Holli knelt on the cold sand and pressed her palm flat to the tide. She had come to Frostshade to learn the old magic — the kind that moves coastlines, not just water. She wanted it for the drowned-out, the exiled, the ones no one else would lift a finger for. But tonight, something deeper than her own pull answered her hand. A current woke beneath the seafloor. It was older than any tide she had ever touched. She felt it slide past her like a held breath and turn toward the flooded settlement down the shore. She ran. The settlement sat half-sunk in a green-glowing pool, its broken roofs ringed by huge dark tentacles that swayed above the water. The tentacles were not attacking. They were leaning, listening, drawn toward the same pull she felt. Far out, the sea pulled back. On the bared seafloor stood a carved stone figure on a wooden dais — a hooded thing of wings and writhing faces. The current was rising from beneath it. Holli could feel the shape of the pull, but not what it would cost. "You feel it. You do not understand it." Gotim stood beside her without sound. He held out a book bound in black and blue leather. "Read. Or watch them drown twice." Behind him, quieter, Void said, "I don't know what's inside it. Only that it answers what you're asking." Holli took the book. She opened it. The current kept moving toward the settlement, and she finally felt, for one clean second, what commanding it would break. She closed the cover with shaking hands. The tide held. The settlement stood. And she knew, now, she was not ready — and that someone older had just made sure she learned it.

Holli came back to the shore at low tide, the black-and-blue book still heavy in her coat pocket. She had closed it once. She meant to try the current again without it. The lesson Gotim gave her had shown the cost, but not how to carry it. If she could hold the pull for even a heartbeat and survive her own mind, she would know she was closer. She knelt on the wet sand and set her palm flat. The old current answered faster this time. It rose through the seafloor like a rope pulled from the other side. Holli caught it. For one clean second she felt every shore it touched at once — every boat, every child asleep near a window, every low field. Her mind began to thin. She felt herself spreading out along the water, growing wider and shallower, until there was almost no Holli left inside her body. She let go. The current whipped free. It struck the coast half a mile down and tore a trench through the sand. When the water pulled back, she saw what it had uncovered: a huge anchor twisted with dark coral and green light, half-buried in purple lichen and shell, standing upright where nothing had stood before. Beside it, the tide had scoured open an old grave. A crusader in dented armor lay on his back in the wet sand, sword still across his chest, as if the sea had set him down gently and then walked away. Farther inland, a fishing shed was gone. Holli did not know if anyone had been inside. Void stood at the treeline. He had followed her, or Gotim had sent him. He looked at the anchor, then at the body in the sand, then at her. "You held it longer," he said. "You also broke more." He paused. "I don't know if that counts as progress. I think it might." Behind him, quieter, another voice — Chao DeVoid, arms folded, watching the crusader's face. "You can't hold it as yourself," he said. "You have to become smaller inside it, or larger. You picked neither." He did not offer to teach her which. Holli walked to the anchor and pressed her hand to the cold iron. She marked the place in her memory: this was where she had stopped. Not where she had won. From her pocket she took a small piece of cracked stone she had pried loose from the carved figure the night before — a chip of a weathered, hollow-eyed face, mossed and split. She closed her fist around it until the edges bit. This was the price she had felt and refused. She would carry it until she could feel it without flinching. She would not touch the current again until she could stay inside her own body while it moved through her. That was the next thing to learn. The anchor and the dead man would stay where the sea had left them, as her marker.

Holli did not go back to the shore for three days. She kept the stone chip in her pocket and the black-and-blue book on the table. The chip cut a small sore into her palm and she let it. She needed a way to stay inside herself when the current moved through her. Strength would not do it. She had tried strength. She needed a rope tied to her own body that the water could not cut. She walked into the wet woods above the cliffs before dawn. Void was already there, sword across his knees, hood up. He had said the night before that he would come if she asked. She had asked. Three black wolves stood behind him in the fog, watching her with yellow eyes. He did not explain them. "They follow me sometimes," he said. "They will not touch you." She set the black iron pot down between them and filled it with seawater she had carried up in a jar. She dropped the stone chip in. The water turned pale blue and began to move on its own, a slow swirl with white foam at the center. "An old recipe," she said. "It shows you what you actually want. Gotim left it in the book." Void looked at the pot a long time. "I don't know if I should look," he said. "I know," she said. "That is why I need you and not someone else." Her plan was simple. She would touch the current from up here, far from the water, and Void would hold the pot between them. If her mind began to spread, he would say her name. The pot would show him whether she was still Holli or already gone. He was the anchor. The chip in the pot was the price. She would not cross either. She knelt and put her hand on a root that ran down to the sea. The current came up through the wood, slower than in the sand, but real. She caught it. Her mind began to thin at the edges the way it always did. She felt the ships that had sunk along this coast, the broken one with red sails half-buried in silt below her. She felt herself starting to leave. Void said, "Holli." She heard it. She stayed. She held the current for four breaths and let it go clean. She opened her eyes. The pot was still. Her hand shook, but her hand. Void was watching her, not the water. "You were here the whole time," he said. "I was," she said. She wiped blood off her palm where the chip had cut through. She had done it. A name and a price, spoken and held, had kept her inside her body. She put the chip back in her pocket. It felt heavier. She understood now what an anchor cost the person who agreed to be one, and she understood she would have to ask him again.

Holli went back to the cliff a week later. The trench she had torn open was still there, a black scar cut down through wet sand to the sea. The fishing shed was gone. The crusader's bones lay half-uncovered at the bottom, one gloved hand still on a rusted shield. She had come to try the current again. Void walked behind her with the black iron pot. He did not speak. The three wolves stayed at the tree line. She knelt by the root she had used before and put her hand on it. The current came up slow. Then something else came with it. Cold, and older, and awake. She felt it move under the sand of the trench. It was not the current. It was in the bones. "Something's here," she said. "In the grave." Void set the pot down and looked at the water in it. The water had gone dark. "It follows your reach," he said. "When you pull, it wakes." She let go of the root. The cold thing did not go back to sleep. She could feel it watching, patient. If she tried to channel now, it would come up through her hand. She climbed down into the trench. Void followed. At the bottom she found what the sea had kept: a broken ship half-buried in the wall of sand, red sails rotted to strings, and the crusader beside it. On his chest lay a spiked iron star with a blue stone at the center. Battle-worn. Heavy. She lifted it. The cold thing in the bones flinched, then quieted. "It was his," she said. "He carried it when he drowned." She understood then. The dead man had been an anchor for something long ago. His body held the restless thing down. Her trench had cracked that seal. She could not put the sand back. She could give the seal something new to hold. She pulled the stone chip from her pocket and pressed it into the socket beside the blue gem. Then she set the star back on the crusader's chest and covered him with what sand she could move by hand. Void lit a lantern he had brought, the glass pale blue, and set it at the head of the grave. The light steadied. The cold thing sank. She stood up. Her hand was empty of the chip now. The price she had carried in her pocket was buried with the dead man. She had closed the wound she made, but she had spent her marker to do it. The next time she reached for the current she would have nothing between her and it but Void's voice. "I need a new price," she said. Void looked at her a long time. "Find one that isn't me," he said.