The chamber inside the Ember Spire was dead quiet, save for the faint, pulsing hiss of heat still lingering inside. There were no windows, but the embedded crystals cast a soft glow across the entire room. A single stone slab sat slightly raised in the centre, carved smooth by time and use, and beside it, a metal rack stood mostly empty. A few jars remained; their edges crusted with the remnants of rare ores and failed attempts.

Aaryan stood before the slab, motionless except for the rise and fall of his shoulders. His robes clung to him, soaked in sweat, stiff with soot and effort. Loose strands of hair fell across his eyes, but he didn't blink them away. He was staring.

No—witnessing.

Before him was a dagger that only a few days ago could have passed for trash—its surface chipped, eaten by rust, the hilt half-splintered. Now, that same dagger was wrapped in a thick, dark greyish mass—no longer liquid, not yet solid. It writhed around the blade like a living thing, stretching in thin threads, tightening, sinking into the metal and binding to it.

The mixture, a refined blend of the metals he'd painstakingly processed over what felt like weeks, gave off a subtle shimmer—like moonlight rippling across oil. A soft sizzle escaped the slab as the last of the excess heat bled off. The forge's Soul Fire had long died down, but the essence of it still clung to the room, warm and stifling. The chamber smelled of iron, ash, and the strange sweetness of the boy's sweat.

Aaryan's eyes didn't move. His chest barely lifted.

He didn't know how many days he'd been in here. How many times he'd watched the mixture collapse, destabilize, crack the metal apart. How many hours he'd spent questioning whether he was missing some step—or if he simply wasn't meant to succeed. He had long exhausted the refined ingredients he first prepared back at the inn. But as if foreseeing it, Soot had left behind a spatial ring—a silent nod to the long road ahead. Aaryan hadn't even noticed when Vedik and the old man left. All he remembered was the click of the chamber door and then the silence.

Now, all he could see was the blade.

And something was… different.

The wriggling alloy was stilling. The shine wasn't molten anymore. It was cooling, folding inwards like breath drawn into lungs. The dagger no longer looked like scrap—it looked reborn: edges crisp, surface smooth, its darkness no longer dull but deliberate, like tempered onyx.

The dagger floated for a moment longer, suspended in a strange, weightless descent. The last traces of the greyish alloy clung to its body, a translucent membrane that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.

Then, gravity took hold.

The blade sank downward.

It didn't clatter. It didn't scrape. It sank—and Aaryan's breath caught in his throat.

The dagger pressed against the essence bed—a hardened layer of condensed forging essence etched into the surface of the slab, prepared days earlier. Only now did Aaryan understand why Uncle Soot had carved it with such care.

The moment the tip of the blade made contact, the solid surface rippled faintly… then yielded.

As if it were not stone at all, but mud.

The dagger sank deeper, slow and inexorable, until its entire body lay nestled within a shallow impression that had never been there before. The fit was perfect. No force had been used, yet it pressed inward with silent authority—like it belonged.

Aaryan swallowed, pulse thudding quietly in his ears. This was it. The final step.

The forging wouldn't be complete until the weapon claimed the essence and accepted its rebirth. According to Soot's cryptic mutterings, this was the true test—the weapon would either embrace its new self or reject it entirely.

And there were no shortcuts. No clever tricks. Just patience. Focus. And luck.

Aaryan's fingers curled slightly against his thigh, nails pressing into cloth. He stared at the embedded blade, every muscle poised. It looked peaceful, but he knew better.

The last step—the final integration—he hadn't reached it before. Not once.

He had no idea how many tries this would take.

His gaze flicked briefly to the nearly empty rack—just a few containers left. He had enough ingredients for maybe twenty more attempts. Twenty failures. Twenty restarts.

But that wasn't what gnawed at him.

It was the time.

He didn't want to spend months alone in this sealed chamber. He didn't want that creeping doubt each time the materials turned to waste.

Not again.

But it was too late to turn back now. The path was forged. The heat had been endured. The blood and will already poured in.

Aaryan exhaled slowly and leaned forward, one palm resting gently on the edge of the slab.

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"Alright," he whispered, voice low and dry. "Let's see how difficult it is to make you a spirit weapon."

With a flick of his wrist, Aaryan sent a red orb gliding through the dim chamber. It hovered briefly, catching a gleam of amber from the ember-lit walls, before clicking into place inside a compartment carved into the head of the essence bed. A low hum resonated in the stone beneath his feet.

At once, Aaryan pressed two fingers to the inlet beside him, channelling a thin thread of Qi into the forge's dormant core.

There was no explosion—only a slow awakening.

From the runes etched around the essence bed's edge, golden veins of light pulsed outward, forming a ring that gently cradled the dagger. The compartment above shuddered. Flames sparked within, flickering crimson. The red orb began to sweat, glow, and then liquefy, its hard surface warping like wax.

Within, a glimpse—a panicked snarl. The faint shape of a four-legged creature writhed inside, its mouth frozen mid-roar. Aaryan recognized the dying defiance of the Blood Panther he had felled weeks ago. Even now, its core resisted.

Then the soul fire took it.

The flames consumed the orb entirely, and with a sudden ripple, the fire slid down a hidden channel that unfurled like a secret vein in the slab. It flowed toward the embedded dagger, snaking around it, climbing like it had found something worth devouring.

The dagger vanished within the inferno.

Aaryan didn't wait. His eyes narrowed, body tense, sweat dripping from his chin. He cast his soul sense out—subtle, deliberate—and wrapped it around the engulfed weapon. The sensation was jarring.

The flame was alive. Not wild, but fierce—demanding.

He steadied his breathing. Every moment mattered now.

This step wasn't just about heat or skill—it was about will. He had to guide the fading remnant of the beast's soul, strip it of its feral nature, and anchor it into the metal. He had to coax it into silence without shattering it entirely.

A spirit weapon didn't just contain a soul. It was the soul.

The flames pulsed with his breath. The chamber vanished—there was only heat, resistance, and will.

The spirit struggled.

A growl echoed through his mind, primal and resentful. It struck at the edges of his soul sense, clawing like a wounded animal.

Aaryan gritted his teeth. His fingers trembled—not from fear, but strain. The kind that came from dragging his soul across the edge of failure, day after day. Slowly, deliberately, he guided a portion of his soul sense toward the flickering wisp of fire surrounding the dagger, diving into the place where the beast's will still lingered.

The wisp, still pulsing faintly with the remnants of a Blood Panther's spirit, lashed back instinctively. There was no grandeur in the resistance. No death throes. No howl of defiance. Just a brittle echo of a creature that once hunted with pride, now reduced to fragments.

Aaryan paused. For a moment, he expected the usual resistance—the prolonged, exhausting struggle to grind down a beast's consciousness—but instead, the panther's will collapsed like burnt paper. His breath caught.

Was that it?

Suspicion crept in. His instincts—honed in battle, sharpened in the quiet moments between failures—told him this wasn't how it was supposed to go. The beast's soul had folded far too easily. Still, there was no time to doubt. The flame had already begun to weaken, its essence thinning.

Without hesitation, Aaryan reached out and pressed his will forward, wrapping the soul fragment in his sense, then guided it down—into the dagger.

The fusion was instant.

Light erupted, sharp and soundless. A burst of radiance like a newborn star flared in the closed chamber, casting long shadows across the stone walls. Aaryan flinched, shielding his eyes with the crook of his arm. Then—just as swiftly—it vanished.

Silence fell.

The Soul Fire winked out. Smoke curled up in slow ribbons. On the essence bed, the dagger rested in stillness.

Its surface had changed, again.

The dagger was now pitch-black, but sleek—like cooled obsidian. It glinted faintly in the dim glow of the forge runes, not with polish, but presence. A single silver lotus—small, delicate—bloomed where the blade met the hilt, as if it had grown there rather than been forged.

Aaryan reached for it with slow, reverent hands. His fingertips brushed the blade—cool to the touch, but not inert. There was a hum beneath it, not in sound, but in sensation. A quiet pulse that seemed to greet him, unsure but present.

He closed his eyes and pushed his soul sense in.

There it was.

A flicker. Faint and unformed—like a child blinking at the world for the first time. It didn't speak, didn't resist. But it felt. A soft presence, unsure of itself yet undeniably there.

Aaryan exhaled, then laughed—dry at first, then louder. The kind of laugh that had nothing to do with amusement and everything to do with the sharp relief of success.

At last.

His first Spirit Weapon.

He clutched the dagger close, breath still shallow, chest rising and falling with disbelief. His back ached, his soul burned, and sweat had long dried into salt. But none of it mattered now.

Not the silence. Not the solitude. Not even the endless failures that had come before.

He had given it a soul.

And it had accepted.

The silence still lingered like cooling smoke, not just in the chamber—but in him. The essence bed dimmed in rhythm with his pulse, faint but steady. The dagger rested in his hands, its presence subtle but warm—like a heartbeat against his wrist. His fingers hovered near it for a moment longer before sending it to his ring.

Aaryan exhaled. The stillness hadn't left him, not really. It lingered inside.

He adjusted his robes, tugged his collar straight, and gathered his scattered tools into his bag. Movements practiced, but slowed by fatigue. His soul felt stretched thin, as if part of it still floated beside the forge fire. He flexed his hand once—soul sense withdrawing fully—then turned and left the chamber.

Outside, the corridor felt colder than he remembered. The stone walls of the upper floors gleamed faintly under the blue-etched array lights, humming just low enough to make the silence feel too loud. This floor—set aside for independent forgers—was mostly deserted. Only the faint shuffle of footsteps echoed from some distant corner, too far to matter.

Aaryan didn't linger.

Each step down the spiral stairwell felt heavier. Not because of weariness, though that was there too—but because his thoughts kept circling the same questions. 'Where the hell had Soot run off to? And Vedik?' The dragon never stayed hidden this long.

By the time his boots hit the ground floor, his brows were knit tight in a scowl.

He moved quickly toward the exit.

The guards by the gate—the same one from that day—glanced his way... and then looked right through him. They neither nodded nor raised their hands to stop him. Not even a flicker of recognition passed their eyes.

Strange.

But Aaryan didn't stop. He was too tired, too mentally drained to piece apart their indifference. Maybe they had been warned not to mess with him. Maybe they simply didn't want trouble. Either way, he passed them without a word and stepped out into the late afternoon sun.

Light struck him immediately—hot, bright, and blinding after the forge's gloom. He blinked hard, lifting a hand to shield his eyes.

And then, someone stepped into view.

Leaning against the low stone railing just outside the tower's gate, arms crossed, her foot tapping slowly—impatiently—against the ground. No wind blew, but her dark braid shifted slightly as if agitated on its own, mirroring the tightness in her jaw.

"Finally." The word snapped out of her like a whip—tight, restrained, but edged with heat.

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