," she said, as if reading from a schedule. "You'll be okay, right? You looked like you hadn't slept."
Only when I lose control does my soul show me things without asking. That memory wasn't mine to pull. It happened because I wasn't holding the tide.
She turned to Ardent, who was idly winding copper filament around a spare coil. "What is the core, exactly?" she asked.
Ardent smiled, pleased to explain anything about machines. He kept his voice low, practical, the way one speaks around delicate gears. "Think of the core as the Spire's heart and its brain at once," he said. "It's a reservoir that gathers the raw, noisy Aether that flows through the kingdom and makes it useful. Ambient Aether is like wind in tall grass, nice to feel, terrible to base a city on. The core takes that wind, filters and steadies it, then pushes it back out as a constant, reliable current."
Victoria frowned. "But don't the runes and machines already use Aether?" she asked. "Everything here is, what, rune-powered?"
"True," Ardent answered. "Most devices pull straight from the ambient flow, short bursts, improvisation. The core is different. It's a converter and a stabilizer. It locks to the ambient Aether and creates a steady rhythm, like turning someone's wild singing into a choir that always hits the same note. That steadiness lets you run big things, city lights, the larger golems, the anchor-work that keeps the Spire itself steady."
Kael pressed, practical as ever. "So it's power. Fine. But why is everyone whispering like it's something more?"
Ardent's expression tightened. "Because the core isn't just a battery. The people who built it left… instructions. Not words, not spells, patterns. Tiny marks and design choices that teach the core how to behave." He tapped his temple. "It's like giving a machine a memory of what 'normal' looks like, so it can keep the city stable."
Victoria frowned. "You mean it remembers what it's supposed to do?"
"Exactly," Ardent said. "Think of it like a compass made out of old habits. As long as those habits stay steady, the core runs smoothly. But if the pattern was based on something unusual, or if it starts drifting, then the whole system can shift with it."
Kael's brows lifted. "Shift how?"
"That's the problem." Ardent spread his hands. "No one fully understands the original team's design. The council guards the details. The rest of us just know this. If the core's guiding pattern changes, the city will feel it. Lights flicker for a reason. Currents wander for a reason."
A machine that remembers. A machine that follows the reasons left behind by people centuries ago. It's like an advanced form of Echocraft.
But somewhere in the back of her mind, a single unanswered question pulsed:
Whose reasons were left behind?
Victoria, still trying to steady the thought, asked the obvious technical question, "How does the core link to the rest of the kingdom? Is there a physical line, or is it all—" She waved at the air, searching for the right word. "—magical?"
"Both," Ardent said. "Copper and crystal, runes and careful phasing. The heart feeds a network of conduits, physical channels that carry the steady current, and a system of runes that bind that current to places: gates, golems, drones. Mages put the runes in, engineers build the channels. The core keeps them in time. When the core purrs right, everything hums along."
Aurelia hesitated, then asked the question all of them had been circling. "But how does it even do that? Converting that much Aether… stabilizing it long enough to power an entire kingdom? Aether is the world's current. It's everything. You can't bottle the ocean." Her voice dropped. "Something like that would take… a god."
Ardent barked a laugh. "Plenty of people say the same. There's an old myth, older than the Spire, older than the first logs, that the core only works because a god blessed this place. Gave the founders permission, or power, or whatever gods give when they're in a generous mood."
Kael gave him a flat look. "That's a children's tale."
"Maybe," Ardent said with a shrug. "But it's the story everyone falls back on when the numbers stop making sense. And the numbers do stop making sense." He gestured around them. "The way the core pulls Aether, the way it refines it… it shouldn't be possible, not without something extraordinary built into it. And that's why the effect is limited to the Imperial Spire. No other province can tap into whatever makes this place special."
Lysandra absorbed that, thoughtful. "So the Spire works because this land was… blessed?"
"That's the legend," Ardent replied. "A god touched the ground, and the core can drink deeper because of it."
Aurelia stayed quiet, but inside, her suspicions snapped.
A "blessing" that only worked here.
A machine that remembered.
Patterns that behaved like a will.
All of this aligns with my visions…