The Light of Riversong

Lynnie Weaver watched.

The cascade thundered.

She stood at the basin's south edge with her hands behind her back and her master's shoulder close enough to lean into. Lynnie did not waver. She was here for her wizard.

Master Serena beside her. Honey-blond braid loose over one shoulder, skin tan again, the same steel-gray eyes as her brother across the rim. She looked more like herself than she had in months. A witch's black dress, white-gold at the fringe. A white-gold belt at her waist. The linden pendant tucked inside her collar. Over it all, an ocean-colored cloak.

Lynnie was dressed the same, braid and all. Earrings, rings, wand at the ready.

Sebastian's closest friends stood around her. All of them had been coming to Riversong since they were small.

His chief instructors and senior witnesses stood a step further back.

"You will be still during the proceeding, Lynette."

"Yes, Master."

Today her beloved would ask Riversong to make him its master, and the domain would answer.

She was a witch before she was anything else. Strong magic wasn't new to her. This place was. So loud she had to lock her teeth against the rattle.

The Heart of Riversong. The basin was cupped high in the mountains, the water so blue it looked lit from underneath. Griffins circled the caldera above. At its center, an island and a linden — ancient, massive, its canopy throwing sapphire light across everything. The water welled up from somewhere deep and spilled over the rim in dozens of falls, and the spray carried the hum into her skin. The place that no one who wasn't called would ever find.

She knew the tree before she ever saw the place. Broad toothed leaves, crooked where they met the twig, pale soft wood, the one most people called basswood. Riversong wore it: the pendant at Serena's collar, the brown of the ranger cloaks. She had seen the shape her whole life. This was where it came from.

Further down the rim, Domonus Gabriel stood with his eyes on the falls. Sebastian's master. As strong as Lionel — her brother, the Thunderer of House Weaver, head of their còven.

Master Gabriel's mother stood on the island beneath the linden. Domonus Alara Serrano — the Morning Sun of Riversong. Lynnie had been in her presence a hundred times. Never here. Never with her power on display.

Beside her, Lord Sagan. Wheelchair of deep blue light. Serena's son Louie on one side and Lionel's daughter Lyra on the other. The cousins asleep against the old man.

Wrinkled hands settled on the children's backs. Bright smile against chocolate skin, eyes on the cascade. Stridus at his feet, ears forward, eyes on the same. The old man watched while the children slept.

Master Serena's magic wrapped them, snug as if her own arms were around them from across the basin. Lord Sagan loved having them there.

Somewhere between one breath of the falls and the next, the old man's chin dropped to his chest. Then he shook himself awake. He looked down at the boy against his left side, and the girl against his right, a long moment each.

"Fūin."

The word rolled off the island, soft as the spray. Lynnie felt it settle into the two small shapes and go still.

"Oh yes." The bright smile came back to the cascade. "That'll do."

"He's close," Master Gabriel said.

Across the basin, Kole's chin lifted. He had felt it too. He crouched and set two fingers against the rim stone, and a beat rose through the water. Low, round, rolling across the basin floor under the Heart's hum.

Lynnie did not know the song. Across the water, Charles Sharpe and Sasha Chandler were grinning like they did.

The sunsteel warmed against her awareness — her pendant on his necklace, somewhere below the falls, the Sunbreak metal answering. She had tracked him since he left her side at dawn.

The earring he had given her this morning buzzed with power. Every place she had ever stood, an inch from her.

Her wizard's power was growing. Soon he would be as strong as her.

Master Serena's hand found Lynnie's elbow. A touch. Brief.

Watch.

She felt the shift before the Domonus spoke. The pulse leaned. The whole domain turning toward the north woods. Her master had taught her what it felt like when a domain chose.

"There," the Domonus said.

Movement on the north cascade. On the outside of the rim, where the heaviest overflow poured outward and down — the deep channel, the one that fell in tiered steps through the rock before joining the north river — something was coming up.

Not climbing. Running.

A body in the cascade, driving upward through the current, step over step on the slick stone tiers. The Heart's outflow crashed against him — white water, heavy, the full weight of the upwelling pouring over the rim and hammering downhill — and he ran through it. Straight up the cascade's center.

She felt it in the water — his presence pulsing. Dense on the stone, each landing heavier than it should have been, driving him upward. The domain's power was already in him — he'd been bonded for years — but this was different.

Then thin between tiers, almost nothing, the cascade pouring through the space he occupied and meeting no resistance. Solid to launch. Gone in the air. Solid to land. A flicker so fast the domain couldn't settle on what he was. He took the cascade in ten strides and the water embraced every one.

She'd felt what a bond could draw. This was past it.

The figure cleared the last tier and came over the rim.

He came over the edge already falling — clean, dropping toward the basin forty yards below, arms loose, the cloak catching the updraft. Falling like he'd meant to.

He hit the water.

He went through it.

His body entered the surface and the surface gave. He sank through. A few feet. He'd stopped being a thing the water could touch.

Then he rose. The weight dissolving, a palm under his own back. He broke the surface without breaking it. Stood on top of the basin. No ripple. No sound.

Sebastian Strider, Mage of Riversong.

There was a ripple in the air near Sebastian. So close it might have been his own field's echo. It leaned when he leaned.

She didn't know what that was, so she watched his step instead.

Her beloved was in Riversong blues, torn at the shoulder and ribs. Blood on his knuckles — the left ones split, the right still closed around a wand whose core was dim. Curiosity — the linden focus ring on his left hand — lit. A thin white-gold bracelet on his left wrist — hers, given that morning. Soaked through, running on nothing, and his teeth bright against dark skin. Through her Sight, the ball of light at his heart held steady, dense and radiant as ever.

Sebastian looked up at the rim.

He walked. Forward across the water, toward the island and the linden, each stride landing on the beat. A nineteen-year-old who had climbed for six hours and was still bright like there was nowhere in the world he'd rather be.

"Masters, I've been looking for you."

Master Half-Moon chuckled behind Lynnie. "Always wet as a fish, our Bass." Lord Carlos laughed. Master Al'Mira did not. Master Serena sighed.

Beside her, her master drew a breath — shorter, the exhale shaking.

Lynnie looked at her master. Master Serena's face was still. Her eyes were not.

Sebastian stopped. Then his head turned. Back the way he had come, toward empty air above the cascade — a direction with nothing in it.

"But, I suppose you were looking for me, too."

"That's why you've been following me, right, Master?"

The Gabriel on the rim shattered into a million small pieces of light, gone before the sound reached the water.

The shape Lynnie had stood beside for the last several hours had been a doppelganger made from light magic.

Lynnie's breath caught.

At the top of the cascade, where Sebastian had come over the rim, where nothing had stood when he climbed — a veil shimmered, then fell completely.

Gabriel Serrano stepped out of nothing.

Riversong blues under a deep white-gold cloak — the color of Sunbreak, worn for Master Serena of House Weaver. Hands loose at his sides. There had been no shimmer on the way in. He had been standing above the cascade the whole time. Watching his son climb.

Then he began to walk down.

Light folded under his heel. Each foothold a plane of white gold no wider than a boot, held for the breath that needed it and gone as the next one shaped. A stair of his own making, lit tread by tread down the forty yards of air between the rim and the basin.

Oh. So this is what Domonus Gabriel's light projections can truly do.

Lynnie watched him come. Forty yards of empty air, and the descent was a hallway to him.

The heartwood on his finger held barely a thread. The wand at his hip hadn't stirred.

He wore the foci. At his level, he didn't need them.

He reached the water. The last foothold resolved half an inch above the surface, and he did not leave it — he kept it under him, kept walking, the stair now the first in a line of them that crossed the basin toward his son.

Sebastian did not turn. He had already taken ten paces sideways, off the spot where he had risen from the phase.

Gabriel arrived at Sebastian's landing point.

His boot came down.

The water beneath it seized. A column of the basin, ten feet across and fifty feet deep, lurched straight toward the caldera floor — a roaring vertical draw that Lynnie felt before her ears caught the sound. At the bottom of the draw, the cold hit. Ice bloomed where the water had been, a freeze set to close the column the moment anything heavy dropped into it.

Gabriel did not move.

His boot rested on the stair he had made, half an inch above the surface the trap had just pulled out from under him. The rail had found nothing to carry.

"Good one, Bass." He looked down, studying. "Would it have frozen me if I fell in?"

Sebastian laughed. Low.

"Want to take a dip and find out, Old Man?"

Gabriel gestured toward the wand in Sebastian's hand. "I see you brought Providence today." He was smiling. "Why that one?"

Sebastian paused. The stance dropped — the fighter's balance leaving his shoulders, his weight flat on the water.

"Well, this is my favorite wand, Master." The smile that came was completely unguarded. "It's the one you gave me when I turned eleven. You told me no matter what, it would keep me safe."

He chuckled. "I, ugh, I thought it might be helpful against you today." He glanced up at the sky. "You're kind of scary when you get serious."

Gabriel's feet hadn't moved from the stair. "You, too, kiddo. You, too."

The basin held the silence. The falls ran.

"And it's your father's wand. You said it was important to you and I wanted you to know I'm taking today seriously. I won't hold back."

Gabriel nodded. Stiff. "I am glad you remember. Please never forget."

He cleared his throat.

Sebastian looked at him. Ready. A young man running on fumes, but he would not yield.

"You found the Heart." The Domonus's voice carried no praise. "Protector Strider, why are you here?"

"I have tended Riversong's land as Custos. Learned all its ways."

Sebastian calmed his breath. "I have protected Riversong's people as Shugo."

His chin came up. "And now — I seek to become the Balance of magic."

He stopped abruptly.

"Sorry, Master." He lifted his left hand. "A moment, please."

Sebastian snapped.

The water ran out of him — out of his hair, his blues — gathered in a curved sheet beside him and fell back into the basin.

Riversong-blue ranger kit. The linden-brown cloak torn but dry. A nineteen-year-old presenting himself clean for the ask.

"As I was saying, Master." He cracked his neck once. "I seek the Highest."

He snapped again. A column of wind rose and circled the two men.

"I seek Domonus."

Sebastian's master took a wide stance.

"Very well, Bass."

Then his eyes left his son. They went up the rim. Across every witness in turn.

"No one else is to use magic. If you do, the test is over."

Lynnie felt the rim answer. Every working on every shoulder going slack at once. The only magic left in the world was Gabriel's and Sebastian's.

His hands stayed loose at his sides. "Then show me who you are."

Domonus versus Shugo. The Balance of magic versus the protector of people in this domain. Though he looked calm, Lynnie knew his adopted father was going to make Sebastian work for it.

Sebastian moved first.

The wand came up. Slow. Deliberate. The tip traced a tight circle in the air above his shoulder.

The wind answered. The column that had been circling the two men in its lazy spiral felt the wand catch it and pulled tighter.

Cold first. Then visible. The vapor thickening, seizing, the column sleeving itself in frost. By the time the second rotation closed, the wind was no longer wind. It was a spinning cage of ice blades, every edge pointed inward at the Domonus.

Sebastian brought the wand down like he was cutting rope.

The ice flew. Thirty blades, fast as arrow flight, every one threaded with Riversong blue.

Gabriel snapped.

The daggers never reached him. A thread of heat ran out from his fingertips — silent, nowhere near the volume of light it should have needed — and the ice went white. Consumed. Thirty blades flashing to steam in a single held breath, the vapor rising above the basin before the falls could finish their next rolling note.

The Domonus's boots had not moved.

No incantation or focus; just the snap. Lynnie had watched masters use full chains of founder and crafting words to equal the effect.

The snap with no chain, no focus. Lynnie had seen her master do it, and Half-Moon, and Domonus Alara. The handful in all the world who cast it this clean. Above them stood only the Åvus and Lord Sagan, the last of the old Cloud Knights.

She was holding her breath. Below the rim, the falls rolled. Gabriel had not moved.

Then the Domonus raised one finger and twirled it. The wrist loose. A man idly tracing a shape in the air while he thought about something else.

The basin answered.

A spear of water left the basin beside Sebastian and came for him.

Halfway across it changed. Blue to brown. The surface roughened, pitted, thickened — liquid cording into mineral, droplets into granules, the spear broadening as it came. What reached his chest was no longer water. A slab of rough stone, six feet across, driving fast.

Sebastian did not step aside.

His body thinned. The translucence ran from his shoulders down through his knees like a tide running out, sudden, complete, the Riversong blues going see-through. The slab reached him and kept going. Through his chest. Through the back of his ribs and out into the spray beyond.

He solidified on the other side. Wand spinning between his fingers as he lowered it to his sheath behind his waist and under his cloak.

Sebastian's off hand came up. Finger and wrist loose. He twirled it the same lazy rotation Gabriel had used. An echo of the teacher in the gesture.

Then he spoke it.

"Fundae."

The slab bent around him and slung back the way it had come, faster.

Lynnie had heard Gabriel do that working in silence. Sebastian had done it with his full voice.

A lesson. Her wizard was being taught that all the power in the world did not mean he knew how to use his words.

Who was going to win?

The question sat in her chest. She would not answer it yet.

Gabriel whisked two fingers upward.

The slab rose. The fragments with it, picked off the axis Sebastian had set and pulled thirty, forty feet into the air above the basin. The second finger moved. The stone ignited from the inside — half a dozen fireballs the size of small houses, burning against the dark of the caldera sky. His hand flicked down. They fell.

Sebastian stamped the basin. A column of water pulled itself up around him, forty feet wide and twice as high, and flattened into a wide dome. The fire cored the dome and kept coming. Steam bloomed outward in a white ring. Where the fireballs landed, the basin erupted in columns ten yards high.

The shield failed. The fireballs hit the place where Sebastian had been standing.

But Lynnie had already found the shimmer behind Gabriel.

Rising at Gabriel's back, out of the basin's surface without a ripple. The water shield had been the setup. The fireballs had been the permission. While the basin rose around him and the flames crossed the sky, Sebastian had gone thin under the dome and traveled the distance between them through the water itself.

He rose.

The Riversong blues translucent, then solidifying as he came up. In his right hand, the wand. In his left, nothing. The air between his thumb and two fingers shaped and held. Light, pulled tight, compressed into an inch-wide blade the length of a forearm. A kunai of white-gold rasa, the air above it warping.

It came to a stop half an inch from Gabriel's throat.

Sebastian's mouth was soft. Almost apologetic.

"Got you, Old Man."

Gabriel did not move.

His throat was there. The kunai was there. Without hurry, he reached up and closed one hand on nothing in the air beside his head.

A sword took shape in his fist. Ice. Clean, long, the blade forming around his fingers as if it had been there all along and he had only just noticed it. Without water or gesture. A working that arrived as a finished thing.

Then the Domonus tilted his head into the blade. It passed through the side of his neck without drawing blood and came out clean on the far side.

Sebastian's grip on the white gold went loose.

Imago. A light-construct an Imagi could run at a distance, moving the projection like a hand inside a glove. The Gabriel she was watching had been a projection since Sebastian came down from the cascade. He had put a knife to a light.

Sebastian let the white gold go. The kunai unwound in the air between them and was gone.

The light caught him brighter.

He dipped the wand into the basin at his heel. When he brought it up, ice was following it out — a blade drawing out of the water along the wand's line, lengthening, hardening, taking the shape of a sword by the time it cleared the surface. The same blade Gabriel held. A different route.

They closed.

The first ring carried across the basin. Ice on ice, a clean note, not a sound Lynnie had ever heard from a sword. Gabriel's downward cut Sebastian took on a lifted crossguard and turned. Sebastian's thrust the Domonus swayed back from without moving his feet. A man teaching his son how to hold the form.

On the next bout, the projection stepped in and drove the blade forward, straight through Sebastian's ribs.

Sebastian phased.

The ice slid through him as though he were fog. The double was committed to the motion, the body of Gabriel carried forward by the follow-through, passing into the space Sebastian's translucent shoulder occupied.

Sebastian let the ice fall from his wand. His own sword released and tumbled toward the basin. His left hand came up and tapped the projection once in the chest — where the chest and his own were briefly the same place.

"Nūr Nos."

The fake Domonus shattered.

Light scattered from the point of contact outward — the sword, the cloak, the loose hands, the working unwriting itself in the order it had been made. Gone before the ice Sebastian had dropped reached the surface of the basin.

Sebastian's off hand snapped up before the last of the light was gone. A fresh kunai shaped between thumb and two fingers — forearm-long, the edge bright. He threw it hard. Flat across the basin toward a stretch of empty air ten yards north, as fast as the first had arrived at a throat.

The kunai stopped.

A foot short of nothing. Hanging in the air above the basin, the blade of white-gold rasa held in place by something the steam was not thick enough to hide and Lynnie's eyes were not ready to see.

Then the veil fell.

Gabriel Serrano stood where nothing had stood. Hands loose at his sides. Cloak unmoved. The light kunai held between the first two fingers of his off hand — the grip of a man taking a pen from a desk — the white gold dimming against his skin.

He had been there from the start.

"Good try, Bass." The voice carried across the basin without effort.

Then Gabriel raised the hand holding the kunai and pointed. Up.

Beneath the basin's surface, fifty yards east, the caldera floor tore open. A slab of dark granite lifted clear of the water, massive, twenty feet across, rising on nothing Sebastian could see. It cleared the rim above where Lynnie and Master Serena were standing, hung for a breath at the top of its arc, and began to fall.

Toward Lynnie. Toward her master.

Lynnie's fist went tight. Her magic was ready. The boulder was in the air above them.

"C'mon, Master." Sebastian's voice carried across the basin. He stepped forward on the water. "That's not fair."

Lynnie felt him build the magic before he folded space.

He snapped. "Ọrun."

He was in front of them.

"Wosan Rathos Nami."

Three words. Clean and fast. The Magi chain spoken in one breath, every syllable riding the next, no space between them.

This was not the first time Sebastian had shared his intangibility with her, but it always caught her off guard. This time he'd shared it with Master Serena too.

The granite came down on them.

It passed through them. Then it wasn't granite. It was light, coming apart from the bottom up, falling to pieces at their feet.

A light image. There had never been a boulder.

"Oh, shoot." Sebastian's voice. "He added gravity to it." Small. Fast.

Foolish. They had both been perfectly fine. The boulder had never been a boulder. Master Serena had not shifted her weight, had not even brought her hands out from behind her back.

And Riversong had its answer. Sebastian would spend every last drop of himself for anyone he believed was in danger, and the domain had just watched him prove it with three words and every focus he owned — for a threat that had never been there.

She could not be upset with him for acting as a proper wizard to his witch.

Sebastian's reserves emptied.

The wand at his hip dimmed. The ring on his left hand cooled. The earrings went cold against his jaw. His knees did not fold, but the smile went out of him.

Gabriel snapped.

The air pulled taut. Sebastian lifted off the rim. He hung above the basin, a body caught in a weight Lynnie couldn't see.

Gabriel raised one finger. Pointed down.

Sebastian went under.

She felt him try to rise. Twice. Each attempt smaller than the last — the phasing coming ragged, half-formed, his body too hollowed to sustain it.

His power guttered. The white in him dimmed to nothing — the reserves that had carried him through six hours of gauntlet finally empty. On his knees in the Heart's own water with nothing left of his own.

The sunsteel went cold. She'd never felt it do that — six years of following that tear and it had always been warm.

Her hands were shaking behind her back. She counted heartbeats. Four. Five. Six.

And then he did something she didn't expect.

He stopped fighting it.

A loosening. Instead of reaching harder for what he didn't have, he reached for what was already there. The water he was drowning in.

His hands opened. His fingers went loose — the wand drifting from his grip, the ring dimming. She watched those hands. The knuckles still bleeding. The fingers spreading against the surface. Letting go.

Master Serena drew a breath beside her. Sharp.

The sunsteel flooded warm — heat, sudden, answering something vast. She knew what a domain bond felt like. This was past it. The domain wasn't feeding him. It was answering him. The way it answered the Domonus. And underneath that — layers. Every focus he wore was running something different, each one pulling from the domain through its own channel, and the sunsteel was carrying all of them at once. Whatever Sebastian was doing at the bottom of the basin with no wand and no reserves, she couldn't separate it.

The domain answered. Blue. Deep blue, climbing the column and entering his body through paths that were already shaped to hold it. The linden shivered, though there was no wind. The falls leaned inward for a heartbeat, the caldera drawing a breath.

Sebastian's eyes widened. He held on — pulling deeper, reaching for more before he understood what more meant.

He broke his master's binding with sheer surplus, the domain's blue flooding through him. The phase came back first — intangible, full-body, the Domonus's weight passing through him. Nothing to hold.

Then force from both hands aimed down: raw power into the basin beneath him, and the basin threw him back. He broke the surface and came back solid. He stood on the water. The domain's blue running through him at a depth she'd only felt from the Domonus himself.

Master Gabriel's eyes found the blue in his son.

The Domonus lowered his hands.

Sebastian stood on the water. Chest heaving. Soaked through, the borrowed power already fading.

And underneath it, the ripple in the air again. Closer now. Coalescing around the person the domain had chosen.

His head turned toward the linden, searching. Then the Domonus called his attention back.

"It's…It's over." She heard it from the rim.

Sebastian's face broke open. What was underneath was nineteen years old and trying not to fall apart.

"So that's it?" His voice was quiet. "Did I pass?"

Master Gabriel did not look away.

"That's it."

"What now?"

"You will get your ring. Then we will speak of what comes next."

From the rim, her brother's voice carried across the basin.

"Nice bracelet. Let me know when you want to learn the Weaving, kid."

Sebastian's smile flashed up toward the rim. Just once.

Lynnie was not blushing.

But her brother could not stop smiling.

"You are welcome in the Còven, Wizard Strider."

"Thank you, Còvus Weaver. I will honor your trust in me, always." Sebastian put his right index finger and middle finger to his heart. The sign of a Wizard's promise.

Andy Patterson crossed from the southern rim. Lynnie did not hear him arrive. Nobody ever did.

He set Sebastian's collar straight and squared the cloak at his shoulders, and the wet wool dried under his hands until it hung right. Unhurried. A crewman running his checks.

"You look just like your mom." He patted the collar flat. "She was the bravest person I have ever known and I see her clearly in you."

Sebastian's mouth opened. Andy was already going, and the water never marked it.

Domonus Alara hadn't moved from the water's edge. She was looking at the trunk.

"You know what they call this tree outside the domains?" she said. "Basswood. Same tree. Different name. But the wood remembers."

She looked up — past the trunk, past the first fork, past the mid-canopy where the branches thickened and the sapphire light ran heaviest.

"Follow me."

She stepped off the island. Her foot found air and the air held her. Lynnie couldn't see the craft. Sebastian followed, hands at the back of Lord Sagan's chair, guiding it up beside her. His boot landed on nothing. The chair did the same. Stridus walked the air alongside the chair, eyes still on Sebastian. Lord Sagan watched on.

Beside Lynnie, Master Serena stepped off the rim. The same air held her. She walked out after them.

They walked out over the basin. The water forty feet below, the falls pouring, and three people walking on air as though the caldera had simply forgotten to build a floor. Anywhere any of them stepped, it was firm. Domonus Alara changed direction, moved laterally, paused — the air beneath her was solid before her foot arrived. Sebastian drifted two steps to her left and the air held there too.

Lynnie could not feel the working. There was nothing to feel.

Domonus Alara turned back toward the linden and began to climb. A slow spiral around the trunk, rising with each pass, her hand trailing the bark as she went. She paused at a low branch. Tested it with her fingers. Moved on.

Sebastian walked beside her. Serena walked behind them.

"You have proven your body, Sebi." Domonus Alara's voice carried down to the basin. "Now tell me what you know."

He straightened as he walked. Shoulders back, chin level. Domonus Alara's posture. He wore it only for her.

"What is magic?"

"All magic is one magic, Grandmaster." He said it like a prayer. "It flows as rasa through the leylines, through the land, through us." The falls poured below them. "All magic is one magic."

Domonus Alara nodded. They kept climbing. The trunk passed beside them — bark deepening, the sapphire light in the grain growing brighter as they rose. Domonus Alara touched another branch. Considered it. Her thumb ran along the joint where it met the trunk. She let it go and kept walking.

"And the nine?"

"When the Hollows came and poisoned the first domain, we forged the ring of nine. That domain is gone now, and will forever be known as the Hollow Hills."

His hand went to his chest. Where the ring would sit.

"Nine hearts. Nine places where the rasa flows so deeply through the leylines that a barrier against evil is formed. Still, all weapons must be used when facing their darkness."

Gabriel had crossed the water to the island. He stood at the base of the linden, arms folded, watching them climb.

"What is the lesson, Sebastian."

"The Hearts of the nine must never fall, Grandmaster."

From the island below, Domonus Gabriel's voice carried up to them. "For if they do, the nasha will flow through the dasa unchecked, and the corruption will spread from root to root until there is nothing clean left to protect."

"The small places die first. The watersheds far from the ring, where no one is watching." He looked up at his son. "That is how you know."

They were halfway up the trunk. The canopy closed around them — branches thicker here, the sapphire light heavy on their faces. Domonus Alara's hand found a branch and held it longer than the others. She turned it. Looked at the grain.

Serena's voice was soft. "Sebi."

Sebastian turned. Domonus Alara kept her eyes on the branch.

"Yes, Master Serena."

Serena stopped on the spiral. Her hand found his face.

"I am so proud of you for the heart you showed." She had to take a breath. She did not try to hide it.

He held still under her hand.

"You are going to do amazing things, Sebi. I won't see most of them." She held his eyes. "But please know that I am always with you, okay?"

She raised her left hand. The linden ring on her index finger caught the sapphire light — pale wood, dark grain, the same craft as the one she'd put on his hand the year he turned twelve.

He raised his left hand. Curiosity sat where she had placed it. The two rings between them.

His voice was small.

"Master, is it back?"

Beside Lynnie, Master Al'Mira's breath stopped.

Not again.

Lynnie had been there the first time. So had Master Al'Mira.

"No, no my sweet boy." Serena's hand stayed on his face. "Not yet."

Sebastian went to her. He held on for a long breath.

"We will speak on my sickness another day, Sebi." Her hand at the back of his head. "Today is about you and the trials you must face."

She held him for one more beat. Then she stepped back.

Above them, Domonus Alara let the branch go. She shook her head and kept climbing.

Lynnie watched from the rim. Three figures small against the tree and the sky. Alara Morning Sun, Serena the Shining Star of Riversong, and the boy they had raised.

Domonus Alara studied Sebastian as they walked. Her face softened.

"And why would you not use this nasha, Sebi? If it flows through the same channels. If it carries such power."

"Nasha is the corruption, Grandmaster." Quieter now. "Magic is of love. And nasha is —"

He stopped walking. She could see him reaching for a word big enough.

"Oh, nasha is also of love, Sebi."

Domonus Alara's voice was gentle. She had stopped too.

"But it is the cruelest love. Love for oneself above all other things. The love that says I deserve this more than you. I need this more than you need to keep it. Nasha is not the absence of love, child. It is love turned inward until it burns everything it touches."

Sebastian's hand went still at his side.

Master Al'Mira shifted beside Lynnie. A small adjustment in weight.

"And what is the scariest part of nasha, Sebi?"

He looked at her. The recitation was gone. This was him.

"That it's not something you can track just by looking at a person, unless you know how. Sometimes you can feel it, but only those with nasha may sense nasha truly."

"And what is the lesson?"

"Misery loves company."

Domonus Alara waited.

"They will seek allies and we may not know who until it is too late."

Canto, Domonus Alara's griffin, lifted his head on the island below and looked up at them.

The falls ran. When Domonus Alara spoke next, the teacher was gone.

"I believe there is more at play here than we know, Sebi. I believe that many things will be asked of you today, and every day for the rest of your life. But there is one thing you must do."

"Yes, Grandmaster."

She reached for his hand. Turned it over. Her thumb found the knuckle of his ring finger — bare, split from the climb — and pressed against it.

"Take care of your heart, Sebastian." She lifted her hand from his and pressed it against his chest. "Not this one. Yours." Her eyes held his. "You are more. Remember that. In the darkest moments, remember: you are more. That is what it means to be Domonus."

Lynnie's throat closed.

"I understand, Grandmaster."

"I'm not sure you do yet, Sebi." The gentlest smile. "But you will."

Domonus Alara looked at the branch above her. She'd been circling it for the last quarter-turn — her hand returning to the same stretch of bark each time they passed. The grain was different here. Softer. The sapphire light pooled in the heartwood underneath.

"After the domain has fully accepted you, you may take a wand from this tree as well. That is not today." She touched the branch once more. "But your ring has been waiting."

Sebastian reached into the canopy. The bark softened. The grain shifted. A ring of dark wood pulled free. Blood from his split knuckles entered the grain. The pulse locked.

Domonus Alara took it from his palm and slid it onto his hand. It fit as though the tree had known his hand.

It was a promise. The domain had recognized his power.

Domonus Alara's voice carried down to the basin.

"Welcome, Lord Cirrus."

His mouth opened. The defer she knew. His eyes went to Lord Sagan. Lord Sagan watched him steady, the smallest smile at the corner of his mouth. His mouth closed. He bowed his head instead.

Lynnie looked around her.

Allegra at Master Serena's shoulder. Harlan and Luci behind them. Kole at her own — still furious, still silent, his hand closed on the wand at his hip.

Master Al'Mira and Master Half-Moon a step further back, Andy at the Half-Moon's shoulder. Lord Carlos Sharpe at the rim's edge, the pick at his hip, transition glasses dark. Master Emory Nakamura beside him — Toneriko no bokutō at his hip, the dark wood scabbard riding his belt. The Silencer behind them all, quiet as his name. Sebastian's chief instructors and senior witnesses, gathered at the southern stretch of the rim.

Across the basin, the political audience held their positions.

Gabriel where he stood. Domonus Nikita Kinslow of Mistfall, alone where her son had been. Domonus Luz Arcaya of Silversand, alone where her apprentice had been. Domonus Donatella Mason of Stonefade with her grandson Charles. The Thunderer of Sunbreak with his apprentices Carter Mason and Sasha Chandler.

And alone where Master Emory had stood — Gerrard Cosby. Ashwood's only witness now. A boy of eight, Khotan's apprentice, left standing where his elders had been.

Lord Sagan and the children on the island. Domonus Alara at the linden.

Lynnie filed the geometry. Sebastian had not yet looked up.

They sat at the base of the linden as the light shifted. The falls poured, and for a few minutes nobody said anything that needed saying. Master Gabriel sat beside his apprentice — shoulder to shoulder, unhurried. Canto had settled in the grass between them, head on his paws.

Lynnie sat in the grass ten feet from Sebastian. Close enough to see his hands turning the new ring — thumb running along the grain, testing the fit. His other hand rested on Canto's back. His knuckles were still split. He hadn't healed them.

Master Serena had come down from the linden with him. She stood behind Lynnie, outside the circle. Present. Watching.

Canto's ears were up. The water was still running. Above the falls, the air carried a weight it hadn't carried an hour ago. A shift in the ground the Arcanum walked on. Something moving above Riversong.

Her master's hand was not on her shoulder yet. Close, though. Closer than the Master Serena of the rim would have stood.

Gabriel faced the water, not his apprentice.

Domonus Gabriel spoke first.

"We should speak about your future, Bass."

She could feel the thing building in Sebastian before Gabriel finished the sentence. Hands still, the ring turning under his thumb. He'd been waiting for this.

"My mother and the rest of the Imagi have negotiated a return. The Cloud Knights will serve again."

We would only need the Cloud Knights if there was a true fear of the Hollows returning.

He said it to the water. Not to his apprentice.

"By my word as Pråvus of the Åven and First of the Imagi, you are named Lord Cirrus of Riversong, Cloud Knight sworn to all domains, to serve ten years at Mistfall that the dark may not return. You may not be Domonus until your service has ended. None of you may."

Sebastian didn't move. The ring went still under his thumb.

"Kole Kinslow will rise as Alto of Mistfall. Harlan Vasa will join you as Stratus of Silversand."

The Domonus paused. His hand rested on Canto's back, and she could see the tension in his fingers — pressing into the fur, holding on.

"The Arcanum needs people like you. But that's not why. You're nineteen years old. And you've never done anything for yourself. Not once. There are many lost children out there. They need you more than me."

His thumb stopped on the ring. The smallest tell — she'd been reading his hands since Wetstone, since the day he'd almost smiled at something she said across a study table and caught himself.

"What about Luminos?" Quiet. The voice he used when he was testing whether the ground beneath him was solid. "You said we'd finish it together. And then Excelsis. That's why I trained. That's why I stayed."

The Domonus closed his eyes. She had never seen Master Gabriel search for words before.

"None of that matters right now, Bass."

Sebastian absorbed that.

She was watching the man he would never call father send him away.

Beside Lynnie, Kole shifted. His hand went to the wand at his hip. Kole had been the most talented of them since they were children — his Shin always ran ahead, his eyes saw what others missed. He had read what Gabriel was doing first.

Serena's voice came quiet at his shoulder.

"Nikolas. You will stay silent until this is concluded. Then you may do as you will."

Kole did not look at her. His jaw set. His hand stayed on the wand.

Two folds from the rim. Both toward Linden Cove, Sebastian's home. Sebastian would not be alone today.

"But Master, what about Domonus?"

Smaller.

His hand tightened on Canto's back.

"That is not something we have to settle right now, Bass."

Settle. His fingers pressed into Canto's fur.

"Master, is this because I was experimenting?"

Master Gabriel looked at him.

"No. That's not what this is." Gabriel held it. "But why did you go forward with it?"

"I just needed to know I can do it." He looked at the ring. "I would never go back, though. There's nothing there for me."

"Are you sure?"

"I would rather talk about something else. If I had known how long today was going to be, I would've got ice cream."

From the rim, one crack of laughter. Master Half-Moon. It cut off fast, but it had gotten out.

Lynnie's mouth wanted to answer it. She kept her eyes on Sebastian's hands.

Behind Lynnie, Master Serena's hand went to the linden pendant inside her collar and stayed there.

Her master was never still. Serena Serrano was motion and magic incarnate — her hands were never not working. They were still now.

Master Gabriel closed his eyes. "This is about you needing to live your life, Bass." He opened them. "You will go to Mistfall, and you will learn from Nikita. As a ranger and in her school." He paused. "The Arcanum and the new chancellor are pushing Preston Fall forward. You should watch his work closely."

"But, Master, I have told you the type of man he is."

"I know what you have told me." Gabriel's voice was patient. The patience that meant the conversation was not a negotiation. "I am telling you to learn."

She watched him hear it and close.

"Your wand will be ready when it's time to return."

Sebastian checked on Louie through the bracelet he had woven for him. She understood why.

"Louie doesn't need you that way yet, Bass."

His hand stilled on the ring. He looked at his master.

"Did you only adopt me so I could be Lord Cirrus instead of you?"

The question carried across the basin. Lynnie felt Gabriel go still in his chest — not in his hands, behind his ribs.

"I always knew you would be Lord Cirrus, from the moment I saw you."

Sebastian heard it.

"But I thought we were family."

The admission came out before he could stop it.

Lynnie stepped forward.

Master Serena's hand closed on her shoulder. Firm. Holding her apprentice in place because she couldn't hold herself. Her master made a sound — small, broken. Lynnie had never heard that sound from her.

"This is not for us, Lynette." Her master's voice was level. Her hand was not.

Lynnie stopped. She felt her master's pulse through the contact. She had never felt Master Serena's heart race. It was racing now.

She stood still because her master told her to. The gentleness didn't match his eyes. He was warm. He was patient. He held people close and built them up, and this wasn't him. Something was driving this that wasn't in the room.

From the rim, the sound of wind folding over itself. Aluno, Domonus Gabriel's griffin, came down in a long glide — enormous, the gold-barred wings casting shadow across the basin. He landed beside Sebastian and the shift happened between one breath and the next: the massive form condensing until what pressed against Sebastian's side was a rough collie, Riversong blue and white, soft brown eyes. He pushed his nose into Sebastian's hand. Sebastian's fingers closed in his fur without looking.

Domonus Gabriel opened his eyes.

"Bass. I am your master. I must think of these things for you."

Sebastian's voice changed. Flat. The dangerous flat he carried when he had decided what he was hearing and would not be corrected.

"So you don't want me here."

"That's not what I said."

"You said it doesn't matter. Luminos doesn't matter. Domonus doesn't matter." His eyes were dry. "And we're not family. You're my Master."

"I said it doesn't matter right now —"

"I heard you."

The quiet he wore when he disagreed. She'd watched it form over seven years, Sebastian folding inward when something cut too deep. Underneath it, something was hardening.

"No need for the wand, Grandmaster." To Domonus Alara. His voice was formal in a way Lynnie had never heard from him. "My master has given his word. I would go to Mistfall now to fulfill my duties."

Domonus Gabriel's face broke. "Bass—"

"By your word, Domonii."

The formal farewell.

She felt him reach for a fold. The air bending around him, his signature thinning toward departure.

The domain moved. The deep current shifting, the Heart catching his fold mid-formation and turning it back. His fold met Riversong's field and Riversong sent him nowhere.

He appeared two feet to the left. Still on the water. Still in the Heart.

He tried again. The fold built, compressed, reached — and the domain turned it back. He appeared three feet from where he'd started. Still on the water. Still in the basin that wouldn't let him go.

His shoulders drew in. His hands closed at his sides.

"Master." His voice was low. Controlled. "Why are you doing this to me? Why can't I fold?"

Master Gabriel looked at him. Bewilderment on his face. A man who controlled this domain and didn't understand what it was doing.

"It's not me, Bass. I'm not doing anything to you."

Master Serena had not moved. The heart Lynnie could feel through her master's hand had been racing since Gabriel first spoke. It was steady now.

Sebastian looked at his father. Looked at the water. Looked at the island, the linden, the basin that had fed him its power and was now holding him against his will.

His hands opened at his sides. The same hands that had held the wand, held the ring, held on to the basin floor when his reserves were gone. Now they let go of something else.

"Thank you for keeping me safe, Master." Quiet. The voice of her wizard putting away everything he'd come here to be.

He turned to Master Serena. His mouth opened.

"Goodbye, M—"

The word broke. The syllable catching in his throat, the rest of it locked behind his teeth. His hand found the necklace at his collar — the linden cord, the one Serena had made with him when he was ten.

"Goodbye, Master Serena." His fingers tightened on the pendant. "Thank you for the memories. I will cherish them always."

He looked at the water. "I will go. Give Louie my love."

He stopped.

"I may not have been your son, but I thought Louie was my brother." Something closed in his throat. "I guess I'm nobody's brother after all."

Then he phased. Silent. A different door entirely.

She had watched him phase a hundred times. Never while his heart was breaking. The intangibility didn't flicker. It arrived complete. His body thinned against the sapphire light, and the air passed through the space where he'd been. The domain couldn't hold what it couldn't touch.

He looked at her. One breath. His eyes found hers across the water, and she saw the question form and die in the same moment. He wanted her to come. He couldn't survive hearing no. So he didn't ask.

She didn't look away. Her hands were behind her back and her master's hand was on her shoulder and she stayed with him until he was gone. North. Intangible. Heading for Mistfall. For Kole. For his real brother.

The sunsteel went cold.

On the far rim, two folds opened and sealed. Mistfall gray. Silversand gray. North.

Silence. The falls. The wind. The basin that had cradled him in power now held the memory of his leaving.

Then Gabriel opened his mouth and the Heart of Riversong broke.

The sound that came out of the Domonus had no words. A bellow — raw, vast, torn from the man underneath the role. It hit the basin and the water threw it back. The falls caught it and the cascades carried it and the linden on the island shook.

The mountains answered. The deep current surging toward the sound, amplifying it through the stone, through the cascades, through the roots of the linden and the bones of the rim. Aluno pressed himself flat against the ground. Canto threw his head back and howled.

The real Domonus shattered.

Master Gabriel went to his knees.

"How do you think he feels right now."

She had never seen the Domonus of Riversong kneel. He went down on the stone at the basin's edge and his hands found the ground and his head dropped.

Master Serena's hand left Lynnie's shoulder. Her master crossed to him without a word and knelt beside him.

"We just broke our family, Woven. Tell me we saved our son."

"Yes. For many years. And I will be there for him when the time comes."

Serena paused to control her breath.

"If they think they can have him, they will not come to take him and the ember will sleep. Nikita will watch over him. She has arranged for his mundane schooling as well."

Her hand pressed flat against her chest.

"His mother was a hero, and his father was a good man." Her voice broke on it. "We have dishonored them both today, and ourselves as well."

Lynnie didn't know what that meant.

Domonus Gabriel ran his fingers through his hair. "We will honor them by keeping him safe." He looked up. At Lynnie.

"Lynette. There is more to this than you know."

His voice was different. The performance stripped away.

"I have spoken with the Earthkin Kennari, as my mother and her mother did before me. She has never been wrong. But perhaps today is what she asked of me. I will give myself when it's time — and I do not think that time is today."

He closed his eyes.

"What would you have me do, Lynette. He is my son."

He said it. The word Sebastian would never use and Gabriel had just spent an hour refusing to be.

"Then act like his father." Her voice was steady. She was building that steadiness in real time. "I will not let your son be alone on his birthday."

On the island, the Morning Sun rose.

Serena went up the steps to join her.

They crossed to the linden together. Both placed their hands against the trunk where Sebastian's blood still darkened the grain. The bark softened.

"A Domonus was born today." The Morning Sun's palms pressed into the heartwood and the wood opened — not the way it had for him. No ring pulling free. "Please, lend him your strength."

This was older craft: their hands inside the grain, drawing from the center, the tree giving what they asked.

"He is worthy."

The wood came out pale and warm. Domonus Alara shaped it between her palms. Serena wove the protections through the grain as it took form. The ridges rose across its length. Raised bands forming through the linden. The shape of a baton more than a wand.

"He is the best of us."

Domonus Alara opened her palm. The wand rose from it — rotating end over end, slow at first, then faster. It hung in the air between her and Serena, spinning steady, parallel to the basin below.

The Heart's rasa answered. Blue, pulling from the water, climbing the air around the spinning wand. The domain feeding it.

"Protect my Grandson when his magic calls." Domonus Alara spoke to the spinning wand. The basin carried her voice — through the water, through the stone, through every fall.

"Keep him safe when he falls." The Morning Sun held her hand close to the spin. The wand turned on. The blue deepened around the heartwood.

"Bear his light when ours has gone." Sebastian's adopted grandmother breathed slow, and the linden above them answered. Sapphire light deepened in the canopy.

"Hold him strong from dusk to dawn." Sebastian's adopted grandmother let a tear fall and pressed it to the wand mid-rotation. The linden took it.

"Protect my Son, with all my Power." Serena raised her hand to the spin. Sunbreak white-gold sparked at her fingertips. The lightning leapt from her hand into the wand mid-spin, threading through the grain alongside the linden's blue.

"Magic flowing, through this Shower." Master Serena called the storm. Above the basin, the sky gathered to her word. Cloud forming where there had been none. The air pulled toward her over the caldera. The first rain fell — not water. Each drop a bead of white-gold light, falling past the linden, past the spinning wand, into the heartwood. The spin pulled them in.

"Be there for him, when we cannot." Sebastian's adopted mother held her hand to the rain as it intensified. The cloud opened above the island and Sunbreak white-gold poured down, every drop drawn into the spinning wand. The basin turned bright with the absorption, blue and white-gold weaving in the water at her feet.

"Be strong my heart, never stop." Sebastian's adopted mother stayed at the spin until the last drop landed.

Sebastian's adopted grandmother named the wand. "This is your Resolution, Domonus."

A ripple in the air appeared beside her. The same one that had been following Sebastian — the presence Lynnie had felt near him on the water, the shape she couldn't name. It leaned toward Domonus Alara.

"Please send her to watch over him." Domonus Alara's hand opened toward the shimmer. "And to hold him strong in his moments of greatest need."

The wand floated forward over the water, the spin steady, the basin still glowing under it. The linden, the gold, every drop of the storm wrapped in the heartwood now.

Then it was gone. The ripple with it.

On the island, Lord Sagan turned his head from the falls. Stridus turned with him. He looked at Domonus Alara.

Then his eyes moved. The basin. The falls. The empty water where Sebastian had stood. They settled north.

"Did you send them?"

"Yes, Master."

"Then it will be fine, little one. He is the Domonus who will always return."

His eyes returned to the falls. Stridus went back to her watch.

Beside Lynnie, Master Al'Mira exhaled. The first breath she had let out in minutes.

At least someone on this island was being sensible.

She turned to her master. Master Serena's eyes were red-rimmed. Her hand left Lynnie's shoulder.

Allegra was at her left in the same black dress, but with a forest green shawl. A few years older. Serena's first apprentice.

Lynnie stepped forward. Her hands were still behind her back.

"You will never speak to him this way again."

Gabriel looked up at her.

"I'm not sure what I'll tell your granddaughters about this moment."

She stepped off the rim and walked down to the center of the basin, to the water where Sebastian had stood.

She turned.

"By the covenants of old, I invoke my right as a princess of the Åven to challenge the choice for my home seat of Sunbreak."

Her eyes found Lionel.

"Còvus Weaver, may I?"

Zavala was strong. Strong enough for the rank. That was the only reason the Arcanum could name him. But strong was not the same as wanted. He was a man the others would let go without a fight, and her brother had let his name stand because of it. Lionel had known she would come for the seat, and he had made certain that when she did, no one would be sorry to lose the man in it.

She looked at her brother. She saw it now.

"You may, Witch Princess." Lionel's voice carried across the basin. "The Cloud takes only the best of Sunbreak, and the best is proven, not appointed. Take what you came for."

Then she looked to the one who eclipsed them all.

"Sister, may I?"

Master Serena nodded.

Lionel's voice came again, clear and resolute. "I witness this on behalf of my younger sister Witch Princess Lynette Weaver and my older sister Serena Serrano of House Weaver, the Princess of all Witches."

"By the word of my sister Pråvus Serena Serrano, Princess of all Witches of the Åven, I will be Nimbus."

She looked around at the mages above her, all her senior by Arcanum standard, and spoke very clearly.

"I am sure our mother would agree."

No one spoke.

Then she faced Zavala. She gave him his full name and his rank.

"Imagi Raul Zavala. I challenge you for the seat of Nimbus."

Zavala looked across the basin, to the mages who had named him to the seat. Not one of them moved to answer for him. The Arcanum had given him the rank. It would not spend a breath to keep him in it.

"When we're done, I will take my place at Sebastian's side, with my brothers and sisters of the Cloud."

She lifted her chin once.

"Stratus. Alto. To me."

Harlan came down at her left, Sebastian's duffle across his back. Kole at her right, the bundles from Linden Cove drifting at his shoulder. They had slipped away during the proceedings and packed what Sebastian would need from the workshop.

"Yes, Witch Princess."

"Lentis. Virga." She did not look back to watch them move. "Incus. Velum. Cumulus."

They came down off the rim. Allegra and Luci. Then Khotan, who took the long step without a word, all that weight gone quiet. Feng a beat after. Older than any of them by a few years, her eyes already on the water like she had read the duel and found it short. Caden was last. He stopped on the rim and summoned an Eye — a pale sphere waking over a basin where nobody had called for one — then came down slow enough to stay in frame. No one made him room.

From the rim, small and clear: "Caden sucks."

A piece of bark, hard as iron, was already in the air when she said it. It crossed the basin flat and took the sphere out of the air. The water swallowed both.

A girl's voice. Ironbark brown, thirteen at most, standing at the shoulder of Domonus Charlotte Stihl — her apprentice, and her sister.

Beside Master Emory, his younger brother Bo coughed into his fist. "At everything." Charles and Sasha laughed.

Laughter broke along the stone before the Domonus's hand closed on the girl's shoulder. Charlotte did not look down at her. Her mouth was fighting her.

Constance was going to be in trouble tonight, and by her face she had already decided it was worth it.

Luci grinned across at her. "What do you say, Lentis? Want to break some rules?"

Allegra's mouth turned up. "I was to understand the rules no longer apply to us. We are Lords and Ladies of magic as of today."

"I will need witnesses for what's to come."

Kole Kinslow's voice carried across the caldera. "A master should know when they are not needed." His eyes were squarely on Gabriel. "And this was not needed."

"We have been coming to Riversong since we were very young, all of us. There are no secrets here. That is your credo, is it not?"

No one answered.

His wand spun slow in his right hand. Casual. His left dipped into the basin, and the water around his fingers rose as a bottle of wine. He tucked it under his arm. His anger was in the water and the air, no matter how level the words stayed.

"I'm disappointed in every single one of you. I have seen the truth in your hearts, so I know there is love. That is why I am being polite about this, Masters."

"If you need him, you may call upon me, and I will answer. By my word as the leader of the Cloud. Or he will come to you when he is ready. Until then, know his real family will be with him."

Then Kole looked up at Zavala. The grin came back. It was not a kind one.

"Lynette has made the challenge, so Raul may choose the battlefield." He let it sit. "I don't think it really matters, my friend. She'll take you anywhere she wants to go." He turned back toward Lynnie, still speaking to Zavala. "But hurry up. We have plans."

Zavala came off the rim last of all. He had worn an easy smile through the whole morning. He came down without it, opened his fold, and was gone to choose his ground.

The Cloud followed. Folds opening across the water one after another, Sebastian's duffle on Harlan's back going with them into the dark.

Lynnie stayed where she was a moment longer. On the water. Where he had stood.

She snapped her fingers. The witch's dress was gone. Her ranging kit in its place, the color of the ocean, the woven sunsteel cloak at her shoulders. Lightning flicked along her skin, white-gold, and stayed.

One look back at the rim. A hand, lifted once through the closing gold.

"Never again."

The tesseract sealed behind her.