The vault smelled like ozone and scorched memory.
Kael knelt amid the wreckage—breathing hard, hands slick with sweat and ash. Around him, relics had gone still. Their voices, once screaming, now murmured in a confused hush. As if even they weren't sure what had just happened.
In his lap, the Knife lay twitching. Its edge was no longer clean—warped slightly, heat-bent, humming like it had just been reborn through fire.
Core simmered in his chest.
She hadn't spoken again—but Kael felt her presence like the pressure of a thousand watchers standing too close, waiting for him to slip.
He reached into the relic scatter around him, fingers closing around the one thing she hadn't drained yet—a dagger-hilt wrapped in black steel, its blade long vanished, but still pulsing faintly.
It was ancient. Unused. Disgraced.
And it spoke.
"Abandoned for failure. Left to rot. I remember glory."
Kael whispered, "Good. You're going to remember it with someone."
He placed the old hilt beside the Knife. The air rippled. Core's presence surged.
"You would taint the merge with wasted steel—"
"No," Kael said. "I'm saving it. You want to consume. I want to protect. That's our difference."
Core fell silent.
Kael took his remaining binding glyph—a rough one, stolen from Veyra's training floor—and slammed it onto both relics.
Energy sparked. The glyph burned white, then black, then vanished entirely as the relics fused.
The blade screamed again—but this time, not in pain.
In recognition.
Metal reshaped. The hilt lengthened. A curved edge shimmered into view—dull at first, then sharp with divine heat. Glyphs spiraled down the flat of the blade—neither Core's nor the Knife's, but something new.
Kael lifted it slowly.
The weapon pulsed in his hand.
And the voice that answered was… both familiar and foreign.
"I am still me. But more."
A pause.
"I remember things I never lived."
Kael exhaled. "You're not alone in that."
Core whispered faintly, distant now.
"You delay the inevitable. But you adapt… efficiently."
He smiled grimly.
"Good."