Verdwood's reaction to Torren was exactly what we expected: immediate, and split clean down the middle.
When we walked him through the main gate—a small, ten-year-old boy half-hidden behind me and Kaela—you could feel the shift. Some villagers, the ones who had come to see my own mark as a blessing, looked at him with a kind of quiet validation. See? Ren wasn't a fluke. This was a pattern. This was real.
Others just looked afraid. They saw confirmation of their worst fears. They saw a sickness spreading, another mouth for the void to speak through, and our village actively inviting it in. Elder Stoneheart convened an emergency council meeting before we'd even gotten Torren a hot meal.
"We now have two convergence-marked children in Verdwood," he stated, his voice a carefully neutral stone dropped into a roiling pond. "This changes our strategic position. We're no longer just protecting an anomaly. We are, by default, establishing ourselves as a sanctuary."
"That's a dangerous word, Stoneheart," Elder Ironwood snapped, his voice sharp. "A sanctuary is a target. Every void-touched child we take in is another reason for the cult to strike us. It paints a target on all of us."
"We already have that target," Master Dren countered, his arms crossed. "The cult has known about Ren for years. Adding Torren doesn't meaningfully increase our risk. It increases our capability."
"Capability?" another council member, a merchant named Farris, scoffed. "He's a ten-year-old child who, by your own report, can't control his power. He's not an asset, Dren. He's a liability."
I was sitting in the back with Kaela and Lysara, and I could feel my jaw tighten. They were talking about him like he was a new sword, debating his worthiness, his "strategic value," not the terrified kid who had been standing at the chamber entrance, clutching his own arms. My skin was crawling.
Kaela's hand found mine under the table, her grip bruising. She was just as angry.
"He's a child," I said, and my voice came out louder than I intended. I stood up. The whole chamber turned to look at me. "He's a child who's been alone and terrified for months. And yes, he can barely control his power. So did I. Neither of you," I nodded at Farris and Ironwood, "were complaining when my 'liability' saved the eastern wall. He needs training. He needs support. He needs people who actually understand what's happening to him. With that, he becomes the asset you're so worried about."
"Or," Ironwood countered, his voice dangerously low, "he becomes corrupted and destroys us all from the inside out."
"Then we watch him," I shot back, stepping forward. "We train him. We give him a thousand reasons to choose us over the void, over the cult. What we don't do is abandon a ten-year-old kid because we're afraid of a 'what if.' That's not prudence. That's cowardice."
The silence in the chamber was absolute, heavy and sharp. I'd just called a council elder a coward in public session.
Elder Stoneheart's expression was carved from granite. "The convergence-marked speaks with... authority," he said, his eyes meeting mine. "Does anyone wish to challenge his assessment?"
No one did. Ironwood's face was dark, but he knew the political math. I was the village's prized, terrifying weapon. Contradicting me carried a cost. And Torren, whether he knew it or not, was now under my protection.
The vote passed, not as a warm welcome, but as a heavily conditioned probation: regular health monitoring by Miren, mandatory training with Master Dren, and supervised integration into scout activities. It was official protection, at least.
Torren, who had been watching from the doorway, looked like a boy who'd just been told he was allowed to live, but wasn't entirely sure he wanted to.
Master Dren's logic was, on the surface, sound. "You understand what he's experiencing better than anyone," he told me the next day, formally assigning me to assist with Torren's training. "You can help him integrate his curse in a way I never could with you. You learned by trial and painful error. He can learn through mentorship."
What I understood was that I was thirteen years old, still barely competent with my own curse, and now I was supposed to guide a ten-year-old through the same psychic minefield.
Our first session in the practice yard was painfully awkward.
Torren just stood there, his small shadow twitching around his feet like a nervous animal. Kaela and Lysara watched from the sidelines, a visible and, I was sure, deeply intimidating audience.
"Show me what you can do," I said, trying to sound like Dren.
Torren hesitated, his eyes flicking to his own feet. "I... I don't really do anything. It just... happens. When I'm scared. Or angry."
"That's normal," I said, and the words felt good, true. "Mine was the same. It's a trigger. But you can learn to make it a tool. You can activate it on purpose, not just on accident."
"How?"
How? How do you explain an instinct? How do you teach someone to be something? "It's... it's part of you," I fumbled. "Not an external thing you're holding. It's an extension of your will. You don't... you don't tell it to move. Just... be your shadow. Let yourself expand into it."
He frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."
"I know," I said, frustrated. "Just try."
It took him three tries. The first two, nothing happened. On the third, he squeezed his eyes shut in concentration, and his shadow stretched forward about two feet, like a patch of dark ink, before snapping back. It was deliberate. It was controlled.
He opened his eyes, staring at his feet. "I did it." His voice was a mix of pure wonder and raw fear.
"You did," I confirmed, a weird sense of pride settling in my chest. "Now do it again. And again. Until it's as natural as breathing."
That day set the rhythm for the next few weeks. Our lives became a new kind of training montage. Mornings, Torren worked on basic footwork and sword forms with Kaela, who was surprisingly patient, her voice firm but not unkind. Midday, Lysara took over, drilling him in the dry, academic side of things: magical theory, void mechanics, ley line interactions. Afternoons were mine. I'd take him to the practice yard, and we'd work on the curse.
It was exhausting. He was ten. His control was all over the place. Some days, his shadow would respond perfectly, mimicking his movements, solidifying, and retracting on command. Other days, it would lash out at a sudden noise, and I'd have to use my own curse to block a tendril of shadow before it knocked over a weapons rack.
But slowly, painfully, he was getting better.
Then, three weeks in, we found it by accident.
We were in the yard, practicing shadow manipulation. I was showing him how to make his shadow 'climb' the wall. "Feel the texture," I was saying. "Match its form." Our shadows were overlapping on the stone, a complex knot of darkness.
And then, they *touched*.
It wasn't a physical thing. It was a click. A feeling, sudden and electric, like a gear that had been grinding finally meshing into place.
I gasped. It was like suddenly hearing a frequency that had been blaring in my ears my entire life, but I'd never consciously perceived. I could feel his curse as clearly as my own—the gnawing hunger, the cold otherness, the constant, low-level hum of the void's song, and his own small, terrified consciousness struggling to stay afloat in it.
And he, I knew instantly, could feel mine.
"What is this?" Torren's voice was tight, his eyes wide with panic. "Ren, what's happening?"
"Connection," I said, my own voice strained. I was trying to stay calm, but my heart was hammering. "Our curses... I think they recognize each other."
Lysara was on us before we'd even pulled apart, her eyes bright with a frantic, academic fire. "Don't move! Keep the connection active! I need to measure the energy signature!"
We stayed like that for almost three full minutes, our shadows merged, this bizarre, silent conversation happening between our curses. When we finally pulled back, we both stumbled, trembling from the intensity.
Lysara was already scribbling, her voice vibrating with excitement. "Your integration levels! They spiked! The moment you connected! Ren, you were at a stable seventy-eight percent integration. You just jumped to eighty-four. Torren, you were at forty-two... you just hit fifty-one percent!"
"What does that mean?" Kaela asked, stepping forward, her hand on her sword hilt, as if she could fight the numbers.
"It means," Lysara said, finally looking up, and her expression was staggering, "it means we stabilize each other. When you're in close proximity, when your powers are active... you reinforce each other's integration. You make each other more stable. More controlled. More human."
The implications hit me like a physical blow. My blood ran cold. "This is why the cult wants us," I said, the words coming out in a rush. "This is why they're *collecting* kids. If they get a bunch of marked individuals together... this 'resonance effect' would... it would accelerate their transformation. They'd become void-touched, all of them, so much faster."
"And more powerful," Lysara added, her voice grim. "A coordinated group... they could create corruption zones. Deliberately. Sustainably."
"But it works both ways," Kaela pointed out, her mind, as always, on the tactical. "If we're reinforcing humanity... could a group of us *heal* a corruption zone? Push the void back?"
"Theoretically," Lysara said, her gaze distant. "But it's a razor's edge. It would require perfect coordination. Absolute commitment. One person falling, one person giving in to the void... they could corrupt the entire network."
That night became a new kind of normal. The discovery of the resonance effect changed everything. Torren wasn't just a refugee; he was a vital part of my own stability, and I was part of his.
But two months after his arrival, he woke the entire dormitory screaming.
I was there first, bursting into his room. It was chaos. His shadow was writhing, lashing out, not in anger, but in pure, mindless terror. The air was cold. He was thrashing in his bed, tangled in his blankets, his eyes wide and unseeing.
I didn't think. I didn't call for Dren. I just acted. I grabbed his hands, forcing contact, and pushed my own curse into the storm.
His nightmare flooded me.
It wasn't a memory; it was happening. The smell of smoke and rot. The screams of his village. The sound of his mother's voice, cut short. And the Woman. The cultist, her voice a seductive whisper, promising him power, promising him belonging as the void closed in. And under it all, the cold, patient song of the void itself: You belong to us. Stop fighting. Come home.
"You're not there!" I shouted, both aloud and through the connection, pouring all of my own will, my own anchors—Kaela's face, Lysara's arguments, Dren's flawed determination—into him. "You're in Verdwood! You're safe! You are not alone!"
Slowly, the storm inside him broke. The shadows receded. He gasped for air like a man who'd been held underwater, his small body shuddering.
Kaela and Lysara were in the doorway, along with two other scouts, their faces pale. They kept their distance, understanding this was... different.
"I'm sorry," Torren whispered, his voice small and broken. He was crying now. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."
"Stop apologizing," I said, my own voice rough. I sat on the edge of his bed, not letting go of his hand. "You did nothing wrong. The nightmares... they're part of it. I had them, too."
He looked at me, his eyes huge in the moonlight. "Do they... do they stop?"
I wanted to lie. I wanted to tell him yes. But he deserved the truth.
"No," I admitted. "They don't. But they get... quieter. You get better at recognizing them. At grounding yourself. It gets easier."
"How long did it take you?"
"I'm still learning," I said.
That seemed to help more than the lie would have. He relaxed, just a fraction, and I helped him get untangled from his blankets.
As I was leaving, his voice, small, came from the dark. "Ren? Do you ever... just want to give in? To let it take you?"
I stopped in the doorway. Kaela and Lysara were still there, watching. "Yes," I said, the honesty tasting like iron. "Sometimes. It feels like it would be easier. Like fighting is pointless. But then I remember why I'm fighting. The reasons I want to stay human. And that... that makes the fight worth it."
"What if the reasons aren't enough one day?" he whispered.
"Then we hope someone is there to remind us," I said. "That's what the network is for. When one of us is weak, the others hold the line."
He nodded, and I left, pulling the door almost closed.
Outside, Kaela was standing guard, her warrior's discipline a mask. "That was hard," she said quietly.
"It's going to happen again," I said, leaning against the wall, suddenly exhausted. "He's integrating all that trauma and the curse. It's... messy."
"How do you do it?" she asked, her voice low, not as a warrior, but as my friend. "How do you listen to that... that song... and stay yourself?"
"I don't do it alone," I said, reaching out, finding her hand in the dark. Lysara's hand joined ours a second later. "That's the whole secret. I stay human because I have reasons to. You guys are the reasons."
Time, it turned out, was something we suddenly had. After the nightmare, Torren's integration, while not smooth, became real. He still had bad nights. His control still wavered. Some villagers still gave him a wide berth. But he also had friends. He had us. He had a place.
Six months after his arrival, he was on the training yard. He held his shadow, solidified, as a stable, defensive shield for a full hour, longer than I could have managed at his age. Master Dren watched from the sidelines, a rare, genuine smile on his face.
"You have a gift for teaching," he told me later.
"He's motivated," I said, shrugging. "Fear's a good teacher."
"So is hope," Dren corrected. "You gave him that."
That evening, the five of us—me, Kaela, Lysara, Torren, and Dren—were on the rooftop, watching the ley lines pulse in the twilight sky.
"We proved it," Lysara said, not looking at her notes for once. She was watching Torren, who was trying to teach Kaela a complex shadow-string game. "The model works. A convergence-marked child can be found, rescued, trained, and integrated."
"So we do it again," Kaela said, her fingers fumbling with the shadow. "We search for others. We build the network."
"The council won't approve it," Master Dren warned, his voice a gravelly reminder of reality. "Resources are limited. The risk is too high."
"Then we search anyway," I said, looking out at the horizon. "Without approval, if we have to. Because somewhere out there, right now, is another kid like Torren. Alone. Terrified. Wondering if they're a monster. And if we can get to them first... the risk is worth it."
Torren looked up at me, his eyes reflecting the magical sky. "You really believe that?"
"I know it," I said. "You're the proof."
Below us, Verdwood was settling in for the night. In the distance, the void corruption was a creeping stain, and the cult was out there, planning. The war was so, so far from over.
But here, on this rooftop, we'd built something new. A sanctuary. A beginning.
And sometimes, a beginning is all you have to hold on to.