Now we see if it holds, Elio said, studying the map.
None of us slept well.
THE NETWORK’S FIRST REAL TEST came in our second week, at 3:04 a.m. Tokyo’s team detected corruption forty minutes after it started. We were there in under two minutes and had it cleansed in fifteen.
I already knew the Wickem wellspring was conscious with all the ways it had communicated with me. What I hadn’t expected was how different they would all be from each other.
Tokyo handed me tactical intelligence. It showed me exactly where the corruption had embedded, how deep it went, which channels to prioritize first—with the precision of something that had been under siege before and knew exactly how to respond. Patient in a way that had nothing to do with gentleness. When we finished, what I felt from it wasn’t gratitude so much as a held breath finally released—exhaustion that predated this single corruption event by centuries.
It had been waiting for help for a very long time.
Behind every red marker on our map, something distinct. Something that had been waiting in its own particular way. I hadn’t let myself think about that until now.
By breakfast the same day, Berlin’s team flagged their wellspring. Mexico City’s followed an hour after that. We handled both within the hour.
He’s testing our speed, Elio said over coffee, studying the response times. Seeing what we can handle.
Then we move faster, Cyrus replied.
Something in the way he said it was different—quieter than the commands he’d issued at the start of the year. Certain in a way that included the rest of us rather than preceding us.
We moved faster.
FOUR DAYS INTO OUR THIRD week, seven wellsprings corrupted at once, coordinated across three continents. Not staggered—simultaneous.
The master’s daring us to pick, Elio said.
We don’t pick. I was already on my feet.
Keane’s portals split across the world—seven sites, perfectly coordinated. He stood in the center of the room with his eyes half-closed, and what he was doing changed in some way I felt more than saw. The portals stopped being separate and became connected, each one holding up the others, sharing the load like a web instead of seven individual threads. Wisp pressed against his leg, grounding him in a way she hadn’t needed to before.
I guided remote teams through two cleanses, my voice through Keane’s portal the only thing tethering my necromancy to their location. Cyrus and I handled the critical sites directly.
The remote ones felt different. Speaking to a wellspring through Keane’s portal was like communicating through a wall—I got the information I needed, the location of the corruption, the depth—but the texture was gone. What made Tokyo distinct, what made each one a presence rather than a system, was lost at that distance. I could cleanse them. I just couldn’t know them.
I didn’t have time to decide how much that mattered. Forty-three minutes later, all seven were clean.
I collapsed into the nearest chair, my necromancy still buzzing under my skin. Scout climbed into my lap and chattered softly.
Cyrus appeared with water. He didn’t say anything—just pressed the glass into my hand and waited until I drank.
Keane’s portals closed with a soft shimmer. He looked exhausted. Wisp was still pressed against his leg.
We saved everything, Elio said quietly, looking at our updated map. His voice carried something I rarely heard from him—genuine surprise.
The master had tried to drown us in numbers.
We saved everything.
WE’D PROVEN IN WEEK THREE that we could match his scale. In week four, he stopped testing scale and started testing something else.
He kept pushing on volume—more sites, more simultaneous strikes. We kept building to meet it. More teams stationed at predicted nodes, better protocols, faster handoffs. The next time he hit fifteen wellsprings, we had teams already at eight. We only had to step in for seven. And we saved those too.
But midway through that fourth week, Keane’s network picked up something new. Not corruption—something quieter.
It’s like someone knocking to see what’s locked and what’s not, he said.
Elio’s illusions made it visible, thin threads of magic brushing against the system with probes and tests.
