Torin was already in the hall when I arrived, standing in the center with his hands clasped behind his back the way he always did when he was waiting and didn't want to look like it.

  "Arms," he said by way of greeting.

  I moved to the floor and started without preamble. Drawing aether inward, directing it outward between flesh and bone—the familiar pressure, the swelling sensation that had stopped feeling unnatural weeks ago. Both arms together, held steady. Four minutes before I released.

  "Legs."

  I moved through the sequence. Right, left, both together. My hold time on the legs had grown since the early sessions—I could manage close to three minutes on a combined hold without the muscles shaking themselves apart. Torin watched without comment until I let go, and even then only made a small sound that meant he'd noted it.

  "Core."

  The core was always the hardest. The network of muscles across the abdomen and back responded differently to the technique than the limbs did—more resistance, the aether wanting to stay close to the pool rather than pushing outward into the surrounding tissue.

  I'd learned to use that tendency against itself, letting the aether settle just enough to feel the pull before redirecting it outward in a slow, even push. I held it for two and a half minutes before I had to release. Torin let the silence sit for a moment.

  "Today we start the face."

  I'd known it was coming. He'd told me at the beginning—arms, legs, core, then the face last. The face was where the work either paid off or fell apart, because unlike the limbs there was no margin for careless pressure.

  The eyes, the ears, the sinus cavity behind the nose, the brain behind all of it—none of those responded to mistakes the way a strained arm tendon did.

  "Sit," he said. "Cross-legged. You want to be still for this."

  I sat. He pulled a low stool over and settled in front of me, close enough to watch my face carefully.

  "The principle is the same," he said. "Aether between tissue and the structure beneath. But the face has more variables than any other part. There are cavities—the sinuses, the orbits around the eyes, the inner ear. If you let the aether settle into those spaces rather than around them, the pressure will be wrong and you'll know it immediately. That's not damage. That's just your body telling you to stop and reposition."

  "How do I know the difference between wrong pressure and damage?"

  "Wrong pressure is sharp and localized. It resolves the moment you release. Damage lingers." He folded his hands in his lap. "Start with the jaw. The muscles there are straightforward. Work outward and upward from there. Don't touch the eyes until I tell you."

  I closed my eyes and turned inward.

  The jaw was as he said. The masseter and the smaller muscles beneath had the same quality as the forearm muscles in the early sessions—they resisted briefly, then accepted the outward pressure as I settled the aether into position. I held it, testing the feel. No sharp sensation, no wrongness. Just the stretched, slightly taut feeling that meant the technique was working.

  "Cheeks," Torin said quietly.

  I extended the hold upward. Slower here, more careful. The cheekbones sat close to the surface and the tissue above them was thin. The aether wanted to distribute unevenly across the flat of the cheekbone, pooling where the density was lower. I kept adjusting, small corrections, until the pressure felt even.

  "The forehead next. Leave the temples for last."

  The forehead was easier than I expected—the broad, flat expanse of it gave the aether room to spread without fighting the anatomy. I let it fill outward from brow to hairline and held it there alongside the jaw and cheeks.

  My face felt strange. Slightly numb, slightly too present at the same time, like a mild pressure change in a descending aircraft.

  "Temples now. Gently. There are blood vessels there that don't forgive pressure."

  This was where I slowed down considerably. The technique at the temples was less of a push and more of a coaxing—aether brought to the area and held loosely, just enough presence to do the work without compressing anything it shouldn't. I could feel the pulse in both temples as I worked. I kept the pressure well below it.

  After a minute Torin made the small sound again. "Good. Now eyes. Open them first."

  I opened my eyes. The room looked ordinary.

  "Keep them open and bring the aether to the tissue around the eye socket. Not into the socket. Around it."

  The orbital ring—the bone and muscle framing each eye. I worked one side at a time as Torin watched my face closely, his own expression attentive without being tense. The right side first, bringing the aether to sit against the supraorbital ridge and the muscle beneath it.

  The sensation was unlike anything the limb work had produced. Not painful, but very specific, very present, the kind of feeling that demanded attention. I held it for thirty seconds before releasing, then moved to the left.

  "Release everything," Torin said.

  I let the whole technique go at once. The aether fell back into its natural distribution and my face returned to normal feeling—or rather, to the feeling of not feeling it specifically, which was what normal meant.

  Torin was quiet for a moment.

  "Thirty seconds on each side. That's where you start." He stood and moved the stool aside. "The face will take longer to develop than the other areas. The control required is finer. But the benefit compounds—a practitioner whose face is properly tempered takes a strike there differently than one whose isn't. You've felt what a hit to the temple does."

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  He didn't need to elaborate. I'd taken enough of those from Garrick to understand precisely what he meant.

  "Same time tomorrow," he said, and that was the session done.

  I walked back to the tower with the usual post-session feeling of having been carefully taken apart and put back together slightly wrong. My face didn't hurt. It just felt like it had recently been very thoroughly examined.

  Back inside, I lit the candles and stood in the middle of the room for a moment.

  The face session had given me something I hadn't had before: the last piece. Every segment of the body had now been introduced to the technique individually—arms, legs, core, face. I knew how each part responded, where it resisted, where it gave.

  I wanted to try it all at once.

  I sat on the floor, cross-legged, closed my eyes, and started from the bottom up. Feet first, the aether spreading outward through the soles and insteps. Calves, the muscle tissue pressing outward against the skin. Thighs.

  The core, that familiar resistance requiring patience before it yielded. Chest, the ribcage area responding more readily now than it had in the first weeks. Shoulders, arms, down to the fingertips. Then upward—neck, jaw, the careful spread across the cheekbones and brow, the temples last and with the most attention.

  When everything was held simultaneously, I opened my eyes.

  My hair was standing. All of it. The short hairs on my arms were lifted straight up, and the longer hair on my head had fanned outward in every direction, reacting to the aetheric pressure radiating from the scalp.

  I could feel the aether seeping out of the skin at the head and shoulders in particular—the extremity of the push, where the pressure was highest and the tissue thinnest, the excess bleeding outward into the air.

  It looked, I imagined, fairly ridiculous. A small boy sitting cross-legged on a tower floor like an inflated version of himself, hair splayed in all directions, with a faint shimmer rising from the top of his head and shoulders like steam off hot stone on a winter morning—except the shimmer had a faint glitter to it, a scatter of light that moved without wind.

  It was different from the stardust quality of fourth-stage aether. That had its own texture, its own warmth, something that felt like a property of the aether itself rather than a product of what was being done with it.

  This shimmer was mechanical—a side effect of pressure and volume, the aether being pushed beyond the skin's ability to contain it cleanly and dispersing into the surrounding air in fine, lit particles. The principle was different. The look was superficially similar, but only if you weren't paying attention to the quality underneath.

  I held it for forty seconds before the concentration demanded by the face work frayed first. The eyes, then the temples, then the rest unraveled in sequence from top down, and I sat breathing evenly while the hair settled back to normal and the shimmer faded.

  I stood at the workbench for a moment, looking at the two finished cases side by side. The base halves fitted together cleanly, the channels carved smooth, the ironwood lids seated on top of each with the river serpent hide trimmed and laid over them. The hide straps for the forearm were coiled beside each one.

  The cases weren't complete weapons. The coil assembly, the motor, the launching mechanism—all of that was still waiting on the forge. But the shells were done, and I wanted to know what done felt like on my arms.

  I strapped the first one on. Left forearm, base against the skin, three hide belts pulled snug—one at the wrist end, one at the elbow end, one across the middle. I flexed my hand, then my wrist, then bent the elbow. The case moved with the arm. The belts held it in place without restricting the joint.

  I strapped on the second one.

  Standing with both arms out, the cases sat flush from just behind the wrist to just before the crook of the elbow. Not long. They were as long as my forearm because the femur halves had been as long as my forearm, which for a nine-year-old wasn't much of a reach.

  The added weight was noticeable—not heavy, but present, the kind of weight that would make itself known after an hour of movement. I went outside to the dummy.

  The cold hit my skin immediately, sharp and biting on the exposed parts of my face and hands. Inside though, the aether kept things warm. The contradiction of it never quite stopped being strange—cold registering on the surface, warmth held underneath it, both sensations present at the same time with a clear line between them where the skin ended and the body began.

  I pushed that aside and got the dummy moving.

  The dummy's arms were still. I started with a slow rotation—the baseline, stepping into the rhythm and getting the three tiers spinning before committing to anything else. The familiar clatter and creak of the wooden bearings settling in, the resistance in the first few turns giving way to a smoother glide as it picked up speed.

  Then I stepped in.

  The first difference was the reach. I was used to blocking incoming arms with my forearms already—that was half of what training with the dummy was for—but the cases added a small amount of length to each forearm and a more significant amount of width.

  An incoming arm that I would normally deflect with the inner forearm now hit the case's side instead. The impact distributed differently, transferred through the hide cover and the ironwood beneath it rather than directly into the muscle.

  It absorbed better than I expected. Not dramatically, but measurably. A hit that would have left the forearm buzzing traveled into the case instead and spread sideways.

  The weight took more adjustment than the reach. The cases changed the moment of my forearm when I extended and retracted—not by much, but enough that timing a block or a strike required a small recalibration. I overextended twice in the first few minutes, the cases arriving slightly late because my arm was used to the unloaded speed. I kept moving, kept adjusting.

  After twenty minutes the correction was becoming more automatic. The dummy arms kept spinning, and I kept working the new geometry of the blocks—the wider profile, the different contact point, the way the case's edge could redirect a strike instead of just absorbing it.

  I tried one thing I hadn't planned to. I let an arm hit the ironwood lid directly, full contact, without softening the impact.

  The lid took it. The flex I'd designed for was there, barely perceptible but present—the wood gave fractionally under the strike and came back. No crack, no splinter. The hide over it showed a faint compression mark that faded within seconds.

  I stepped back and let the dummy slow.

  My forearms were warm inside the cases, the hide backing holding body heat. The whole assembly felt more settled than it had when I first put it on, either it had adjusted to my arm or my arm had adjusted to it.

  I went inside, unstrapped the cases and set them on the bench. I pressed my hands against the stacked tile stoves to drive the surface cold out of my fingers—the aether kept the body warm well enough but the hands had taken a beating from the air and needed the direct heat.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and stretched my neck slowly—left, right, the usual soreness from the day's work settling into the muscles along the base of the skull. The face tempering had left a faint residual sensitivity across the cheekbones and brow, less than the soreness in my arms and legs but more specific. More aware of itself.

  I lay down and pulled the blanket up.

  The tournament was three months out. The cases were done. The training was progressing. There were components still to forge, techniques still to develop, and gaps in my fighting that Garrick was working through with systematic thoroughness. All of it was moving.

  But as I closed my eyes, it was the tournament itself that settled at the front of my mind rather than the remaining work. Not the planning side of it—the brackets, the likely opponents, the tactical considerations I'd been turning over for weeks.

  Something less structured than that. A shape without a name. The feeling of standing somewhere I hadn't been yet, in front of something I hadn't faced yet, and not knowing what came next. I pushed it aside and let sleep come.

  It didn't stay pushed aside for long.

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