By the time Reika’s key slid into the penthouse lock, the city had climbed fully into day. Sunlight rolled off the high-rises like slow water; the hoverlanes sang a thin, constant thread under the glass. The scent of pancakes still lingered in our kitchen—the kind of domestic evidence that makes a house feel more like an argument you’ve already won. The door clicked. Reika stepped in with her usual quiet economy: shoes lined perfectly, coat folded once over her arm, tablet tucked under her elbow. Violet hair pinned back, violet eyes taking the room’s temperature in a second. She looked at the banner slouched on the wall, the blue roses gathering light, the two mugs on the table. She looked at me. "Welcome home," I said. "Master," she replied, and the formality warmed rather than cooled the space between us. Her gaze softened, a small smile tilting. "You look... rested." "I am," I said, and let that be enough explanation for now. She set the tablet on the counter and reached into her satchel, drawing out a book wrapped in cloth dark as night water. My chest tightened a fraction; I knew that shape in my bones. The Martial King’s sword manual. I had given it to her years ago with the honest line that it held everything my master thought I might need later. Back then, I could read the surface and sense the rest, like a song I almost knew. Since the breakthrough, something had changed. Sword Accord had settled under my skin like an old friend finally arriving by the right road. Reika placed the manual gently on the dining table. "I finished the last sequence," she said. "I can feel where it points next, but not how to step there without breaking the chain. You mentioned... new notes." I pulled the chair out for her. She sat, back straight, hands folded on the cloth. I unwrapped the book and felt the memory of my master’s hand in the binding, the way he tied thread and thought together so they couldn’t come apart by accident. When I opened to the center spread, the ink breathed. Not an illusion—more like condensation on cold glass. Stroke by stroke, faint silver lines rose out of the page, too fine to be ordinary ink, too steady to be accident. The margins filled with small arrows, the kind you miss if your eyes are hungry for spectacle. Between major forms, ghosted diagrams bloomed, showing hips and shoulders out of step, a rib cage holding tension like an unpaid bill. Reika leaned in. "I couldn’t see that before," she whispered. "I couldn’t either," I said. "Not until Accord." The silver notes weren’t instructions so much as posture corrections written for a future student. My master had hidden them under what any talented swordsman could use, sealing the real voice behind a door only this level could open. I traced a finger above the page, not touching, letting the lines tell me where Reika’s road bent wrong. "Here," I said, tapping a tiny curve in the margin. "Your left hip rushes the right shoulder by half a count when you transition from quiet guard to advance. It worked at your current ceiling because your power paid the bill. It won’t anymore." She nodded once, eyes on the mark. "I feel that seam. The blade gets there on time, but my center arrives late." "You’re strong enough now that delays show," I said. "This sequence stitches it. It’ll feel slower. It isn’t." I folded the page back and the notes followed like light under water. Another spread, another low breath from the hidden layer. Small text knotted next to a sketch of a knee and an ankle: Wait until the floor finishes speaking. Don’t answer a question you didn’t hear. "I love him," I said, not realizing I’d spoken aloud until Reika’s mouth tilted. "He was your master," she said, and it carried no envy. "Still is a little," I admitted. "He did this for me, and for you. For anyone stubborn enough to climb." The kettle started without me touching it; Luna’s Purelight had a way of remembering what comfort looked like. I poured tea and set a cup near Reika’s right hand. She wrapped her fingers around it, not to drink but to anchor. "Try this," I said, sliding the manual and tapping a three-beat loop written so small I had to lean to read it. "Half-kneel. The foot doesn’t search. The blade doesn’t announce. Breath leads the heel." Reika stood, moved the chair without a scrape, and took her place on the living room mats. She settled and drew an invisible blade first, the way we do when the brain needs to learn before the body swings. Then she lifted the real thing. Her first pass was clean and wrong in exactly the way the margin warned. The second pass corrected for the warning and overcorrected. The third pass found the count. She repeated until the room’s rhythm accepted it. On the tenth pass, the cut lived in her legs instead of her shoulders. The air made a sound that is not sound, the one that says ’that is the seam.’ She lowered the blade. "There it is," she said simply. "Again," I said. We don’t clap for the seam. We fold it in until it’s just how your body talks. She worked while I turned pages. Silver constellations dusted margins. Small arrows pointed left, then not-left, then center. Notes to myself from a man who knew me better than I did when I was nineteen. Notes for Reika from a man who never met her but trusted my taste. I circled three clusters with a soft pencil: one at the shoulder girdle, one at the knee, one near the back of her neck. "These will matter after the Gates," I said. "They’re invisible until you pass them. When you do, these will stop you from paying with joints." She returned, cheeks faintly colored, sweat beading at her temple. She looked at the circles and then at me. "You saw them." ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝗻𝗼𝘷𝗲𝗹•𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮•𝕟𝕖𝕥 "I see them now," I said. "I’ll copy the pattern for you. When you cross, it will open." A small silence folded between us. Reika’s gaze held my face the way she studies a form—no rush, no flinch. She smelled the room: tea, roses, the last echo of last night that even a careful shower can’t erase. "You and Lady Luna," she said gently. I held her eyes. "Yes." A breath. Not a test. Not a flinch. Just a breath that had room for humanity. "I am happy," she said. "I am also... human." She reached across the table and placed her hand over mine. Not claiming. Not comparing. Something simpler: acknowledgment that we are building a life with many rooms, and that her room has a lock only she owns. "You never make me small," she said. "Even when your world is large." "That won’t change," I said. She squeezed once, then let go and sat back, the line of her shoulders easing. "Good. Then I will make dinner later," she said, because Reika’s love is sharp and domestic. "And I will train after. I want to reach the Gates before the year turns." "You will," I said. "You’re close." She smiled without showing teeth, the way she does when praise lands in a place she doesn’t like to leave empty. "Tell me more," she said, and meant the manual. We went back to the pages. I marked three drills with pencil dots, a private shorthand from the old days: do this tired, do this fresh, do this until you want to throw it out the window and then keep going. She copied them onto a pad in her neat block script. I added two small notes of my own in the margin—Grey-thin, barely there—so the book would whisper to her when Accord finally unlocked it. "Your bottleneck isn’t power," I said. "It’s patience. You want to spend what you’ve saved. Save it longer. Let the floor finish its sentence before you answer." She exhaled, smiling because I’d stolen her line. "That is almost rude," she said. "It is," I said. "And it works." We took a break because bodies remember better when you let them. I topped her tea. The city’s hum pressed into the glass and stayed polite. From Stella’s room came the faint scratch of a stylus and then her laugh at something only she could see. Luna’s pendant hummed from the side table—four in, six out—like it approved of how air should be used. Reika looked toward the sound and softened. "She is happy," she said. "She is," I said. "Because of you, most days." "Because of us," Reika corrected, then added, "and a very stubborn father." She smiled again, then returned to the book, turning a page with the kind of care you give to holy things. "Your master left you this knowing you would share it." "He taught me with that assumption," I said. "That I would not hoard." "You don’t," she said simply. Then: "Thank you." "You’re mine," I said, as if that explained anything and everything. We worked another hour—short sequences joined to shorter ones until they felt like single breath. I watched her chain improve in increments only a boring person could love, and loved them. When she finally stepped back and bowed to the blade, the room felt cleaner, like we had swept it without brooms. I closed the manual and rewrapped it in its dark cloth. When I tied the knot, a thin ripple of silver ink pulsed once through the cover and vanished. Accord acknowledging Accord. A door locking after being cataloged. I slid the bundle toward her. "Three drills," I said. "Two weeks. No new forms. Make these live in your legs first." "Yes, Master," she said, and the word didn’t put me above her. It reminded both of us I stand beside her job. She stood, and on a gentle impulse I reached for her. She came into my arms like the decision had been there already, press of violet hair under my chin, steady heartbeat against mine. No heat, no rush. Just the warmth of a person you trust to carry their own weight and still let you help with the corners. When we stepped apart, her eyes were bright and steady. "I will put on rice," she said, tone back to business. "You will shower." "Is that a hint?" I asked. "It is a fact," she said, which is Reika for ’yes.’ She took the manual and moved toward the kitchen. I watched her go and felt grateful in the old, heavy way—not fireworks, not trumpets. The feeling you get when a bridge holds underfoot and you can keep walking without looking down. I headed for the hall and paused at Stella’s door. She looked up from her tablet, grin immediate. "Daddy, the math cats learned integrals." "Terrifying," I said. "Save them one pancake." "I will if they pass the test," she said, deadly serious. "Fair," I said, and ruffled her hair. In the mirror by the bathroom I caught my own reflection: the calmer weight in my shoulders, the thinner, quieter line in my gaze since Accord settled. I thought of my master, of the silver notes we woke together, of Reika’s patient climb, of Luna’s blush and new habit of stealing my side of the bed, of Stella’s pendant breathing with the room. The house felt like a page with good margins. I turned on the water and let the noise of it fill the spaces that thinking doesn’t need. When I stepped back into the hall, Reika was already at the stove, rice soaking in a clay pot, vegetables lined military neat on a board, knife flashing with the kind of economy that wins small wars. She glanced over her shoulder once, read something in my face, and nodded like we had agreed on a plan no one else needed to see. "Welcome home," I said again, quieter. "I am," she answered, and the word fit.