Verdwood was rebuilding. You could hear it. The sound of hammers on wood, of saws cutting new timber, was the first thing you heard at dawn and the last thing you heard at dusk. The northern wall was being reconstructed, but this time Master Dren was having void-dampening metal alloys—hideously expensive—forged into the foundation. The wounded were healing in Miren's care, but twelve families were holding funeral rites. Twelve defenders who weren't getting back up.
I went to every funeral. I had to. I stood in the back, a silent, awkward shadow, as families grieved. I was braced for the anger, for the blame. It was our fault. We were the reason the cult came.
At the seventh service, for a young scout named Alrin, his mother approached me. I tensed, my hand instinctively moving near my sword hilt, bracing for a scream, a slap, anything. She had every right.
Instead, she just took my hand. Her own was calloused and warm.
"Thank you," she said, her voice quiet, her eyes dry.
The words didn't compute. "I... what?"
"My son. He believed in what you're building. He told me, the night before... he said protecting children was more important than being safe. That if Verdwood wouldn't stand for the vulnerable, it wasn't worth defending."
Her forgiveness, her understanding, broke something inside me that the siege hadn't. I had been carrying the guilt of those twelve deaths like a physical weight, a stone in my gut. Her words didn't take the stone away, but they changed its shape.
"I'm so sorry," I whispered. It was all I had.
"Don't be sorry," she said, her grip tightening for a brief, fierce moment. "Be worth it. Make his sacrifice mean something."
It became a command. A new mantra, burned into my brain. Be worth it. Every time I woke up from a nightmare. Every time my muscles screamed in the training yard. Every time the curse whispered how easy it would be to just let go.
Be worth it.
The siege had proven one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: we were sloppy. Our individual power was high, but our coordination was a mess. Master Dren's new training protocols were a direct, brutal response to that. He stopped training Torren, Zara, and me as individuals. He started training us as a single, unified tactical unit.
"Your power multiplies when you're in sync," he explained, pacing in front of us in the rebuilt yard. "But multiplication requires precision. You can't just hope you'll resonate. You need to know each other's capabilities, each other's thoughts, before they even happen."
It was the hardest training I'd ever done. The physical part was easy. The mental part was exhausting. Learning to merge our shadows, to maintain that connection, was like trying to sing a three-part harmony while all three singers were also running an obstacle course. It required a level of focus and, worse, a level of trust that I wasn't prepared for.
Torren struggled, but he was adaptable. He was young and his control was still shaky, but he listened. He didn't let pride get in the way of a correction. He was all raw talent and desperate-to-please energy.
Zara was... different. Zara was a bag of broken glass and fury. The cult had shattered her trust in everything, especially her own power. Her control was erratic but terrifyingly strong. When she committed, the force she could bring was staggering. The trick was getting her to commit.
We were in the middle of a synchronization drill—trying to form a simple, stable, three-person defensive barrier—when her control snapped. It wasn't a gentle failure. Her shadow, fueled by a sudden spike of panic, exploded outward, lashing wildly. It would have taken Torren's head off if I hadn't been linked, felt the spike, and absorbed the energy. The feedback sent a jolt of pure, cold terror up my arm.
"I can't do this!" Zara screamed, scrambling back, her hands in her hair. She was breathing hard, on the verge of hyperventilating. "I can't! I can't control it like you! It's... damaged. What they did... it's broken."
"Your curse isn't damaged," I said, moving toward her slowly, my hands open. "It's traumatized. There's a difference."
"How do you fix a traumatized curse?" she spat, the words bitter.
"The same way you fix a traumatized person," Lysara said, appearing at the edge of the yard. She had been observing, of course, documenting everything. She held out a water skin. "Patience. Safety. And practice in an environment where failure doesn't have catastrophic consequences."
"This is that environment," I said, nodding to Lysara. "That's the whole point. If your control slips, we catch you. I did catch you. That's what a network is. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to trust that we'll be there when you falter."
Zara stared at me, those haunted, amber eyes searching my face. "The cult," she whispered, "they never caught me when I faltered. They punished me."
"We're not the cult," Torren said, his voice quiet but firm. He stepped up beside her, a small, serious soldier. "And you're not alone anymore."
Something in Zara's posture, in the hard, defensive line of her shoulders, finally... eased. Just a fraction. She nodded, once, and we got back to work.
Her control was still shaky. But it was better. It wasn't her technique that improved. It was her fear that lessened.
I found Kaela and Lysara on the rooftop late that evening. The air was cold, but the ley lines were bright. They were sitting close, their hands intertwined, just... watching the sky. It felt private, and I almost turned to leave.
But Kaela heard my footstep. "Get over here, Ren."
I sat down with them, and for a moment, the three of us just watched the sky.
"We were talking about you," Kaela said finally.
"Should I be worried?"
"Probably," Lysara said, her voice dry but warm. "We're worried. You're carrying too much. You're going to break."
"Someone has to," I said, the old, familiar excuse.
"Not alone," Kaela said, and her voice was sharp. "You keep acting like you're the only one strong enough to bear this. Like you're the only one with a stake in this. You're not. We're right here."
"I know that," I started, but Lysara cut me off.
"Do you? Because you attended every funeral alone. You're training the kids like it's your sole responsibility. You're making strategic decisions in your head before you even bring them to us. You're trying to carry us, Ren, and you're not trusting us to carry our own damn share."
Her words hit harder than any void entity. Because she was right. I looked at both of them, at the two people I trusted most in the world, and realized I'd been treating them like liabilities to protect, not partners.
"I... I don't want you to have to carry it," I admitted, the truth tasting like ash. "This curse. This war. It's my burden. Not yours."
"That's martyrdom, Ren. Not leadership," Kaela said, her warrior's directness stripping me bare. "And it's insulting. We chose this. We chose to stand with you, from the very beginning. Stop diminishing our choice by trying to 'protect' us from the consequences we already accepted."
I looked at Kaela's fierce loyalty. I looked at Lysara's sharp, analytical compassion. And the weight I'd been carrying didn't just feel heavy; it felt stupid.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't apologize," Lysara said, her voice softening. "Just... stop. Trust us. Trust us to be strong enough to stand with you, not behind you."
Kaela took my right hand. Lysara took my left. We sat there, the three of us, a complete, unbreakable circuit.
"I love you both," I said, and the words were heavier than just words. They were an oath. A recognition of our partnership.
"We know," Kaela said, squeezing my hand. "We love you, too. All three of us. Together."
"Statistically," Lysara added, a faint smile on her face, "the odds of three teenagers successfully fighting a continental cult are... astronomically low."
"But not zero," I said.
"Not zero," she agreed. "Just very, very difficult."
The weight on my shoulders finally settled, distributed properly. Below us, Verdwood was rebuilding. The cult was planning. The void was spreading. But on this roof, we were balanced.
Elder Stoneheart announced the council's decision three weeks after the siege. "Verdwood will continue to serve as a sanctuary," he said in an open, village-wide session. "But the siege proved we cannot stand alone. We are formally requesting military support from Riverholt and two other regional settlements."
"That means telling them why we were attacked!" Elder Ironwood argued, his voice full of the old fear. "It means revealing the children. We'll be inviting judgment, not just from the cult, but from everyone!"
"We're already a target," Stoneheart countered. "The only question is whether we face that threat alone, or with allies."
The council had voted to risk exposure over isolation. Master Dren took me aside after the meeting. "You understand what this means, don't you? Regional involvement... it makes you a political figure, Ren. Not just a scout. They'll want to meet you. To assess you. To decide for themselves if convergence-marked children are assets... or just threats to be put down."
Great. One more thing to worry about.
Four weeks after the siege, Zara had her breakthrough. We were in the yard—me, her, and Torren. We were attempting a full synchronization, a sustained, merged defensive state. It was supposed to be a five-minute drill.
We held it for fifteen.
When we finally separated, we all collapsed, breathing hard. But Zara... Zara was smiling. A real, actual, exhausted smile.
"I did it," she breathed, her voice full of wonder. "I held it. I wasn't... I wasn't scared."
"You were terrified," I corrected, grinning back, offering her a hand up. "But you held it anyway. That's the part that matters."
"Your integration level jumped seven points," Lysara said from the sidelines, her voice vibrating with academic excitement. "That's... remarkable. It means you're stabilizing. Your curse is integrating with you, not against you. You're proving it. You can be marked and still be you."
That, I saw, was the validation she needed. Proof. Proof that she wasn't broken. Proof that she wasn't destined to become one of the cult's monsters.
That night, on the rooftop, Zara was a different person. "I want to help," she said, her voice firm. "When you search for others. I want to help. I know what the cult camps look like. I know how they talk, how they recruit. I can find kids who need help."
"You're eleven," Kaela said, her voice gentle but firm.
"So was Ren when he started," Zara shot back, already having the counter-argument ready. "Age doesn't matter. Experience does. And I have experience none of you do."
She was right. We all knew it.
The first response to our request for aid arrived six weeks after the siege. Two settlements sent polite refusals. They were scared. They didn't want the cult's attention.
But the third letter, from the large trading town of Riverholt, sent a shockwave through the council chamber. Elder Stoneheart read it aloud, his voice heavy.
"...we are willing to provide limited assistance. But in exchange, we require information. We need to see your training protocols for the void-touched. We have... a situation of our own. A marked individual we do not know how to handle."
Another one. There was another one.
"This is it," Lysara said, her mind already racing. "Regional coordination. A distributed network."
"Or it's a trap," Kaela countered, her hand on her sword. "The cult's heard our call for help and is luring us in."
"We investigate," Master Dren said, his voice cutting through the debate. "Small delegation. Fast and quiet. We assess their legitimacy. If it's real, we build an alliance. If it's a trap, we get out."
The council approved the mission: Dren, me, Kaela, and Lysara. We would leave in two days.
That night, the five of us were on the roof. The air was tense with the new mission.
"Be careful," Torren said, his voice small. "The cult knows you're looking for others. This is... it's what they'd expect."
"We'll be careful," I promised. "You two... you hold the line here. Keep training. That synchronization shield? I want it to be second nature by the time we're back."
"It will be," Zara said, her voice full of that new, hard-won certainty.
I looked at them—these kids, this family we'd built. Kaela and Lysara, my anchors. Torren and Zara, our proof that this could work. Below us, Verdwood slept. To the east, Riverholt waited—either an ally or an ambush. The war was so far from over.
But we weren't alone anymore. And that, I was beginning to realize, was the only thing that mattered.