Blake stood weakly against the concrete pillar, watching the fabrication node work its magic on Verdict. The device hummed with purpose, its articulated arms dancing around his pistol in precise patterns. Microscopic repairs flickered across the weapon's surface like digital frost.

The mall stretched empty around them now. Caprea's security drones had swept through an hour ago—sleek chrome wasps buzzing through the corridors, driving the remaining undead back into whatever holes they'd crawled from. Blake could still hear the distant whir of rotors patrolling the upper levels.

"So what you're saying is that we can't replicate the trick we used to pull power from Caprea to nuke the bastards?" Blake asked, shifting his weight. His shoulder protested the movement.

"No. Without time to heal, even trying would probably kill you outright. It barely worked once, and that was only because of the unique arrangement between us and my temporary bond with Caprea." Kitt's avatar materialized beside the fabricator, watching Verdict's reconstruction with professional interest.

"Damn. It's a strong card to have in reserve."

"You and I are already sharing power," Kitt responded. "Make sure that I grow big and strong, and I'll build a nice set of reactors we can draw from ourselves."

"Wait, really?" Blake blinked. "That's something you can do?" The fabricator paused its work, rotating Verdict to expose a section of the grip.

"Blake, it's something I've already done. Vylaas had to draw power from mechanical systems through me all the time to pull off some of his stupid self-sacrificing heroics."

The casual mention of her former partner felt different from before. There was less bitterness this time—just a matter-of-fact acknowledgment like discussing an old colleague's work habits.

"Speaking of stupid self-sacrificing heroics," Blake said, changing the topic slightly. "Why haven't we tried anything like that before? The info-dump you gave me about that ability. I'll need to practice the hell out of it, but you basically just handed me a new power. That seems useful."

Blake watched the fabrication node pause, its primary arm extending a delicate scanner over Verdict's trigger assembly. The device hummed, analyzing stress fractures in the metal before resuming its microscopic welding.

"Part of it was how fuzzy my memory was before I worked with Medea to put my Psycheform back together," Kitt said. Her avatar shifted position, arms crossed as she studied the repair process. "Most of it, though, is how incompatible you and Vylaas are."

"What do you mean?" Blake rolled his left shoulder, testing the joint. The movement sent a dull ache through the muscle where shrapnel had grazed him at some point. "Incompatible how?"

The fabricator's secondary arm deployed, threading new circuitry through Verdict's grip. Blake could see the faint glow of fresh connections being made—organic pathways that would let Kitt interface with the weapon more efficiently.

"Despite the fact that he failed to walk it in the end, Vylaas's skills and abilities were rooted firmly in his Path. He wasn't quite a pacifist—he'd knock heads on the battlefield if he had to, but he refused to do any lasting damage. And killing? Not even on the table."

"And I'm, what," Blake said, pushing himself away from the pillar to pace a few steps toward the fabricator, "too wired for killing?"

His boots crunched on debris—fragments of concrete and twisted metal that Caprea's drones hadn't bothered to clear. The question came out sharper than he'd intended. Something about the comparison rankled.

"No, no, it isn't that." Kitt's avatar gestured, frustration creeping into her voice. "It's more that he was ... inflexible. You would have a hard time adapting most of his abilities because they're so rigid. Why bother teaching you how his [Maze of Force] worked when you can already create walls of force yourself? Do you really need to learn his [Force Bind] ability when you could instead learn to use your own abilities to do the same and more?"

Blake stopped pacing, watching as the fabricator retracted its arms. Verdict lay there, looking almost pristine except for the faint scorch marks along the barrel—battle scars that the machine hadn't bothered to polish away.

"So it's just that I should be learning on my own?"

"I'm not explaining it right." Kitt's avatar flickered, her form becoming less solid for a moment. When she stabilized, her expression showed clear annoyance—at herself, not him. "His abilities, even if you learned them, would only ever do what HE intended for them to do. Pure defensive tools without a lot of options. It would take you just as much effort to learn the effects on your own than to rework the abilities to suit your own Path."

Blake reached for Verdict, testing its weight. Physically, it was fine, but on a metaphysical level, it was dead. Just inert metal in his hand. He began to cycle mana through the material in the way Kitt had first shown him weeks ago, starting the bonding process.

"I suppose that makes some kind of sense. You can't give me the generic ability, you can only relay what you experienced—and that's highly tied into that guy's rigid style and worldview."

"Exactly." Kitt's relief was visible as her avatar moved to join him. "Magic is weird like that. You might think that any given ability is the same as another, but there's always something of the user in everything they do. [Bastion's Redoubt] was something Vylaas continued to refine until the end of his life, and the fact that it allows for people inside to counterattack at all shows an evolution of his worldview near the end."

"Interesting. So if I ever find myself in need of pure, boring, predictable defense..." Blake holstered Verdict. So long as it was on his person, the bonding could continue without any active effort.

"Yeah, I've got a few abilities you could borrow. But you're better off improving your own cultivation," Kitt finished. The fabricator's status display shifted from amber to green, signaling that Caprea was queuing up another job.

Blake stretched his legs on the narrow cot, working out the kinks from sleeping on something designed more for emergency use than comfort. Four hours of real sleep had done wonders—the constant low-grade headache from channeling Caprea's power had finally faded. It was nice to have the static scrubbed from his skull.

"So, have we figured out any good ways to put these Outsider-spawn down?" he asked, sitting up and rolling his shoulders.

Kitt's avatar materialized beside the cot, her expression thoughtful. "Well, Eland was pretty clear that we'd need to attack them in a way that was 'path resonant' if we wanted to deal lasting damage. The trick with you is that everything you're doing in here is in line with your path, but none of your attacks are..."

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"As effective as we need," Blake finished, pulling on his boots. The left one still had a scorch mark across the toe. Just one more thing to mend.

"I was going to say 'evocative' enough." Kitt crossed her arms, leaning against the wall. "Your path is about defending people and places from things, sure, but you don't have any sort of fancy 'hold the line against the darkness' style attack."

Blake snorted and pushed up, shifting his weight to make sure the world hadn't decided to tilt. His ribs still smarted where the debris had taken him—annoying, not crippling. "That is staggeringly corny. Please don't tell me that's what I need to do."

"Fine, it's reductive. But it captures exactly what I mean." Kitt sounded frustrated, so Blake didn't take the joke further. Instead, he just listened.

"Everything you do aligns with your Path because you know who you are and what you're trying to accomplish. You resist the Outsider's influence better than most people would, and you deal real damage to these things. But we haven't cracked how to channel the core of your Path into something that hits them where it counts."

Blake crossed to the fabricator, the status display casting blue light across his knuckles. The machine churned through whatever armor plating Kitt had queued up, its steady thrum vibrating through the deck plates beneath his boots. After the screaming metal and shattering glass of the mall, the mechanical rhythm felt like a lullaby.

"Yeah, I get what you're saying." He turned back to face her, leaning against the machine. "I do wonder what the criterion is, though. I'm only still here because I'm trying to save Caprea. Seems like that would be enough."

"It's not about the situation or your motivations," Kitt said, shaking her head, her form flickering slightly. "It's about how you express those motivations through your abilities. When Vylaas used [Bastion's Redoubt], it wasn't just a defensive barrier—it was a manifestation of his absolute conviction that no harm would come to those under his protection. The shield worked because it was infused with that certainty."

"And my abilities lack that kind of... what, emotional investment?"

"Maybe? I don't know. Not exactly." Kitt paused, searching for the right words. "Your telekinesis, your weapons—they're tools. Effective ones, sure, but they're not declarations. They don't carry the weight of who you are. Which is sort of ironic given that your particular relationship with the tools and practice of violence is … well, it's definitely a core part of understanding who you are."

Blake considered this, watching the fabricator's progress bar creep toward completion. What Kitt was saying made a certain amount of sense. He liked fighting, sure, but he also liked rock climbing. Both of them were highly physical activities that required skill, preparation, and focus to mitigate their danger. Being good at combat was more practical, given his career and lifestyle choices, but…

"So you think what's holding me back is that I'm treating this entire excursion like it's a day at work instead of some sort of higher calling?" As he said it, Blake saw Rax flicker briefly into view in the corner of the room. A hint? Maybe.

"In a sense, yeah." Kitt's avatar moved closer, her expression serious. "The Outsider spawn aren't just monsters, Blake. They're manifestations of unreality, of things that shouldn't exist. The reason "path-bound" attacks work is that they represent you enforcing reality onto them. Aggressively."

She transitioned seamlessly into a smaller form, no larger than a housecat, and spun lazily around him while she mused. "It feels like the fact that you've just accepted their presence as 'more weird things to kill' is part of the problem."

The fabricator chimed softly, its work complete. Blake opened the access panel and pulled out a section of armor plating, still warm from the molecular printer. The material felt solid in his hands—real protection against real threats.

But Kitt was right. He'd been approaching this like any other mission, using the tools at his disposal to eliminate targets. Maybe that wasn't enough anymore.

"There is good news," Kitt continued. That pulled Blake up short.

"Go on." Blake tested the weight of the repaired armor plating, running his thumb along the edges. The material felt different now—denser, more responsive to his touch. Maybe that was just his imagination, or maybe Caprea's fabricators worked at a level beyond what he was used to.

"I was working with Caprea to crunch the numbers and get as much real data as possible on the enemy, and we found something interesting," Kitt said, settling into her preferred perch on the edge of the fabricator's control panel.

"You don't get paid by the word. Stop dragging it out."

"Fine." Kitt's expression shifted into an exaggerated pout. "We have a lot of data on you mowing your way through the bad guys over the last few days. And there were two instances where your damage output exceeded expectations."

"Meaning what?" Blake set the armor plating aside. This felt important, and he focused on her completely.

"Meaning that in those moments, you were on the right track. Your attacks were pathbound."

He groaned and rubbed his forehead. "With my luck, it was when I lost my shit and went berserk after my imaginary Rax pissed me off."

"No, actually. The first time was in Caprea's core chamber, and the second time was during the last fight."

Blake tried to reconstruct those moments in his mind. The core chamber—everything had been chaos, pain, and blood loss from the vine attack. He'd been running on fumes and desperation. "Times when I was, what, standing directly in defense of something?"

"Not quite. Caprea didn't need your help in the core chamber. In fact, you were in the way. I don't think you were actively trying to defend anyone, either. You were half out of your mind between the blood loss and the poison."

That tracked, considering he'd barely been conscious, just reacting on instinct.

"Yeah, I was just sort of pissed." He searched his memories, trying to make sense of it. "Which doesn't really feel like it fits. Not to mention I barely scratched that thing—are you sure about your numbers?"

Blake caught a flicker of motion and glanced up. Rax had materialized in the corner, partially transparent but still distinct. The phantom made deliberate eye contact before turning to look at Kitt. The implication was clear—pay attention to what she's saying.

"Yes. The last [Kinetic Detonation] did far more damage than it should have based on your mana levels and the resilience the creature showed," Kitt continued, throwing a sidelong glance to their spectral audience.

"Interesting. And during the last fight?"

"Basically, every attack you made while burning Caprea's power was stronger than it should have been, even accounting for her influence."

Blake frowned, trying to parse the variables. "Wasn't that mostly the combination of your Recoil Rounds and the Bastion's Redoubt increasing the kinetic payload of the shots?"

"That had an effect, but it's perfectly measurable. And the damage you were dealing was anomalous. There's an answer there."

Blake looked at Rax again. The phantom's expression had shifted to pure exasperation, as if Blake should have assembled the pieces already. The answer was right there, wasn't it? Something about those moments, something that connected them beyond just circumstance or technique.

"Yeah." Blake felt the understanding begin to crystallize, cold and sharp. "And that answer is going to line up with what the Gravedigger title is pointing me at."

"Good!" Kitt chirped. "We can get rid of our third wheel."

"We can do more than that," Blake replied, distracted. "We can go after the big bad himself."

Blake's mind was racing as he put the pieces together. He was right on the cusp of it—he could feel the gnosis gathering to reward him if he could just find the words to capture what he was feeling.

Which is why it was, inevitably, the perfect time for him to be interrupted.

With a dramatic and entirely unnecessary rush of wind and the sound of a bell tolling, Chronicler Aureon appeared in the center of the barren storefront.

"Sounds like you've got big plans, Connover. But no one asked me for my opinion."

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