The morning after the 3rd form unlocks, Melissa came down to breakfast in her operational gear.
Not the training kit she wore for field sessions. The other kind — reinforced joints, weapon sheaths built in, the cut of clothing designed for someone who might need to move very fast at any moment. Levi recognised the difference the same way he'd always recognised it on his mother. It meant something real was happening.
"Olympicõ was attacked this morning," she said, before anyone could ask. She was eating standing up. "The defences held but took serious damage. A quarter of the city destroyed. The MKs there contained it — they need reinforcement while they rebuild."
The kitchen went quiet.
A quarter of a city. Levi thought about Velvetia and set the thought aside.
"How long will you be gone?" Sylvia asked.
"Two to three weeks. I'll be back before the trial." Melissa set down her cup. "Which means you three are training without me."
She looked at them the way she looked at things she expected to hold. "Duration. That's the goal. Train in your 3rd forms until they give out, recover, repeat. Your bodies need to treat the energy consumption as natural, not exceptional."
"How do we measure progress?" Priscilla asked.
"You last longer. That's it." Melissa looked at her. "Your training runs differently — mental, not physical. Spatial awareness, levitation, extended object control in the 3rd form. Find your mind's edge and push it." A pause. "Not in the lounge."
Priscilla opened her mouth.
"I know my house," Melissa said. "Training area. Yes?"
"Yes," said Priscilla.
Melissa picked up her pack. Hugged Sylvia — briefly, firmly. Then she crossed to Levi, which caught him off guard, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Three weeks is enough to double your duration if you work properly." She said it the way his mother used to set expectations: not pressure. Information. "Don't waste it."
She was out the door before he'd finished processing the hug.
The kitchen was quieter than it had been.
✦ ✦ ✦
King Gabriel's study looked like the office of someone who actually ran a kingdom. Three walls of bookshelves. A desk buried under maps and reports. He was standing at the window when Melissa entered, looking out over Olympus with the expression of a man running calculations.
He was younger than people expected — mid-forties, with a contained energy that made him seem perpetually more alert than necessary. He had Sylvia's eyes. Or rather Sylvia had his.
He turned. "Melissa. Thank you for coming quickly."
"It's Olympicõ," she said. "Of course."
He sat down at his own desk rather than standing over it, which was how Gabriel ran meetings — same level, always — and pulled a report across. "You've seen the analysis. SSS class, coordinated, hit the eastern and northern walls simultaneously." He looked up. "Someone planned it."
"I noticed," said Melissa.
"This is the third coordinated incursion in two months." He set the report down. "Velvetia was the first."
"Velvetia was legendary class."
"Velvetia was the demonstration." He said it quietly, with the weight of someone who had been sitting with this conclusion for a while. "Whatever is running these attacks has been probing since — testing defences, mapping weaknesses. Olympicõ wasn't a target. It was a calibration." He looked at her directly. "I don't think they're done."
Melissa thought about the portal network. The mystery man. The precision of everything at Velvetia — the timing, the wall breach, the legendary class deployment. Someone patient. Someone with a plan that stretched further than any single attack.
"I'll hold Olympicõ," she said.
"I know you will." He stood — end of meeting. "Stay safe. The kingdom can't afford to lose you."
"The kingdom couldn't afford to lose me at any time. That's always been true."
The almost-smile. "Also always true." He moved toward the door, then stopped. "One more thing."
"Charlotte," Melissa said.
He gave her the look of a man who had given up being surprised. "Send her next week. Sylvia needs to see more of her — and the boy from Velvetia will be good for Charlotte. He doesn't manage her."
"Most people manage her," Gabriel said.
"Most people are afraid of her. Levi's been through things that recalibrate what's frightening."
Gabriel was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully: "The three students you're training. The reports from the entrance exam—" He was looking at his desk map, not at her. "Are they as good as I think they are?"
Melissa thought about an ocean with an oak tree growing from its surface. A burning forest where everything was hers. A floating city held in perfect, patient suspension.
"Not yet," she said. "But they will be."
✦ ✦ ✦
The training field at nine in the morning was cooler than the afternoon sessions — the garden still carrying overnight dew, the city at a lower register. The three of them stood in their triangle and looked at each other.
"Duration," said Sylvia.
"Duration," said Levi.
"Mental training," said Priscilla. "Not in the mansion."
"Obviously not in the mansion."
They transformed.
The field did its thing — heat and electricity and silver light converging, the air above the grass briefly interesting. And then the work began. No elegance to stamina training. Movement until the form failed, recovery, movement again. Levi and Sylvia ran circuits, worked combat forms, pushed through resistance drills — all of it in the 3rd form, the Flux burning above its sustainable ceiling. Not tired muscles. Something deeper.
Priscilla sat cross-legged two feet off the ground and extended her awareness outward in rings. The training area first. Then the garden. Then the pool. Then the east wing of the mansion — every object in it present in her mind with its weight and position, held with the particular knowledge that Allicirp had named correctly: not force. Understanding.
Levi's form gave out just under four minutes. He sat down before his legs could make the decision for him. Sylvia lasted four and a half, which neither of them mentioned.
Priscilla was still going at the ten-minute mark.
She opened her eyes at twelve minutes, descended the final foot to the grass, and sat beside them. "The training is working," she said.
"You were hovering for twelve minutes," said Sylvia.
"Hovering and mapping the entire east wing simultaneously." A beat. "There are forty-seven objects in your mother's study worth more than my annual allowance."
Sylvia stared at her.
"I was aware of them," Priscilla said. "Not doing anything about them."
"Please keep it that way."
Levi looked at Priscilla. Twelve minutes on day one. He thought about Melissa's voice: double your duration if you train properly. He thought about the gap between twelve minutes and four.
He'd close it. Three weeks was enough.
After lunch, they went back out for the second session.
Twenty minutes in, Levi noticed Priscilla was gone.
"Where did she go?" he asked, not breaking stride.
Sylvia's expression shifted into something he'd learned to recognise.
"She's in the mansion," Sylvia said. "Isn't she."
It wasn't really a question.
They looked at each other. Then they went inside.
The lounge door was closed.
From behind it came a very faint sound — the particular quality of ambient noise produced by a room where everything in it was moving at once.
Sylvia's hand stopped on the door handle.
"Melissa said not to do it in the mansion," Levi said.
"She did say that."
"Specifically the lounge."
"She didn't say the lounge specifically."
"She said 'I know my house.'"
Sylvia opened the door.