Thaddeus’s voice dropped into that particular sound he used for stories—not dramatic, just present. The voice of someone describing something witnessed rather than invented.
“Robin stood on the Sky Bridge with wind clawing at his cloak and the abyss dropping endlessly below. The bridge was one of the ancient spans—brick and stone and light, laid in the first years, when the builders knew secrets we’ve forgotten. It crossed the gap between the Tower of Eagles and the Land of Time Freedom. A distance no rope bridge could manage. No ship could fly without exactly the right winds.”
Tracy’s eyes drifted to the window. Outside, a sky ship passed in the distance—three masts, sails shaking as it caught a thermal she couldn’t see from here. The ship was small from this height, heading west toward the deep islands where the Tower of Eagles was rumored to stand.
Where are they going? she wondered. What are they running from—or toward?
“Tracy,” Thaddeus said gently.
She pulled her attention back. “Sorry. I was just—”
“Wondering where they’re sailing.” He didn’t sound annoyed. Just understanding. “Everyone does. That’s the thing about these islands. Forty-four of them spread across emptiness, and you can spend a lifetime exploring and still find mysteries you never expected.”
He sipped his tea.
“But you won’t discover any of it from this tower. That’s why tomorrow matters.”
He set down his cup and continued.
“Far off above Robin, the dragon Black Ember drew slow cinder-circles in the clouds—patient as winter, wings that swallowed light and threw back only darkness. Every island in the archipelago glittered in the distance. Spires catching sunlight. Forests rolling green. White cities perched on cliffsides. And for one bright heartbeat Robin could see them all at once, like a map of destinies spread before him.”
Tracy found herself holding her breath.
“He had crossed storms to get there,” Thaddeus said. “Real storms—thirty-foot seas that turned ships into toys, masts bending like they’d snap, water coming over the bow in walls that could crush a man.
He had breathed the sour air of prison. Twice. Stone cells where the only sound was your own breathing and the Dark Lord’s voice whispering through the silence.”
“The Dark Lord,” Tracy whispered. “Does he ever... appear?”
Thaddeus’s expression darkened. “Sometimes. Not often. He’s almost as ancient as Sophia—some say older. A hooded figure. Some think he’s a lich, undead, feeding on souls. Others think he’s something worse.”
He paused, his hand moving unconsciously to his left shoulder. That scar. Thirty years old.
“What matters is he doesn’t NEED to appear. His forces patrol sixty percent of the bridges in these islands. With soldiers, with fear—and dragons. The Dark Lord’s three greatest—Black Ember, Crimson Fang, and the Ashen Queen—they work in what the Watchers call the Triangle of Death. Each dragon takes a position. They don’t all attack at once. They don’t need to. One circles. One waits. One strikes. And if you survive the first, the second is already moving.”
Tracy’s hands had gone white-knuckled around her tea cup.
“Robin faced one dragon alone on that bridge,” Thaddeus continued. “Just one. Black Ember. The other two were busy elsewhere that day, or he wouldn’t have made it.”
The morning sun climbed higher outside the window, its orange glare making it harder to see the distant ship now. Tracy squinted against the light and thought about tomorrow. About the forest path that led to the first bridge. About what circled above those bridges, waiting for people like her who thought they were ready.
The thought made her stomach drop—that feeling she got when she stood too close to the island’s edge and remembered there was nothing below but thousands of miles of empty air.
“Robin had failed forty-one times before he found the right path,” Thaddeus said. “Forty-one programs, systems, proven methods that proved nothing except that effort without the right foundation just means you fail harder.”
Tracy nodded slowly. She knew something about that.
“And yet somehow—through all of that—a fire had kindled in him. Not despite the failures. Because of them. Because he’d learned that enthusiasm—real, bone-deep enthusiasm for a vision burning in your chest—is more powerful than dragon-fire.”
“That sounds like something you’d put on a wall,” Tracy said quietly. “Not something you’d bet your life on.”
Thaddeus’s mouth curved slightly. “Yes. That’s exactly what everyone thinks. Right up until the moment the fire comes and they discover whether they believed it or just said it.”
He settled back in his chair.
“Robin discovered the difference on that Bridge. Standing there with Black Ember circling and the gap below and the Dark Lord’s voice whispering—not from outside but from that place in Robin’s chest where doubt lived, where it had always lived. You cannot cross. You were never supposed to make it this far. Turn back now while you still can.
But Robin had learned something in the darkness that fear couldn’t touch anymore.
He took the first step anyway.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Tracy hadn’t noticed the clouds gathering on the western horizon, but they were there now—dark ones, moving in with the particular weight that said weather was coming.
“And?” she whispered.
“Black Ember dropped from the clouds.”
Thaddeus’s voice went quiet.
“Opened his throat. Fire poured out—a wall of it, circling Robin in a complete ring. The flames should have consumed him instantly, like fire turns stone to glass. Anyone else would have burned where they stood.”
He leaned forward.
“He didn’t.”
The room was very still except for the fire crackling in the hearth and the first whisper of wind in the rafters above.
“He kept walking. One step. Then another. Then another. And Black Ember, for all his age and power and fury, could do nothing but watch as a man who should have died just... didn’t.”
Tracy’s breath caught audibly in the cold tower room. Her hands had gone white-knuckled around her tea cup. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Thaddeus’s face but seeing something else entirely—seeing Robin on that bridge, seeing Black Ember’s circle of fire, seeing that impossible moment when belief became stronger than physics.
She could FEEL it. The heat. The terror. The choice.
“How?” she whispered. “How did he just walk through dragon-fire?”
“Because he’d learned something about money that most people never learn,” Thaddeus said, and the shift in his answer caught her off-guard.
“What?”
“That money is a BY-PRODUCT. Not a goal. You don’t chase money. You chase MASTERY of skills that create value. And when you master those skills—when you can serve people so well they’d be fools not to pay you—money follows like harvest follows sowing of seeds.”
He sipped his tea.
“But you can’t learn those skills without being tested. Without facing your own dragons. Without the fire proving whether you’re solid or hollow inside.”
Now he had her full attention.
“So you’re saying... to make real money, I have to face dragons?”
“I’m saying to make REAL money—the kind that lasts, that’s consistent, that sets you free—you have to become someone the dragons can’t burn. Someone who’s been tested and came through—”
“Stop.”
Tracy’s voice cut through the moment like a blade.
Thaddeus blinked. “What?”
“Tomorrow I leave. For real. I don’t have time left for poetry.” Her eyes were fierce now, not desperate. Demanding. “Tell me what you actually MEAN. In plain words. What are the dragons? What is the fire? What does ‘can’t burn’ mean when I’m standing on a real bridge, wondering if I’m about to die?”
Thaddeus looked at her for a long moment.
Then he smiled—genuinely, warmly, like she’d just passed a test she didn’t know she was taking.
“Good,” he said quietly. “That’s the question you should have asked two years ago.”
He leaned forward.
“The dragons’ fire is ADVERSITY. The worst life can throw at you—apart from death itself. Failure. Rejection. Loss. The voice that says you’re not enough. The circumstances that seem impossible. The moment when everything you built collapses and you’re standing in the ruins, wondering if you should even try again.”
Tracy’s hands tightened on her cup.
“And ‘can’t burn’ means this,” Thaddeus continued. “Gold can be thrust into fire for thirty days without losing its essence. It comes out with greater luster, not less. And you—” he met her eyes “—are of greater value than gold.”
He paused.
“When adversity comes—and it WILL come—you have to find the seed of triumph hidden in it. Not pretend it doesn’t hurt. Not pretend the fire isn’t real. But refuse to let it destroy what’s essential in you. Let it test you. Let it refine you. Come out the other side with greater luster, not less.”
The room was very quiet.
“That’s what Robin learned,” Thaddeus said. “Not that the dragons weren’t real. Not that the fire didn’t burn. But that he could walk through it and come out SOLID. Refined. Proven. Someone the next fire couldn’t destroy because the first one had already shown him what he was made of.”
He settled back.
“So yes. To make real money—the kind that lasts, that’s consistent, that sets you free—you have to become someone adversity can’t destroy. Someone who’s been tested and came through solid.”
Tracy was very still.
“Now,” Thaddeus said gently, “let me tell you how Robin got to that bridge. How a broke schoolteacher from the lowlands with forty-one failures behind
“Robin came to Sanctuary bleeding.”
Tracy’s eyes widened slightly.
“Not dramatically,” Thaddeus continued. “He was running through the forest, hunted by one of the Dark Lord’s trackers, and an arrow caught him in the shoulder. Missed his heart by two inches. Maybe three.”
He paused.
“Two inches between making it to Sophia’s steps and dying alone in the pine needles with no one knowing he’d tried.”
“But he made it,” Tracy said quietly.
“He made it. Collapsed in Sanctuary’s secret garden. Left a blood trail Margaret said took three days to scrub clean.” Thaddeus’s mouth quirked. “She wasn’t complaining. Just... observing. The way she observes everything.”
Tracy nodded. She knew Margaret. Everyone at Sanctuary knew Margaret—practical, competent, the one who actually kept this place running while making it look effortless.
“While his body healed,” Thaddeus said, “something else happened. He found the Library Between Worlds.”
“I work there,” Tracy breathed. “Every afternoon. Copying manuscripts, cataloging—”
“Then you know it’s not just a library.”
She nodded slowly. “The books... they’re alive somehow. When you read them, really read them, you don’t just learn ABOUT the places they describe. You... go there. Sort of.”
“Exactly. And Robin went somewhere he didn’t expect.” Thaddeus leaned forward slightly. “He walked into a garden.”
Tracy’s hand moved unconsciously to her chest. She KNEW. Sophia had shown her.
“His mind became a garden he could actually see,” Thaddeus said. “Every thought he’d ever planted was growing there. Some were strong. Some weren’t. Patience looked solid until wind hit it and bent it straight to the ground—showed him how shallow his roots really were. Joy grew low and stubborn like wild thyme, impossible to kill, no matter how many times it got stepped on. And Anger...”
His voice went quiet.
“Anger was a vine that looked like it was supporting everything, giving the other plants something to climb. But when you looked close, it was strangling the roots.”
Tracy’s tea had gone cold in her hands. She didn’t notice.
“What did he do?”
“What the Scrolls told him to do. The Ten Scrolls—written by a man named Og Mandino in the world beyond these islands. Real words. True words. Words that work if you’re willing to do what they say.”
“Which is?”
“Read them three times a day—morning, noon, and night—for thirty days each. One Scroll at a time. Ten Scrolls total. The first time you read them, you’ll understand the surface. The tenth time, you’ll start seeing what you missed. The thirtieth time, the words will be so deep in you that you’ll discover meanings you couldn’t have seen before. That’s when they stop being something you READ and become something you KNOW. That’s when they sink past your conscious mind into the soil where the garden grows.”
He stood, moved to a shelf, and brought back something wrapped in oilcloth. Set it on the table between them and unwrapped it carefully.
A booklet. Worn. Yellowed at the edges. Water-stained. The smudges of many hands visible on the cover.
Secret Routes Through the Western Isles in faded ink across the front.
Tracy reached out. Touched the cover with one ink-stained finger.
“This is where Robin actually learned to make money,” Thaddeus said quietly. “Not in a classroom. Not from theory. From DOING. From failing. From trying again with slightly more knowledge than the time before.”
“What is it?”
“After Robin and his companions escaped their burning ship—Black Ember turned it into a floating pyre, remember—they made it to shore barely alive. Found three bodies in the forest. Travelers who’d been less lucky when the dragon came through.”
Tracy leaned forward.
“On one of them was a manuscript. Maps. Secret routes between the islands that nobody else knew.”
“Valuable,” Tracy murmured.
“Incredibly. Most people would have kept it. Guarded it like gold. But Robin and his companions—Henry and Marcus, back when Marcus still had vision—they did something different.”
He opened the worn booklet.
“They copied it. Made these thin hand-stitched booklets with the routes drawn careful and clear. Sold them to travelers for a few silver pieces each. Face-to-face. Simple. Real value for real need.”
Thaddeus held up one finger.
“First, Robin learned advertising. Not shouting at everyone who passed by. Finding the RIGHT people—the travelers who actually NEEDED safe routes—and reaching them where they gathered. Knowing who they were and where to find them.”
Second finger.
“Then he learned to catch their attention. A signal fire on a distant peak that the right eyes recognize and respond to. Something that made them STOP. Made them look. Made them want to know more.”
Third.
“When he had their attention, he captured it. Built a list. Names. Faces. People who trusted him enough to come back. An audience that belonged to HIM, not to a platform that could change its rules tomorrow.”
Fourth.
“But here’s what most people miss,” Thaddeus said, leaning forward. “You can have the biggest list in the world, and if you don’t know how to COMMUNICATE with those people—if you don’t create a real spark between you and them, genuine usefulness, the kind of trust that makes them WANT to hear from you—you might as well throw the list away. That’s the fourth skill. Real communication. Being so helpful that trust becomes the natural result.”
Fifth.
“Then he learned funnels. Walk into a shop for milk, walk out with a cart full of things you didn’t plan to buy—that’s a funnel. Robin sold a traveler one booklet, then offered updated routes, then maps to different regions. One silver piece becomes two. Two becomes five. Eventually you make the system work while you’re sleeping.”
He paused, hand still raised, five fingers extended.
Tracy looked at him, waiting.
“And sixth,” she said quietly.
“Mindset,” he confirmed, lowering his hand slowly. “And here’s the truth about mindset—if you don’t learn it, you won’t be around long enough to even MASTER the other five. You’ll quit before advertising starts working. Before your list grows. Before the spark catches. Before the funnel has time to prove itself.”
He met her eyes.
“Mindset is the foundation everything else stands on. The garden you tend daily. Because when you get to the Bridge and hear Black Ember circling—when the voice whispers that you should turn back—mindset is what keeps you taking the next step. It’s what stops the weeds from taking over. It’s what makes you believe the vision instead of the voice.”
He gestured to the worn booklet.
“Those six skills work in this world and in yours. The tools change. The platforms change. The specific methods change. But the laws underneath them don’t. They didn’t work a thousand years ago and then stop. They work now. They’ll work a thousand years from now.”
Tracy looked at the booklet. At the water stains and finger-smudges and the particular wear that came from being used, not just kept.
“Robin built something real from this,” she said. Not a question.
“He built something real from this. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t glamorous. It was a broke man and his companions making hand-stitched booklets at a table by candlelight and selling them face to face to strangers who needed what they’d made.” He met her eyes. “And that simple, unglamorous, real beginning—laid in honesty, built on genuine value—became the foundation of everything that came after. Including standing on that Bridge and discovering the fire was real.”
Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy. Young. The particular rhythm of someone carrying more weight than they were quite strong enough for yet.
Guard Finn appeared in the doorway without warning—seventeen years old, broad-shouldered in the way of boys who’d grown fast and hadn’t figured out what to do with all that new size, arms loaded with split oak, face flushed from climbing five flights of tower stairs.
He stepped through the doorway.
Saw Tracy.
And stopped.
The world narrowed in that particular way it narrowed when you saw something beautiful without preparation, without any defense against the way it hit you. One moment firewood and duty and whether he’d latched the stable door. The next moment nothing but HER.
The way morning light caught her brown hair where it had come loose from her braid. The curve of her throat as she leaned forward over her tea. The soft shape of her beneath the cloak as she turned toward the sound of his footsteps—the gentle curve that made him forget, just for a heartbeat, that he was supposed to be looking somewhere else.
He forgot the firewood. Forgot his name.
She wasn’t trying to be beautiful. That was the thing that made it worse. She wasn’t DOING anything. Just sitting there with her tea and her bitten nails and her ink-stained fingers and the particular softness that lived in the tender places of the world—in sunsets and first snow and things that made you think thoughts you didn’t usually think.
Tracy felt it.
That was the thing she hadn’t expected—how clearly she felt it. Like a change in air pressure. Like the moment before thunder when everything goes strangely still. She’d been looked at before, of course she had, but this was different. This wasn’t calculation. This was something raw and unguarded and completely without artifice.
She lifted her tea cup. Took a sip of something that had long since gone cold. Pretended she hadn’t noticed.
She’d noticed.
Then Thaddeus cleared his throat.
The sound was quiet. Gentle, even. But it crashed through whatever spell had taken hold like a hammer through glass.
Finn jerked, gasped, remembered suddenly where he was and what he was supposed to be doing and how badly he was failing at doing it. Finn’s hands remembered the firewood. He lurched forward, overcorrected, and a piece of split oak clattered to the stone floor with a sound like a gunshot in the quiet room. He dropped to his knees to retrieve it, face going from flushed to something closer to crimson.
As he bent, he brushed past her—his arm against hers, the briefest contact that lasted half a second and felt like something that would take days to stop feeling.
Tracy’s breath caught. The softness of the contact. The heat of it. The absolute wrongness of the timing.
Tomorrow, she thought with something close to despair. I’m leaving tomorrow.
“Morning, Keeper,” Finn managed, not looking up. Not daring to. “Miss Tracy.”
His voice cracked on her name.
He put the firewood near the hearth and then fled.
Down the stairs like something was chasing him, his footsteps echoing back up the stone stairwell in a rhythm that sounded embarrassingly close to panic.
Tracy blinked, puzzled, looking from the empty doorway to Thaddeus and back again.
Thaddeus cleared his throat—quiet, gentle, but it cut through whatever moment had just happened like a stone through glass.
He was hiding something behind his tea cup that might have been a smile. His wedding ring caught firelight as his hand rested on the table.
“What was that about?” Tracy asked. Too briskly. Too professionally. In the voice she used when she wanted to establish that something had not happened.
“Nothing,” Thaddeus said, equally brisk. “Just nervous around his elders.”
Tracy looked at her tea. Realized her hands were shaking slightly.
Tomorrow, she thought again. This has to wait. Everything has to wait. She pulled her cloak tighter and tucked her feet—small feet, bare now, boots kicked off somewhere near the dying fire—under the fabric’s warmth.
Behind Thaddeus, the door stood open—always open. Letting out the heat, but Thaddeus wouldn’t dream of closing it.
Outside, the storm clouds were definitely closer now. Darker. The wind picking up enough that they could hear it singing in the rafters.
A gust of wind rattled the shutters. The fire in the hearth flickered, sending shadows dancing across the stone walls. Tracy pulled her cloak tighter.
“You’ve heard Thane’s name before?” Thaddeus asked.
“Bits and pieces. People don’t like to talk about him much.”
“No. They don’t.” Thaddeus’s left hand found his shoulder again, that unconscious gesture. “Because Thane’s story is the one everyone’s afraid will be THEIRS. The one where you start with the same dream, the same fire, the same determination as everyone else—and you still fail. Not because you’re evil. Not because you’re weak. But because you made one compromise, then another, then another, until the person you became wasn’t the person you started as.”
He was quiet for a moment, staring into his empty tea cup.
“Thane and Robin were friends. Brothers, really. Met in the early days, before either of them understood what they were actually trying to do. They crossed storms together. Survived impossible odds. On that Viking ship in those thirty-foot seas—”
“Yes. I remember that part. So what happened next?” Tracy’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“They got captured. Thrown into prison at Harvest Crown Castle—a month of isolation in stone cells where the only sound was your own breathing and the Dark Lord’s voice whispering through the silence.”
Thaddeus looked up, met her eyes.
“Same cell. Same darkness. Same voice saying the same things to both of them: You failed. This doesn’t work. You should stop.
“Robin heard it and looked past it. Used his imagination—that’s one of the Thirteen Steps, imagination—to see the end in mind. To picture himself FREE even when everything visible said he was trapped. Let that vision burn in his chest until the walls couldn’t hold it.
“Thane heard the same voice and saw it differently.
“He looked at the walls and saw only walls. Looked at the pain and saw only pain. His vision died. His fire went out. And when they finally got released—because you can’t keep people locked up forever without charging them with something—Robin walked out burning brighter than he went in.
“Thane walked out already broken.”
The wind howled outside now, a long mournful sound that made the tower feel suddenly very high and very exposed.
“Same storm,” Thaddeus said quietly. “Different seeds planted in different soil. And that made all the difference.”
Tracy’s thumbnail found her teeth. She bit down without thinking, then caught herself and lowered her hand.
“Did they ever...” She hesitated. “Did Robin try to help him?”
“Of course he did. Tried everything. But you can’t make someone tend their garden, Tracy. You can’t make them read the Scrolls if they’ve decided the Scrolls don’t work. You can’t make them keep the fire burning if they’ve chosen to let it die.”
“So Thane just... quit?”
“Worse than that.” Thaddeus’s voice went hard. “He went to work for the Dark Lord. Not intentionally. Not because he woke up one morning and decided to be evil. But because he was weak and bitter and convinced the game was rigged, and the Dark Lord used that. Used HIM. Turned Thane into a door—a way to get to Robin when nothing else worked.”
Tracy gasped softly. “He betrayed him?”
“He led the Dark Lord’s forces right to them. Robin, his companions Henry and Marcus, all their work building something real—Thane sold it for the promise of safety. For the lie that if he just cooperated, maybe the pain would stop.”
“And it didn’t?”
“It never does.”
Twenty minutes later, footsteps again. Different rhythm this time—heavier, uneven, the particular sound of someone who’d been climbing these steps for forty years and wasn’t about to stop just because her knees complained.
Maren appeared in the doorway with a fresh pot of tea and disapproval radiating from every line of her weathered face.
She’d been at Sanctuary longer than Thaddeus had been teaching. Longer than anyone except Sophia. She’d been head caretaker when these stones were still settling, and the fact that she’d officially handed that role to younger hands hadn’t changed her opinion about how things should be run.
“You’ve let the fire die again, Keeper,” she announced, setting the pot down with a decisive THUNK that made Tracy jump slightly.
“I was just about to—”
“You’re always ‘just about to.’” She moved toward the hearth with the efficiency of someone who’d been doing this since before Thaddeus was born. “Forty years I’ve been saying this. Forty years.”
Her eyes found Tracy. Took in the bitten thumbnail. The ink-stained fingers. The cloak pulled tight against the cold.
“And YOU,” she said, pointing with a finger that had kneaded more loaves of bread than Tracy had eaten in her lifetime. “Stop biting your nails. Can’t look confident with shaking hands.”
Tracy’s thumb froze halfway to her mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Margaret!” she called down the stairwell, her voice carrying with the particular authority of someone who didn’t take orders from anyone. “Bring fresh bread. This girl needs to eat.”
“Coming, Maren,” a younger voice called back.
A moment later, Margaret appeared—maybe forty, dark hair in a practical braid, arms carrying a cloth-wrapped basket that smelled of warm bread and honey. She moved with the ease of someone who managed a hundred tasks simultaneously and made it look effortless.
“Here,” Margaret said, setting the warm bread on the table. Her eyes did the same quick assessment Maren’s had—fire burning low again, the fact it was getting cold up here, Thaddeus’s empty cup, the open door, Tracy’s thin frame.
“Make sure she eats before she leaves,” Margaret said to Thaddeus. Then to Tracy, gentler: “You’ll need your strength for tomorrow.”
Maren was already heading down the stairs, still muttering about fires and apprentices who didn’t eat enough. Margaret caught Tracy’s eye, offered a small smile that said she’s impossible and we love her, then followed.
The door remained open. Their voices drifted up from below—Maren giving instructions about something in the kitchens, Margaret’s patient responses, the sound of an estate being run by two generations working in tandem.
Tracy looked at Thaddeus.
He was definitely hiding a smile now.
“Maren was here before me,” he said, reaching for the fresh tea. “Before anyone except Sophia. Hasn’t noticed she’s retired yet. We’re all afraid to tell her.”
There was affection in it. The kind that came from decades of being corrected about fires and knowing it meant someone cared.
“And Margaret?”
“Keeps it from falling apart now.” He poured fresh tea for both of them, the mint-scent rising sharp and clean. “But she’s wise enough to let Maren think she’s still in charge. Some battles aren’t worth fighting.”
Tracy wrapped her hands around the warm cup and thought about tomorrow. About leaving this place where people cared enough to correct you about fires and nails and eating properly.
About walking into a world where nobody would.
Thunder rumbled closer now. The storm was almost here.
Thaddeus settled back into his chair. “While Robin was building that simple business—selling booklets, learning the six skills—something else was happening. In his mind. In the garden Sophia had shown him.”
He paused.
“The Ten Scrolls taught him what to water and what to pull. Not because it sounded mystical. Because the daily practice helps you find the missing pieces. It reaches past the thinking mind into the soil beneath. And the garden changes without you even realizing it’s changing.”
Tracy thought about her own garden. About the two years she’d spent here preparing.
Two years of studying. Reading. Getting ready.
Had she been growing patience? Or had she been watering fear and calling it wisdom?
“For ten months,” Thaddeus continued, “Robin read those Scrolls. Morning. Noon. Night. Every single day without exception. And slowly—so slowly he almost didn’t notice—things shifted. Patience learned to bend without breaking. Joy spread like thyme, impossible to kill. The vine stopped strangling the roots.”
He looked at her with that steady gaze.
“That’s what made him able to stand on the Bridge when the dragon came. Not because he was braver than anyone else. Not because he was stronger. Because his mind had become a place where the fire could burn without consuming him.”
“Where are the Scrolls now?” Tracy asked.
“Where they’ve always been. The Magic Room, two floors below us. They’ll be waiting for you tomorrow morning if you want to take them when you go.”
Tracy looked at her tea. “I’ve walked past that room a hundred times.”
“I know.”
“I never went in.”
“I know that too.” He wasn’t reproachful. Just accurate. “Some people need to almost leave before they’re ready to start.”
The fire crackled. The morning light shifted as clouds covered the sun. The tower room grew darker, the warmth from the hearth more important.
“In the days ahead,” Thaddeus said quietly, “you’ll need three things.”
Tracy looked up.
“First: Find something valuable to offer. Not something you THINK people want. Something they NEED. Something that solves a real problem. Robin found routes through dangerous territory. You’ll find yours.”
He held up a second finger.
“Second: Learn the Six Critical Skills I just showed you. Advertising—reaching the right people. List Building—an audience that belongs to you. The Spark—real communication that builds trust. Funnels—systems that work while you sleep. Execution—showing up daily. Mindset—the foundation everything stands on.”
Third finger.
“Third: Find mentors. Join a mastermind. You can’t do this alone. Robin had Henry and Marcus in the beginning. Later, he found the Watchers. Others who’d crossed before him and were willing to show him how. You’ll need the same.”
He leaned forward.
“Those three things—something valuable, the six skills, mentors who’ve crossed before you—that’s the plan. That’s what works. Not someday. Tomorrow.”
The wind outside had grown ferocious. It rattled the shutters so violently that Tracy’s notes—she’d been writing all morning, scattered across the table and floor—suddenly lifted into the air like startled birds.
“Oh!” Tracy gasped, dropping to her knees to catch them.
Thaddeus moved to help, stooping with the particular difficulty of a man whose body remembered being younger but no longer was. Together they gathered the scattered pages—her handwriting everywhere, notes on the Six Skills, questions about the Scrolls, thoughts she’d been trying to organize for two years.
And then the air changed.
Not because of the wind. Not because of the shutters Thaddeus had just pulled closed against the storm. Just—a shift. A thinning of the ordinary air. A sense of presence arriving the way dawn arrived, gradually and then completely.
Tracy felt it before she saw it. Her breath changed. Her hands stilled on the papers she’d been gathering.
She looked at the third chair.
Sophia sat there.
She looked exactly as she always looked—neither old nor young, present but somehow translucent in the storm-light. A shawl around her shoulders. Hands folded in her lap. Those eyes that saw through every surface to whatever was actually happening underneath.
Those eyes moved to Tracy.
And Tracy felt the weight of being truly seen—not the surface things, not the graceful movements or the loose hair or whatever it was that made Finn forget his name—but the actual interior. The bitten thumbnail. The ink stains from writing endless notes and tips. The two years of preparing to leave and never quite leaving. The fear she’d dressed up as readiness for so long she’d almost forgotten which was which.
“You’re afraid you’re not ready,” Sophia said quietly, and her voice sounded like Tracy’s own mother—like every mother—like the voice of God speaking through memory.
Tracy’s throat closed. She couldn’t answer.
“You think if you study harder, prepare longer, understand EVERYTHING before you start—then maybe you’ll be worthy of crossing that Bridge.” Sophia’s gaze didn’t waver. “But Robin didn’t cross because he was ready, child. He crossed because he refused to stop when he wasn’t ready.”
Thaddeus sat very still, his tea forgotten, watching this exchange with the expression of someone who’d witnessed it before and knew better than to interrupt.
“In the dungeon,” Sophia continued, her attention shifting to include them both now, “Robin felt the fire dying. Felt the darkness pressing close. Felt every doubt he’d ever had gathering weight and momentum like a stone rolling downhill.
“And I reached through that darkness—” her hand moved slightly, as if touching something invisible in the air between them “—the way dawn reaches through a shuttered window. Took his hand. Showed him something he’d forgotten.”
“What?” Tracy breathed.
“The sanctuary inside his own mind.”
Sophia’s hand opened, palm up, as if offering something.
“There’s a place in your mind where imagination—that great tool of the mind—lives and breathes. Where you can see the end so clearly, you can smell it—and that seeing becomes a fire of enthusiasm so strong and generates a heat that no dragon, no Dark Lord, no dungeon can contain. That nothing external can touch it but God alone.”
“Robin went there. In his imagination. Saw himself FREE when everything visible said he was trapped. Saw Time Freedom so clearly he could smell the salt air, feel the sun on his face, hear his wife Elena’s voice beside him saying they’d finally made it.
“And that vision became a fire. Not metaphorically. ACTUALLY. A burning in his chest that the darkness couldn’t touch because it wasn’t MADE of darkness. It was made of something the Dark Lord can’t understand and therefore can’t control.”
“Enthusiasm,” Thaddeus said quietly.
“Enthusiasm,” Sophia confirmed. “The great force behind every leader who has ever changed the world. Stronger than money. Stronger than power. Stronger than influence or strategy or skill.”
She looked at Tracy again.
“You have it too, child. I can see it in you. That same hunger. That same fire wanting to burn.”
“But I—” Tracy’s voice cracked. “I haven’t been through what Robin went through. I haven’t been in the dungeon. I haven’t faced—”
“You’ve faced failure,” Sophia said gently. “Watched your father’s business collapse. Felt the weight of promises you couldn’t keep. Arrived here broken and ashamed and certain you’d proven you weren’t enough.”
Tracy flinched. Those memories still hurt.
“That IS your dungeon, child. The place where the voice says you failed, this doesn’t work, you should stop. Robin had stone walls. You had disappointment and debt and the particular darkness of watching everything you built fall apart.
“Same dungeon. Different walls.
“And you’re still here. Still preparing. Still looking at that Bridge and wondering if you have what it takes to cross it.
“That means the fire didn’t die. It’s still burning. The question is whether you’ll trust it enough to take the first step.”
The fire snapped loudly. Thunder cracked closer now. Outside the storm was almost here—she could hear the rain beginning to fall. Wind howled through the window shutters, making the fire dance wildly.
“The voice will come tomorrow,” Sophia said. “On the path. In the forest. On the Bridge when you see what’s circling above it. It will sound very reasonable. It will say turn back in a voice that sounds like wisdom.”
“And?” Tracy said.
“And you’ll know it’s lying,” Sophia said simply, “because it only ever points backward. It has no vision for you. Just a very detailed case for staying where you are.”
She stood—or seemed to, though Tracy couldn’t quite track the movement—and the chair was empty again between one breath and the next.
Thaddeus was very still.
Tracy sat with what had just happened settling into her like something that would take years to fully understand.
“She does that,” Thaddeus said finally.
“I know,” Tracy said quietly. “It’s just—it’s different when she does it to you.”
“Yes,” he said. “It always is.”
The storm broke fully. Rain hammered the stone walls, filled the tower with the sound of water, turned the world beyond the shutters into grey and silver.
Tracy pulled her cloak closer. Didn’t move.
Outside, somewhere in that grey—miles away, invisible in the storm but always there—the Bridge of Light waited.
Always waiting.
Thaddeus stood. Moved to the window. Opened one shutter just far enough to look out through the rain.
“The skills are real,” he said, not turning. “The Scrolls are real. The enthusiasm and faith that lets you walk through dragon-fire without burning—that’s real. Robin discovered all of it. And you will too.”
He closed the shutter. Turned.
“But none of it works if you don’t take the first step. And the first step is always—always—the one you take before you’re sure you can.”
Tracy looked at the worn booklet in her hands. At the Scrolls waiting two floors below. At the open door with its safe sounds and accountable rhythms and the particular warmth of a place she’d called home for two years.
At Thaddeus, who’d spent thirty years teaching others to cross a bridge he’d already crossed himself. Who’d chosen to spend his freedom here, in this cold tower, telling stories that might save lives or might fall on deaf ears, depending on who was listening.
“Tomorrow,” she said. Not a question.
“Tomorrow,” he confirmed. “You can leave with Amanda.”
“I’m so glad she’ll be with me!” Tracy said happily. “I’d be ever too afraid on my own.”
“Yes. I understand. It was like that for Robin, too.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“Tomorrow, I’ll walk you to the gate,” Thaddeus concluded. “After that, the path is yours.”
She stood. Tucked the booklet under her arm. Her small feet found her boots.
At the doorway, she paused.
“Thaddeus.”
He looked at her.
“If I pass Finn on the stairs...” She stopped. Started again. “What do I say?”
Thaddeus looked at her for a long moment with the expression of a man who was very old and very married and remembered exactly what it cost to leave beautiful things behind when you were twenty.
“Goodbye,” he said simply. “Clearly. Without making it mean more or less than it is.”
Tracy nodded. Looked at the floor. Looked back up.
“And if he says something?”
“Then you listen,” Thaddeus said. “And then you say goodbye anyway.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“That’s very hard advice,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is.”
She went.
Her footsteps descended the stone stairs—lighter than Finn’s had been, more certain, the footsteps of someone who’d made a decision and was implementing it before she could unmake it.
Thaddeus stood at the window.
Opened the shutter fully.
The rain was easing now. Clouds breaking apart in the west, light starting to find its way through. And there—distant, gleaming, absolutely unchanged by the storm that had just tried to obscure it—the Bridge of Light.
Always gleaming.
Always waiting.
He closed the shutter gently.
She’ll cross it, he thought. She’ll struggle and she’ll doubt and the voice will be very persuasive on some of those dark mornings—but she’ll cross it.
He touched the scar on his left shoulder. Thirty years old. Still aching when storms came in.
He’d crossed it too, once.
And chosen to spend his freedom here.
Some choices, he thought, you never stopped being glad you made.
He sat back down. Poured the last of the cooling mint tea.
And waited for whatever student would come through that door next.
You are that student Thaddeus is waiting for.
You’ve been told the lie that if you just find the right program, or just invest enough money, everything will change. My millionaire mentor told me one time that if all you have is $1 and ambition… that’s all it takes. And if you don’t even have a $1. Ambition will help you get the $1 you’re missing.
But I’m here to tell you the hard truth: it’s not the program, or the money.
Of course, the program matters. And if you don’t have the money, you can save up for it. But the foundation matters even more than the money or the program.
The foundation is SKILLS—not skills you learn ABOUT, but skills you actually LEARN and APPLY.
Just knowing about them—even from everything this chapter shared—isn’t enough. Each skill takes real time to master. And without a coach to guide you away from the wrong rabbit holes, you’ll spend years circling success without finding it.
Here’s what you actually need:
A TEAM who wakes you up in the morning, reminding you that you’re more powerful than you realize.
COACHING from millionaires—without spending an arm and a leg to get it.
SOMEONE IN YOUR CORNER who walks you through these six skills personally, keeps you accountable, and helps you break through the ice.
That’s why the nightly Zooms exist. That’s why you’ll have your own personal sponsor. That’s why the community is there—to help you find your way and save you massive amounts of time.
It took me ten years to find a program that pays 80% commissions. A program that’s 100% legit, FTC-compliant, with a community that actually cares. Ten years.
I don’t want you to spend ten years.
That’s why if you move forward with this book and course, I’ll help you find your way much faster.
“Most people quit three feet from gold. They learn the skills. They start applying them. They see some results. Then the voice comes—that Dark Lord whisper—and they stop.
Here’s what separates the people who cross the Bridge from the people who turn back: DAILY DISCIPLINE around the fundamentals.
Read the Scrolls. Every single day. Morning, noon, night.
Tend the garden. Pull the weeds before they strangle your vision.
Show up to the Zooms. Let the mastermind carry you when you can’t carry yourself.
And remember this: You don’t need to be ready. You just need to refuse to stop when you’re unready.
The fire is real. The skills work. But only if you actually DO them.”
—From a seven-figure earner who started exactly where you are
P.S. Want more wisdom like this? Read The Twelve Pillars by Jim Rohn (who earned over $500 million). Same principles. Same fire.
The Bridge goes somewhere worth crossing—and you don’t have to cross it alone.
Lemme tell ya something before you turn another page.
I failed forty-one times.
Not forty-one small stumbles. Forty-one real attempts at building something online. Programs bought. Systems followed. Gurus believed. Money spent. Results? Crickets. Maybe a sale here and there—never enough. Never consistent. Never anything close to replacing a paycheck.
Before all that, I taught school for twenty years. Loved every minute of it. Then the school lost funding and I lost my job. Had three months of severance, some savings, and a fork in the road.
I could go find another classroom. Trade more hours for dollars. Build someone else’s dream again.
Or I could bet on myself.
I chose myself. Not because I was brave—because I was hungry for something nobody talks about enough:
TIME.
Time with my wife. Time to travel together. Time to take our family on adventures that didn’t require a permission slip from a boss. Time to serve. Time to do something meaningful with what God gave me.
That hunger—for time more than money—is what kept me going when forty-one failures said stop.
But here’s the thing I learned the hard way…
TIME without MONEY is just poverty with a prettier name.
You can quit your job. Sail around the world. Chase every dream you ever journaled about. But if you can’t afford groceries when you dock… if you’re watching every penny while pretending to be free… if you’re leaving the person you love behind because you can’t afford to bring them with you—
That’s not freedom. That’s just a different cage.
And when you’re married? You’ve got a choice that most people don’t talk about:
Go chase it alone. Leave her behind. Pursue your thing and hope she’s still there when you figure it out.
Or build something that creates BOTH—time AND money—so you can enjoy the dream TOGETHER.
I didn’t want time without her.
I didn’t want money without time with her.
I wanted both.
The ability to wake up with nowhere we were required to be—except together. And the resources to actually DO something with that morning.
That’s the real Bridge. Not time OR money. Both. With the person you love standing next to you.
Year after year I kept trying. Kept failing. Kept spending. Kept believing the next program would be the one.
Forty-one times.
But I didn’t quit. You know why?
Because the picture in my head—sitting on a beach with my wife, not checking a clock, not worrying about a bill, not asking anyone’s permission to be there—that picture burned hotter than any failure could freeze.
Then something shifted.
I found mentors who’d already crossed the Bridge. People who’d built what I was trying to build. Who were willing to show me not just WHAT worked—but HOW to make it work, step by step, without the hype.
I learned the Six Critical Skills that Robin learned from a worn manuscript and hand-stitched booklets in a world of fantasy—but these skills are anything but fantasy:
?? ADVERTISING — Finding the right people in the right places. Not shouting into the void. Being a signal fire that the right eyes recognize.
?? CATCHING ATTENTION — Making them stop scrolling. The headline. The hook. The thing that cuts through the noise and earns a second look.
?? LIST BUILDING — Creating an audience that belongs to YOU. Not rented from an algorithm. People who trust you enough to let you into their inbox.
?? COMMUNICATION — The spark that builds know, like, and trust. Not manipulation. Just being so genuinely helpful that people WANT to hear from you.
?? FUNNELS — Systems that work while you sleep. That turn consistent effort into scalable results. That let you wake up to progress you didn’t personally push.
?? MINDSET — The foundation under everything. Without this one, you won’t survive long enough to master the other five. This is the garden you tend daily until the weeds can’t hardly grow anymore.
And something changed.
I started earning. Not a windfall. Not overnight millions. Consistent income. Real income. Income that showed up whether I had a good week or a bad one—because the system and the skills did their job.
That’s why I wrote this book.
Not just to entertain you with Robin’s journey through a fantasy world—though I hope it does that too.
I wrote it to show you the skills that changed MY life. The mindset that kept me alive through forty-one failures. And the path that finally led to both—time with my wife AND the resources to enjoy every minute of it.
The Bridge is real. And you don’t have to cross it alone.
THE TEN SCROLLS work. Og Mandino wrote them. You can find them. Read them three times daily—morning, noon, night—for thirty days each. They’ll change your garden without you realizing it until you look back and discover you’re not the same person who started.
THE THIRTEEN STEPS work. Napoleon Hill spent decades distilling them from people who’d already built what you’re trying to build. Desire. Faith. Imagination. Specialized Knowledge. Organized Planning. Decision. Persistence. Mastermind. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation. The Subconscious Mind. The Brain. The Sixth Sense. All of it woven through Robin’s story so you’ll learn it without trying.
THE SIX CRITICAL SKILLS work. In Robin’s world of floating islands and dragons. In YOUR world of emails and videos and websites and the particular magic of one human connecting with another across digital distance.
THE MENTORS exist. Not in a tower on Cathedral Isle. In Zoom rooms Monday through Friday. Morning sessions with seven-figure earners who’ve crossed the Bridge before you and are willing to show you how. Evening coaching to refine what you’re building. A community of people who are exactly where you are and refusing to stop.
THE BUSINESS is real. Eighty percent commissions—not 5%, not 20%, but 80 cents of every dollar goes to YOU. One member you bring in almost covers your entire monthly cost. Two members make you profitable. Ten members change your life. Build from there. My personal daily help. The tools that work. The training that teaches.
Easy.
Fast.
Overnight success.
That the voice will stop whispering.
That dragons won’t circle.
That you’ll never want to quit.
The fire is real.
The skills work.
The Bridge goes somewhere worth crossing.
You don’t have to cross it alone.
And if you keep the fire burning—if you water the right plants and learn the right skills and listen to the right mentors and refuse, absolutely REFUSE, to let the flame go out—
You’ll take the first step. Then the second.
And one day you’ll look back and realize the dragon couldn’t touch you because the fire you were carrying burned hotter than anything fear could throw at it.
The choice is yours.
The Scrolls are in this book—chapter by chapter, woven into story so you’ll remember them.
The Skills are taught through Robin’s journey—simple enough a child could understand, deep enough to build a life on.
The Mentors are waiting in Zoom rooms where you can see their faces and hear their voices and know they’re real.
The Business is one decision away.
Tomorrow, you could take the first step.
Or you could stay in the tower, looking at the Bridge through the window, preparing to be ready someday.
Robin chose.
Tracy chose.
I chose.
Now it’s your turn.
~Albie
P.S. The next cohort of our Mastermind starts tomorrow morning. The morning Zooms fill up fast—seven-figure earners can only mentor so many people at once.
If you’re reading this and feel the fire, don’t wait. Tomorrow might be too late to get in this round.
If you’re feeling the fire right now—if Tracy’s question is YOUR question, if you’re tired of circling success without finding it, if you want BOTH time and money with the people you love—
Don’t wait.
?? Join the Monday–Friday Mastermind Zooms
?? Get your personal sponsor who walks you through the Six Skills
?? Access the community of people who are exactly where you are
?? Find out how to start building your 80% commission business TODAY
If that fire is burning in you right now… this is where you cross.
Cross the BridgeNo pressure. You’ll know if it’s for you.