Chapter 44

Before Aster could work out where exactly he was supposed to fit into this annual act of institutionalised poor decision-making, a voice cut through the corridor behind him.

"Aster. There you are."

He turned just as Lena appeared through a cluster of students — moving with the particular urgency of someone who had already checked three wrong places and was trying not to be annoyed about it.

Eyes scanning him first for damage, then for ignorance. Her gaze took in the Breach-punch in his hand, Rohan beside him.

Relief flickered across her face.

"I'm glad I found you before you wandered off into the outer corridors like a lemming with ambitions." She looked at Rohan. "You filled him in?"

Rohan lifted his cup. "I occasionally contribute to society."

"Must have been exhausting."

"It was."

Aster looked between them. Since his duel with Rohan, repeated proximity had made them accustomed to one another. Neither seemed to trust the other, but somewhere along the way their mutual dislike had been filed down into professional courtesy by the inconvenience of both knowing him.

"I appreciate that you both apparently held a meeting about my ignorance without me."

Lena ignored that entirely — one of her more consistent habits — and fell into step beside him as the three of them started moving with the crowd out of the hall.

"The Headmaster and Rohan have given me the broad version," Aster said. "Storm polarity flips. Creatures spill out. Rich students call it tradition. Everyone else calls it an opportunity. What am I missing?"

Lena considered the question for a moment.

"Breachnight isn't just a weather event," Lena said. "It only looks like one for the same reason the Astral Storm looks like a storm."

Aster looked toward the Storm.

"...You're about to ruin clouds for me, aren't you?"

"It's like looking at a rainforest from orbit," she continued. "You're seeing the shape of it, not what it actually is…

“It’s closer to an ecosystem, a massive one. Around a hundred and fifty kilometres deep from top to bottom."

"You're telling me there's a hundred-and-fifty-kilometre-thick ecosystem between here and the Cradle?"

"More or less."

"It's formed from Psychic Aether bleeding out of the Cradle —

Rohan added: "Think of it less like weather and more like a second world that grew in the way."

Lena nodded. "Before the Mirror Crossways were stabilised, travelling through the Storm was something of a death sentence. Most who ventured into it never returned. It took our ancestors generations to chart safe passages and establish the network of Mirror Relays we rely on today."

Aster glanced at the faint shimmer of a mirror gate visible through the corridor behind them.

"Think of it like a world stacked vertically," she said. "At the centre of the storm, the Aether concentration is so high it stops behaving like a Myst and condenses into liquid."

Aster looked back at her. "You're telling me there's an ocean in there."

"Several, depending on how you define depth," Rohan said. "And they're not small."

"Larger than anything in the Material Realm," Lena added. "Layered pressure zones. The deeper you go, the denser the Psychic-Aether— and more dangerous — the life becomes."

"Reassuring."

"The outer layers consists of Myst. But at the outer edge, where density breaks down between the liquid core and the open air of the Archipelago — that's where the Spawning Maelstrom begins." She turned a corner and kept walking. "A primordial soup of constant formation. Creatures born directly from the Aether saturation, barely stable enough to exist. Most of them die almost immediately — torn apart by whatever formed next to them, or by something that had already adapted to that layer's pressure. Survival is measured in seconds for most of them."

"Which," Aster said, "is a very relatable life cycle."

Lena almost smiled. "The point is it never stops. New creatures constantly forming. Constant birth, constant death. That pressure forces infinite change — every creature that survives longer than it should adapts.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Throw enough attempts at survival at a wall and eventually something weird sticks. Two creatures fight, one walks away. Every time that happens, the survivor changes a little. Sometimes to hunt better. Sometimes to hide. Sometimes the storm's nature forces the change whether the creature survives it or not."

"So the Maelstrom is essentially evolution with a productivity quota."

"When you have that many creatures changing for that long," she said, "eventually something unusual emerges. Minor, most of the time. But sometimes it's something so strange that no cultivator would have built it on purpose — a mutation that exists because the Maelstrom had no particular reason to stop it."

Students were beginning to form into small groups now, some laughing, some checking gear, some doing a poor job of pretending not to be nervous.

"That's the main draw of Breachnight," Lena continued. "Rare Glyph Mutations from things that had no right to stabilise, managing to exist long enough to become something new."

Rohan added: "Creatures like these are rare. Most don't make it out of the Maelstrom. Specialised mutations don't last long when number of teeth trumps everything else."

"But Breachnight changes that, forcing the outer boundary of the Maelstrom upward." Lena traced a slow arc through the air. "Only a few kilometres. Just enough for creatures from the outer Maelstrom to wash across the lower islands instead of disappearing into the Storm."

"The ones that survive don't always leave," Rohan added. "Some adapt. Stabilise. Breed."

Lena nodded. "Over centuries they spread upward through the Archipelago. Every Breachnight the Storm exports another generation of experiments into the upper planes."

Aster frowned.

"...So evolution with seasonal updates."

Rohan snorted.

"With catastrophically bad patch notes."

"And people can actually use these mutations?"

"Some cultivators integrate evolved glyphs directly into their own pathways. Others break them down to their basic runic formations. Sometimes a mutation strengthens an existing technique. Sometimes it changes one completely."

"And sometimes," Rohan said, "you drag something home that looked valuable until it explodes your meridians."

"That happens often?"

"People without family money have a tendency to confuse terrible odds with their best chance." Lena glanced toward the storm-shrouded windows. "On Breachnight, optimism is less a personality trait than a diagnosed occupational hazard."

That sounded exactly like the version of Galamad Aster had come to understand.

He looked toward the outer exits, where masked students were beginning to move out in staggered intervals. The lanternlight reflected in polished wood and bone and crystal before being swallowed by the shifting Myst beyond.

"So what's the actual expectation here?" he asked. "Do I wander into the Myst and hope some malformed wildlife has accidentally evolved my future, or is there an organised process for the school's annual brush with Darwinism?"

Rohan snorted.

Lena glanced at him. "If you only want materials, the safer route is the interior hunting parties. The school opens certain halls and lower chambers. The weaker breach-creatures get drawn in by the wards."

"Less chance of dying in a ditch," Rohan added.

"That sounds suspiciously sensible."

"It is," Rohan said. "Which is why the rewards are mediocre."

That figured.

"Inside hunts are good for cores, basic materials, common glyphs," Lena continued. "Useful for steady progress."

"But," Aster said.

She looked at him.

"The unusual types aren't stupid enough to be lured in. The wards filter out the weak and leave the interesting." Her gaze moved toward the storm-shrouded balconies beyond the outer arches. "Interesting and dangerous tend to travel together."

Then she stepped slightly closer, lowering her voice.

"But the risks are going to be more dangerous than usual…”

“I wasn't going to mention this, but my brother is on senior patrol tonight. Outer-island support. He sat in on the briefing with Ndlovu this morning."

Her voice lowered.

“The headmaster's readings are off much more than he mentioned during his speech."

Silence.

"His Fate projections is blocked almost completely beyond the inner islands.”

She searched for the word.

" Everything farther out is... tangled. Like someone spilled ink through them."

Rohan's expression hardened.

"That's impossible. He’s the strongest Fate cultivator on the continent; he should be able to see to the other side of the planet!"

Aster looked between them.

"...Am I the only one who doesn't appreciate how bad that sentence is?"

Rohan answered immediately.

"Imagine," Rohan said, "the best meteorologist in history looking at a hurricane and saying: I don't know where it's going."

Aster's humour faded.

"...Ah."

Lena nodded.

"The wards have been reinforced. Patrols have been doubled. They're treating every protocol as if tonight will be worse than expected."

Aster straightened.

"Meaning bigger monsters?"

"Maybe. Or stranger ones. Or simply more of them in one place."

Nobody moved to fill the silence that followed. Even Rohan looked unsettled, which was the kind of observation that had no good interpretation.

"That explains the speech," he murmured.

"They know something's wrong," Lena said. "They just don't know what."

She looked at Aster.

"That's why I wanted to find you."

He met her eyes.

"...I was hoping it was my personality."

"That too," she said flatly. "But mostly this."

Rohan tilted his head. "You're thinking we group."

"Yes."

"Musa and Yani?"

"Top-twenty obligations. They're on patrol support rounds. They can't join us."

Rohan considered it a moment, then nodded slowly.

Aster looked between them. "You both arrived at that decision very quickly."

"Because it's obvious," Lena said. "Small group means less noise, less competition if something rare shows up. Solo is worse, especially with the storm behaving strangely." She gestured between the three of them. "Three gives coverage. Rohan handles close engagement. I've got range and control. And you—"

She paused.

Aster narrowed his eyes. "Go ahead."

"You'll make sure we don't miss something rare while everyone else is busy stabbing it."

"That's a generous way of saying I overthink everything."

"It's a generous way of saying you notice patterns," Rohan said. "Which, tonight, actually matters."

Aster looked back toward the exits. The first groups were moving out now, lanternlight catching on the polished mask surfaces before the Myst swallowed them. The Headmaster's voice still sat somewhere at the back of his skull, quiet and patient. Ask yourself what it expects in return.

Cassian sat on the other edge of it. Closer every day.

"And this mysterious extra danger doesn't change your enthusiasm for going out there?"

Lena didn't hesitate. "No."

Rohan gave a small, humourless smile. "It actually makes it more likely something interesting might show up."

Of course it did. More pressure. More instability. More chances for something to go wrong in precisely the way that might, with enough luck and poor judgment, become an asset.

He clicked his tongue.

"Let's go, then."