The next couple of days blurred for Petros. With his teaching schedule cleared, he lost himself in the ward lab, head down over inks and sigils, barely acknowledging the few times Eamon slipped in to work at the center table.

  This time, he was prepared. He had quietly paid one of the fort caretakers to fetch him for his scheduled portal window so he would not miss it again.

  He spent the hours pushing at the seam where Myriad met runes. They had barely scratched the surface of this new magic. Cultivation theory, core dynamics, inscription, and lived fieldwork were colliding into a framework that did not exist a year ago. He and Eamon were literally writing the book that others would teach from for decades.

  Myriad’s versatility still astonished him. People could choose so many paths. A subset had taken to calling themselves deckers, channeling Myriad through inscribed cards to build power decks. It was clever, and he respected the control, but he set that thread aside for now. In his view, it constrained growth too early.

  His notes drifted to a different puzzle. When he and Jack first arrived in Aerothane, they had tapped an untended well. They leveled fast and hit strengths that should have taken years. Aerothane natives had been separated from Myriad by the Great Disconnect. The Source and Myriad were different, yet the wound cut across both. The first outworlders had never been part of that break, so they linked to Myriad at once.

  Jack had found a way to help the natives who had potential. Once Jack grew strong enough to see strands, he could see Myriad slipping past Aerothanians like loose threads, close but not seizing. He learned to guide those strands into place with intention. After the Demon God fell and The Source flushed away, the barrier lifted. Anyone with the capacity could connect. And then the flood of outworlders began.

  A rap sounded on the lab door. It slid open, and a boy edged in.

  “Sorry, sir. You said to fetch you under any circumstances.”

  “No, that is fine,” Petros said, setting his quill down. “How long?”

  “About twenty minutes. We will open on time for Pendle. Hajill’s window just closed, and they are clearing the chamber.”

  Petros nodded. His satchel was already packed. He closed his ledgers, tore a neat page from his notebook, and scrawled a quick line for Eamon about the latest Thread and Resonance tests. He left the note under a paperweight shaped like a sleeping frog, then followed the boy out.

  The caretaker had orders to keep him moving so he did not get distracted by a chalk line or a bright idea. Petros accepted the chaperone with good humor. Today had a single purpose. He would meet Jack in Pendle and then push through his evolution. He had put it off long enough, and the new pressure at the center of his chest told him delay could do real harm. Jack had stood with him at every hard edge since the first week. Brother was the only word that fit now.

  They crossed the cool corridor toward the portal room. Petros rolled his shoulders once, felt the hum in his core answer, and let his breath settle into the steady rhythm of someone finally, absolutely on time.

  The portal chamber ran on a four-person rotation: two guards, two keymasters. Before any Key ever saw a drop of mana, Petros and Eamon had attuned the housing so only approved Myriad signatures could wake it. It was the simplest way to prevent creative misuse.

  A short list of officials held emergency access, including the council, but schedules still ruled the day. They were still arguing about what to call the three-fort region. “Jackville” and “Hartvania” had died noble deaths. That had not stopped Jack from submitting “Jackorton,” “Hartland,” and “Jackiverse.” Asil suggested “Jackass,” which, she clarified, was not a place name, but a nickname for her spouse.

  The fort bell tolled the hour. Like clockwork, the keymasters fed a careful trickle of mana into the crystal. The portal drew itself as a bright line, widened, and settled into an oval three meters tall and five wide. The rim sparked blue. Beyond it, Pendle’s square showed clear as a picture: the raised stone slab, the guards at the foot, the bustle of morning trade.

  As always, the Pendle queue waited off to one side while Anjelica’s list crossed first. When the chamber cleared, the keymaster would call for Pendle to send theirs through.

  Petros took his place in the Anjelica line. Someone offered to wave him forward; he declined with a small smile. When his turn came, the breeze of the other town kissed his face. He stepped through and could not help the grin that followed. The portal turned a week’s hard travel into a single stride, yet it had been a while since he had stood in the place where he and Jack first set roots.

  Pendle had grown. It had always been a crossroads, but now two taverns were full to their rafters and a third frame was rising. The tailor had doubled her space. Henry’s forge hammered from morning to moonrise, the blacksmith gruffer than ever and saddled with three apprentices, most from Anjelica and Hajill, who wanted to carry his craft home. Competition did not worry Henry. Work would never run out. If anything, steady help might make him a little less grumpy. A little.

  Raven still ran the tavern along with her father, the owner. She and Petros had fallen into a rhythm that suited them both. She visited Anjelica two or three times a month when she could slip away from Pendle’s defense rota and the bar. He could not leave his post in Anjelica for long, council work and wards being what they were. They had talked about it. For now, stolen days were enough.

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  People in the Pendle queue greeted him in ones and twos. He answered each hello, stepped off the slab, and moved aside so the rest of Anjelica’s travelers could cross.

  He did not head for the tavern at once. Raven would be buried in work at this hour. Instead, he turned his feet toward the forge to pay respects to Henry.

  Pendle’s northern edge had crept outward, swallowing the old treeline. The smithy, once near the border, now felt like the town’s middle. They had begun to fold the surrounding woods into streets and yards to make room for the arrivals.

  Petros, Jack, Eamon, and Asil had a working theory. Aerothane’s population had thinned after the Great Disconnect. When The Source flushed away and Myriad rushed in, that same surge washed across Earth. The storm that followed had carried a fraction of Earth’s people here. In the Inbetween, they chose race and class under Lucien’s watch. Human was often closed to push balance, so elves, dwarves, fae, and others crossed in healthy numbers. When they stepped through, they became what they chose, true-blooded in body and strand. Aerothane’s old mix was returning.

  The ring of hammer on anvil cut his thoughts clean. Even lost in Pendle, you could find Henry by following that sound.

  Henry felt Petros the moment he crossed the square. Myriad tugged like a familiar thread. He barked one last instruction at an apprentice he was definitely not yelling at, wiped his hands, and strode out of the forge.

  “Petros, my boy, how are ye fairing?” He wrapped the smaller scholar in a hug that smelled like smoke and hot iron.

  “Busy most days, overworked the rest,” Petros said, grinning as they stepped apart.

  He took in the expanded shop with absolute pleasure. Before the town pushed its borders, Henry had claimed the surrounding lots for growth. It paid off. With Anjelica sending builders and steady commissions, the forge had sprawled into a proper complex.

  Petros watched the apprentices with open pride. He had helped Henry handpick most of them. “What you are turning out is spectacular,” he said, eyeing racks of armor and weapon orders bound for the three forts and beyond.

  “Aye. Getting this lot to make a decent spoon was a battle,” Henry said, beard twitching. “But they are coming along. You found me good hands.”

  They reminisced for a while. When Petros judged the breakfast rush at the Boar & Brew was past and the lunch crowd not yet thick, he promised to bring Jack by later and took his leave.

  The Boar & Brew faced the square with a row of other busy shops. Inside, the common room still hummed, but at least there were chairs. Raven spotted him in a heartbeat and crossed the floor like she had been launched.

  “Took you long enough,” she said, kissing him quickly. “I felt you step through the portal, you doof.”

  Petros flushed. Around Raven, he often felt eighteen kinds of young, which was both ridiculous and true. “I assumed you were buried,” he said. “I did not want to be in the way.”

  “Oh, hush. I saved a table for you and Jack at dawn.” She tipped her head, mock-severe. “But I suppose you had to kiss your boyfriend Henry first. Is he better at it than me?”

  “I cannot say,” Petros replied, solemn as a judge. “His beard is scratchy.”

  Raven swatted him with two fingers and towed him toward the saved table. A drunk started to pull out one of the empty chairs.

  “That seat is saved, you oaf,” Raven snapped.

  “I will sit where I bloody well…” The man looked up, saw who he was arguing with, and deflated. He whisked off his hat. “Sorry, Miss Raven, ma’am. I was just, ah, wiping it off. See?” He polished the chair and the edge of the table with the hat, smiling a wide, unconvincing, mostly toothless smile.

  Petros took the other chair before the man could improve its shine. Raven pressed a second kiss to his cheek and pivoted away, balancing a tray of mugs like a conjurer.

  A moment later, a mug appeared in front of him, cool and sweating. Milk.

  “Oh, come on,” Petros said, staring at the white surface as if it had betrayed him.

  Across the room, Raven did not look back, but her voice carried, cheerful and merciless. “Council minds stay sharper on milk before noon. Beer after.”

  Petros sighed, lifted the mug, and admitted it tasted annoyingly good.

  The faint bite of ozone reached Petros before the sound did. The tiny hairs on his arms stood up, then a single thundercrack rolled over the square without a cloud in sight. A gust shouldered the tavern door wide.

  Jack stood there, framed by bright street and dim room, and every head turned his way.

  He spotted Raven first and crossed the floor in three long strides, scooping her into a quick hug and kissing her cheek. “I always greet my special Pendle lady first,” he said, tipping his flat cap with a flourish.

  “Oh, you say the sweetest things,” Raven cooed, then her eyes sharpened. She snatched the cap and jammed it back on his head, crooked. “Then why didn’t you stop by the other day, you oaf? Or was other business more important than your special Pendle lady?”

  “Always a pleasure,” Jack said, easy grin intact.

  Raven’s mouth softened. “Good to see you,” she said, rubbing his arm once before turning away with her tray.

  Jack spun to the table and dropped into the chair across from Petros. “Hey, little brother,” he said, ruffling Petros’s hair.

  A mug of hot tea appeared in front of him as if it had grown out of the wood. Jack blinked at it, then toward the bar. Raven was already halfway across the room, balancing three tankards and a plate without looking back. He lifted the mug in a small salute, steam curling in the warm, familiar air.

  Jack opened his mouth to speak, then stilled. Something tugged at him. He turned his head toward the door a heartbeat before it swung.

  Three figures stepped in: two men and a woman. The one in front was built like an ox, shorter than the other two, thick through the shoulders, neck like a stump. The second man cleared six feet and carried himself like he had been paid to hurt people. The woman was an inch taller still, eyes sweeping the room with a merciless calm.

  Conversation thinned. Chairs stopped scraping. Raven set her tray on the bar without looking away.

  The ox shouldered forward, boots slow and heavy on the floorboards. He did not bother to raise his voice.

  “We are looking for Jack Hart.”

  Silence took over the room as a whole.

  The man turned his head until his eyes found Jack, and a grin broke across his face like a crack in ice.

  “Good,” he said. “Found you.”