Chapter 14 - The Language of Atoms

  “The mind speaks, the hands shape, the catalyst obeys. Thus matter is persuaded.”

  — Basic Principles of Shroudcraft, Tuemont Academy

  The croft wore winter like a bruise—dark pooled in every seam, a hush that deepened the further the night crept in behind Eike’s boots. He carried no mp, no token of comfort; the only warmth was in his breath, chased thin by haste and the tighter chill of expectation. Each step bit through snow, the wind scoring at his cheeks with fingers grown bold by midnight. At the field’s edge, the old door gave at a touch; light—yellow, sparse—spilled out like the contents of a miser’s purse, precious, insufficient, but there.

  Inside, Amonvae worked in silence. She had arranged the room with a sure hand: a circle of rough salt confined a coal-burnt rug, shelves lined with jars of silt, speckled stone, roots twisted until the grain threatened to snap. She wore her teaching face—a bde honed by patience only for utility’s sake—gray eyes set on the tokens before her.

  “Close the door,” she said. No greeting, no softness. “The world has ears. Here, precision is our only armor.”

  Eike obeyed, hunching his shoulders against the cold’s st bite. The room smelled not of hope, but of lichen, stale char, the copper-bright sharpness of something mineral ground too fine. He wiped his palms on his coat and stood just outside the salt, waiting for Amonvae to cim him for another round of bargain and discipline.

  “Sit,” she ordered, a nod to the floor opposite her. “Tonight begins with demonstration. Watch.”

  A river stone y between them—pin, streaked with veins the color of dusk. Amonvae drew a breath, long and measured; she pinched a wedge of dried reed between thumb and first finger, then rolled her shoulders back, neck rigid. Her voice, a low drone, slipped into the churn of the fire: not nguage as Eike knew it, but a sequence of sylbles that clung to the tongue and refused to resolve. She moved her free hand—back, circle, sharp flick; each gesture drawn with the surety of a scribe inscribing w.

  The stone shivered. First imperceptibly, then with a crawling energy—hairline cracks racing, dust sifting from the veins. In a blink, it unraveled: color leeched, surface sckening, until only a soft mound of gritty powder curled on the floor, catching in the mplight.

  She exhaled—not from exertion, but habit—and tossed the spent reed into the fire.

  “Catalyst,” she said, holding up an identical stalk. “This reed, river-grown, holds the memory of water and fracture—useful for splitting stone, dissolving bonds the Shroud brushes best. Each material answers if you know its grammar. The mind—” she tapped her temple, “speaks. The hand persuades. The catalyst gives consent.”

  Eike watched, unsure if awe or suspicion would serve him best.

  Amonvae gestured to his side of the circle. “You will learn to speak with the world’s smallest parts. Call it the nguage of atoms, if you wish. We begin with breaking. Only after comes building. Speak as I spoke. Do as I did. Fail carefully, or do not trust your body to walk home unchanged.”

  Training spooled out in measured beats—voice, gesture, catalyst. Eike took the reed, trying to straighten but only managing a hunch; his hands shook, stomach clenched tight with hunger. He drew breath, tried the sylbles—a string of sour, ill-fitting sounds. Each word seemed to snag at his tongue, a choking on the very air.

  Amonvae’s correction was sharp as sleet. “You mumble like a market huckster. Strong, clear. Not for me—for the force that listens. Again.”

  This time, Eike focused—pulse thunder in his ears, the shape of the reed catching sweat from his fingers. He moved his hand—half a beat slow. The sylbles, lower, found a pattern. The stone—smaller than before, a splinter she’d chosen for him—creaked, shimmered with the promise of change, then snapped in two, a wisp of dust licking out. He gasped, surprise and exhaustion swirling together, leaving his skull hollowed by the effort.

  Amonvae’s mouth curled—not a smile, more an acknowledgement. “It answers. That is the first step. Power untested is noise; power called by will, whispered into the Shroud, becomes w. You felt it—how the world resisted, then gave?”

  Eike nodded, breath shallow. “It’s like… pushing at a door and finding it swing inward. Too easy, almost, if I let it.”

  She eyed him. “Ease is a lie. True work begins where instinct stops. Again. Quieter this time—feel for the boundary, let it move.”

  They moved through materials—carved wood, a rag of animal sinew, the stub of an antler. Each had its catalyst—a scrap of lichen, a pinch of copper grit, a splinter of obsidian. The logic was technical, even perfunctory: choose the substance, speak the word, pair the gesture, apply the catalyst, focus intent. Most attempts fizzled: the wood bckened only at the edges; bone would not surrender until his hand cramped with effort.

  Eike’s mind grew foggy, muscles jumping as if hauled and released by strings he couldn’t see. Fatigue seeped into his every movement. He wiped a hand at his nose—blood came away faintly red, almost unnoticed.

  After the fourth trial—splitting a shaft of bark, only to have it snap and wither before his eyes—he slumped, arms shaking.

  “It shouldn’t take so much,” he muttered, wiping the sweat from his brow. “The thing wants to change. It feels like… hunger, looking for a mouth.”

  Amonvae’s eyes narrowed, mouth thinning as she heard his words. “The Shroud is appetitive. But it pays no heed to what you want, only to what you ask in the manner prescribed. Precision, always, and repetition. You are shaping the urge itself—giving it discipline, not mere appetite.”

  She produced a fresh spindle—this one pale, shot through with tiny leaf buds long dead. “Something different. Command it to come green. But do it as taught—break down, then set foundation, then urge renewal. Observe.”

  She demonstrated: words slower, hands darting with deliberate care, catalyst (powdered seed) sprinkled across her palm. At her command, shoots curled from the wood, green sharp and sudden, leaves unfurling to catch the mplight—then colpsed, shriveled by a pinch of her nail.

  She held out the stick, thin smile now unmistakable. “Most cannot manage this without a year’s guidance. Try, if you dare.”

  Eike’s hand shook as he accepted the spindle. He breathed slow, sought the familiar dark interior space where power felt thickest—like kneeling at the edge of a frozen pond, knowing one hard stomp would break the skin.

  He mouthed the sylbles, tracing her pattern. But when he moved—hesitant, heart in his mouth—something shifted: the wood did not splinter, did not bcken or even fade. Instead, where his thumb brushed, green leapt up—too eager, leaf following leaf, a tangled, insistent knot of life winding from the dead husk. It came too fast—bark splitting with a tiny pop, the new growth bright and unguarded.

  He flinched, nearly dropping the thing.

  Amonvae reached across the circle, steady fingers catching his wrist before he could recoil. “Interesting,” she breathed—a word so measured, Eike could not tell if she meant awe or arm. “You mold the urge to persist, not to consume. The drive turns not to ruin, but to structure. Most destroy first, build never. You… invert the stream.”

  Eike blinked at the vivified stick, still trembling between his fingers. Leaves fanned out, impossibly vivid in the mplight.

  “Can you teach it out of me?” he asked—half hope, half fear.

  Amonvae’s gaze lingered on his hands, on the raw green gleaming at his thumb.

  “Quality is not mistake,” she replied, voice lower. “You do what others cannot—or will not. The Shroud marks its servants with ruin or with hunger. You—” her breath caught, “—may yet be something else.”

  For a moment, the room held its breath.

  “Again,” she said. Not command, not quite plea.

  Training stretched over nights, the logic of ordinary time dissolving in a haze of fatigue and repetition. Eike learned the structure of gestures—each twist of finger, each pass of palm a brick id in an invisible edifice. Incantations grew familiar, their rhythm settling into his bones like an old song. Catalysts stacked neatly beside him—moss, salt, a brittle wisp of fox-tail grass, bits of copper drawn from salvaged rags. Each carried its tune, each coaxed the tent power into shape.

  Fatigue pressed at Eike’s shoulders, heavy as hunger’s gnaw, as he stumbled through days half-asleep. At home, Lucy’s rasping breaths marked each dawn, reminder and threat in every cough. After lessons, he’d stare at his palm, scratching at the scar beside his thumb; sometimes, slow as moss growing in shadow, a green sheen would snake across the hurt—not healing, not quite, but mending the flesh tighter, wrong and right at once.

  Amonvae was never gentle, seldom patient, but always precise. Her corrections came in quiet, relentless exchange—adjust the thumb, shift intent from “opening” to “unbinding,” weight each word as if it sealed a tomb. When he fgged, she pressed him harder. “Rest is for after work is done,” she would say, but even in reproof her gaze lingered, weighing. Sometimes, when Eike’s magic spun out of control—roots writhing, or candle smoke winding into fractal patterns she hadn’t specified—Amonvae’s lips would ftten and her eyes dart narrow, as if computing more than danger.

  Inside, her thoughts whorled, swift and sharp.

  The raw gift—no mere bludgeon or knife. Not a child’s chaos. He… builds. Even as he splits, the residue wants pattern, order, growth. Structuring at will—a rumor, a theory in books locked from apprentices. Adenar should see this. Should I send word? No. Not yet. Let him run—see how forking the line yields.

  She wrote, te by shuttered mplight, script tight and quick as a spider’s crawl. He shapes structure where most make ruin—green out of dry wood, flesh mended not broken. No amount of seed, salt, or lichen much alters the outcome. It is as if the Shroud itself listens to him for something I do not name. Dangerous if left unbound. Proceed with care.

  Amonvae sat by the table, hands curled around her knees as Eike dozed, spent. The hunger for discovery—the itch of ambition—throbbed in her chest. This one might name a new principle. Or a new catastrophe. Given the thread, I owe myself the test. Besides, it would be a shame to waste so precise a tool…

  The st lesson of the week fell on the heels of exhaustion. Eike’s hands trembled, his face hollowed by sleeplessness, the sick ache behind his eyes refusing to fade. Snow stuttered at the eaves, the wind a permanent presence outside. Amonvae produced the same spindle he had quickened—now dead again, bark curled, the green turned brown in the course of just one sunrise.

  “Remake it,” she commanded, setting the spindle in his palm. “Without catalyst. Will alone. No words. Show me the shape, if you can.”

  He wanted to protest—not enough left, nothing left—but pride kept his jaw set, and the memory of Lucy’s shallow breath, the reason for all bargains and every compromise, burned behind his sternum.

  Eike pressed fingers to wood, closed his eyes. He did not speak, did not gesture. He allowed the ache in his gut, the stubborn clutch of hope and need, to sink into the grain. For a moment—long enough to feel the world hold still—the power answered. Not a surge, not the hunger to ruin, but a ripple: the spindle shivered, bark unwinding, then—green, a single leaf unfolded, trembling in the firelight.

  Amonvae inhaled, face unreadable. For one moment, Eike could have sworn she looked not hungry, not cautious, but almost afraid.

  “You have turned the lesson inside out,” she murmured. “More dangerous this way. More… necessary.”

  Eike handed her the spindle, breath caught between pride and horror.

  “What am I now?” he asked—not to provoke, but because someone must name the shape of what he’d become.

  She took the wood, thumb grinding its edge. “An apprentice,” she said. “A question. And, if you survive, a doorway none have walked in a generation.”

  He sat back, trembling, watching the firelight flicker across Amonvae’s impassive face. The world around him felt altered—the wood beneath his fingers, the hush of wind at the door, all pliant, waiting, as if he might shape it with a single breath.

  “I only want to save her,” he said, words falling like coins in the hush.

  Amonvae’s answer was quiet—too quiet. “We all shape the world for need, not for comfort. The nguage of atoms heeds the desperate.”

  Eike rose, gathering his coat, weighed down by fatigue and knowledge both new and weightless. The green of the spindle glimmered in Amonvae’s palm, fragile, unearthly, as if defying the bruise of winter at the window.

  As he slipped out, the wind pressed sharp against his face—bracing, unfamiliar. The thread was drawn taut now, the world inside and out both altered. He looked back once—caught Amonvae watching, the fire behind her mirrored in eyes calcuting and cold.

  He forced himself to walk, boots cracking the crust of snow with each step—the cold biting, his breath ragged. The old path felt altered, each footfall spelled out in hunger and hope.

  Outside, beneath the crust of snow, roots shivered—threading through earth hungry for spring or for rot, uncertain which would come first.