Its presence is an intangible weight against my mind, each pulse of light matching the rhythm in my chest and creating patterns that illuminate nothing but itself. The bond thrums between us, raw and electric in its newness, a connection I do not yet understand.
I shift upon the cold floor, and my muscles protest the movement while the cut on my shoulder burns with steady insistence. The distant point of light follows me, adjusting its position with liquid grace, and through our connection I sense its eagerness, an ancient hunger tempered by centuries of purpose.
A dark stain runs down the far wall, old and dried, the color wrong even in the Skathrith's pale glow.
I close my eyes and reach inward, seeking the familiar ground of my torq's display. The technique Mother taught me comes easily now: focus on the space behind my forehead and let the inner darkness resolve into clarity.
The letters form, etched in familiar light.
Name: Janus Ragnos
Rank: White-Gold
Shadow Roots: [13/1000]
I exhale slowly, studying the display that has somehow changed since I last checked it. The number of Shadow Roots in use has increased, and a flicker of confusion passes through me as I wonder what this change might mean.
Then, unbidden, comes a shift. An alien awareness curves patterns onto the inside of my forehead, shattering the familiar letters into pinpricks of light that blink out and are replaced by something fractured and flickering. Shapes resolve into lines of jagged glyphs that burn faintly against the darkness.
Not Malkielian script, but something older, something that predates every language I know. The bond translates it into meaning I can barely comprehend, but the process is invasive, painful, wrong in ways I cannot articulate.
The words form slowly, half-complete and fragmentary, as if the weapon itself struggles to communicate across the void between our natures.
Construct: Skathrith
Bond: Incomplete
Resonance: Fractured
Edge: Sealed
The script dissolves before I can grasp more, while other words flicker at the periphery of understanding, refusing to resolve. Lattice. Directive. Harmony. Concepts that taste wrong on my tongue, as if the weapon speaks a language my mind was never meant to process, a syntax that existed before human thought took its current shape.
The dual displays confuse me. Torq information beneath, familiar from hours of checking my rank and Shadow Roots, while Skathrith data overlays above, alien script burning across my inner vision like a brand. Two systems overlapping, joining in ways I do not yet understand, creating something that is neither wholly mine nor wholly the weapon's.
I remember Cyra floating in the palace gardens last year, after she bonded with her Skathrith in her third year at the Mere. A reward for her achievements and the mastery of her Semblance. The construct amplified what she already possessed, transformed her kinetic manipulation into something that could defy gravity itself.
Only those with a Semblance can bond with a Skathrith. Mother explained it once: the unique power proves the soul is flexible enough, strong enough, to contain something so alien. The construct does not replace what you have but extends it, transforms it into something more, helps it grow stronger than it could ever become alone.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
But the torq is what makes the bonding possible at all, the prerequisite and the doorway through which the construct can enter and anchor itself.
The connection forged during the First Baptism, the dimensional pathway carved through Nenuphar's waters, creates the anchor point. Without that Hell-link etched into our souls, the Skathrith would have nothing to bond to, no foundation stable enough to sustain its alien existence in our reality.
Yet the Semblance is what the Skathrith truly feeds on, drawing power not directly from its wielder but from those the wielder kills, absorbing their essence to grow stronger with each victory.
And I have no Semblance.
My gaze drifts to Binah.
She stands at the edge of shadow, watching me with those violet eyes that mirror my own, silent and ethereal and impossible. A presence only I can see, manifesting shortly after I woke in the Temple of Hope.
The thought forms once more before I can stop it: What if she is my Semblance?
No.
I shove it down into the Inner Hell, refusing to entertain the possibility. She is not my Semblance. She cannot be. Semblances are powers, abilities, extensions of will made manifest, not entities that watch you with knowing eyes or gesture with pale hands or tilt their heads like birds studying prey.
They do not feel alive.
The word burns across my fading vision: Incomplete.
Not a judgment of my worth but a statement of fact. There is no existing power for the Skathrith to amplify, no Semblance for it to transform, just me and a weapon that hungers for what I cannot give.
Perhaps that is why it flickers.
The Skathrith pulses with a low, resonant hum that vibrates through my bones, carrying something beyond mere vibration. Recognition, perhaps, or memory of what it once was.
My mind drifts back to the previous chamber, to the engravings that dominated those ancient walls.
The young figure kneeling in the center, spine arched backward at an angle that should break bone, while above it descended a void-star carved not in relief but cut deep into the stone itself. Negative space. A wound in the wall that never healed.
The young one's mouth gaped open with no tongue visible, just void, the same impossible darkness as the descending star.
I look up at the Skathrith floating above me, and the similarity makes my breath catch. The void-star. The sphere forced into unwilling hands. The shadow with four arms where the body showed only two.
This is what they did. The seven elders in their circle, weaving powers I do not recognize, forcing something alien into a young one who screamed refusal. They made this, or something like it, a predecessor to the weapon that now floats above me.
The Skathrith is not a tool, not a simple weapon forged in some dimensional furnace, but a binding. A construct born from the same violation depicted in those reliefs, where power was forced into flesh that should never contain it.
The young one became something else. The engravings showed its triumph, its hunts, its hunger for the kills. Standing victorious over fallen creatures, blood rendered as geometric patterns flowing from their wounds.
The Skathrith hums its agreement.
I taste copper on my tongue.
My torq feels heavier than it should, the metal warm against my skin as I reach up to touch it, feeling the familiar engravings beneath my fingertips. The record of my achievements, my progress, my worth etched in patterns only I can read.
But now I wonder: what is this thing around my neck? What did we inherit from Malkiel? What bargains did our ancestors make when they fled into the Balah, when they emerged changed and powerful and bound to the Hells?
Did we steal the torqs, or were they given to us by something we no longer remember?
The questions spiral and multiply, branching into pathways I cannot follow, thoughts that lead only to more uncertainty.
I force my attention to the chamber itself, noting how the walls here are different from the previous room. Newer perhaps, or simply better preserved. The cube-shaped space is smaller and more confined, the ceiling lower than the vast height of the chamber I left behind.
And there are engravings here too.
I notice them now through the Skathrith's pale glow. Reliefs carved into every surface, depicting the same tall figures with their elongated skulls and impossible proportions, more torqs around alien necks and more scenes I should study, catalog, and understand if I only had the strength.
But exhaustion presses against my thoughts like a physical weight, making it impossible to parse another mystery or absorb another violation of everything I thought I knew or reconcile the weapon above me with the horrors carved in ancient stone.
The sentinel's cut throbs, the burns and wounds from the previous chamber, and my muscles ache while my head feels stuffed with wool, every thought requiring effort I can barely summon.
The engravings can wait. Everything can wait.
I sink down against the wall, the stone cold against my spine, while the Skathrith pulses in its silent orbit above me, watching. The bond between us hums with questions I lack the strength to ask.
My eyes close.
Just for a moment. Just long enough to stop the world from demanding answers I do not have.
The weapon's song follows me down into darkness.
Soft. Insistent.
Hungry.
Shattered Empire is 20 chapters ahead on Patreon, and that’s only the beginning.
-
Nightbreak (Patreon-exclusive)
-
Ablations (ongoing)
Patreon.com/cw/u792045