November brought storms.

Not every day, and not always the dramatic kind. Tidefall could begin a morning under blue sky and finish dinner with rain striking the western windows hard enough to drown out conversation.

The Academy treated weather like another timetable.

A green flag meant normal coastal access.

Yellow meant supervised access only.

Red closed the external cliff paths and lower harbour routes to students.

Harper checked the flag every breakfast.

"Because weather is interesting," she insisted.

Ava did not believe her.

Jasper watched too, but for a different reason.

Storms changed the Water Titan's presence.

Sometimes the pressure behind his ribs grew stronger. Sometimes it became distant enough that he wondered whether he had imagined it. On other days the physical force of the sea and the strange awareness beneath it became almost impossible to separate.

Professor Elowen refused to let anyone turn that confusion into a neat pattern.

"Wind speed is measured," she told the class. "Wave height is measured. Jasper's experience is reported separately. We do not combine two kinds of evidence simply because we would like them to match."

Ava looked pleased.

Jasper liked the rule for a different reason. It meant he did not have to be correct every time he felt something.

One Tuesday, the weather flag turned yellow before lunch. Cloud thickened offshore and Ocean Studies moved indoors. Jasper felt the Titan for most of the afternoon, broad and restless but not angry.

Nothing happened.

Wednesday was green.

No presence.

Thursday was red.

The presence returned.

Friday was clear, and it stayed.

Ava's first attempt at a pattern died immediately.

She looked at her notebook for a long time.

"Choice," she said finally.

Harper stared. "You said that without getting angry."

"Growth."

The Academy also began its storm drills.

First-years practised moving from exposed wings to internal halls, following whichever route staff marked that day. Older students rehearsed harbour closures. Emergency blankets, water supplies and safe assembly rooms stopped being mysterious cupboards and became ordinary parts of school.

Harper liked the bells.

Ava liked the procedures.

Jasper hated the first drill.

The continuous alarm sounded too much like the one after Harper's fall, and his body reacted before his brain remembered there was no emergency. His heart raced. His hands went cold.

Nobody noticed except Harper.

She stood beside him until the drill ended.

No speech.

No joke.

Just there.

The second drill was easier.

By the third, Jasper could hear the alarm without seeing the broken ledge in his head.

Tidefall prepared seriously because storms were normal on the coast, not because anyone expected ancient magic to attack the harbour.

Then Professor Crowe found damage on the outer breakwater.

It was not dangerous yet. Winter swells had shifted one old stone section by several centimetres, and maintenance crews began work immediately. Temporary beams appeared along the harbour edge. A work barge was moored near the outer gate. New ropes ran through old guide rings built into the stone.

Ocean Studies watched the repairs from the upper gallery.

Jasper felt the Water Titan strongly whenever the crews worked near the gate.

"Could be the noise," Ava suggested.

"Could be the wards," Jasper said.

Harper looked through the glass. "Could hate construction."

Ava wrote all three possibilities.

During a supervised engineering lesson, Crowe showed them how the breakwater worked.

"It does not stop the sea," she said. "It changes where the energy goes. If you try to make water stop existing, you lose."

Harper looked at Jasper.

Jasper looked back.

Crowe noticed.

"Yes," she said. "Engineering becomes philosophical by accident sometimes."

The repairs were expected to take three weeks.

One of the temporary mooring ropes passed through an old stone guide ring near the gate. Jasper saw it and remembered an impression from the Spring Fair: wood against stone, a rope snapping tight, water forcing through a narrow entrance.

He told Crowe.

She checked the rope herself.

New rope.

Sound ring.

Nothing visibly wrong.

"Good," Jasper said.

Crowe nodded. "Good."

Not every strange image needed to predict disaster.

Two nights later, Jasper dreamed about the same rope.

In the dream it was underwater, pulled sideways until the gate jammed half-open. Dark water forced through the gap.

He woke at three in the morning with the Titan's presence heavy behind his ribs.

Harper woke when he sat up.

"What?"

"Dream."

Ava stirred almost immediately.

Jasper told them.

They woke Mae, who woke Professor Ward, who contacted the harbour staff. A check found the gate working normally. The rope was secure. Nothing was jammed.

Jasper felt stupid.

Ward would not let him.

"You reported something unusual. Staff checked. Everything is safe."

"What if it was nothing?"

"Then the system worked."

Jasper frowned.

Ward pulled the blanket back over his knees. "Especially if it was nothing."

A week later, during a routine test in clear weather, the outer gate jammed.

The temporary work rope had shifted sideways under load exactly the way Jasper had seen in the dream.

Staff stopped the test within minutes. Nobody was in danger.

When the old guide ring was removed, a hairline crack appeared along its inner edge. The damage had been too small to see until pressure opened it.

Crowe placed the ring on a workbench.

Jasper stared at it.

"Useful warning," she said.

He thought of Thorne's rule.

Not an alarm system.

"Maybe."

Crowe nodded.

"Good answer."

Outside, the weather flag remained green.