The Silt-Burrows Central Forum.
The air in the Central Forum grew instantly heavier, not with humidity, but with the sudden, collective focus of every scarred Weaver present. Kael could feel their eyes—wary, hopeful, and calculating—all assessing the odds of him failing, and what that failure would mean for the stability of their hideout.
Terris, the Enclave leader, didn't move from the obsidian platform. He simply crossed his arms, the thick, black, ruined lines of his left arm pulsing subtly beneath his borrowed tunic. "Don't delay, boy. Grond's screaming is bad for trade. Show us your payment."
Kael ignored the pressure. He approached Grond, the hulking man whose code had seized up in a disastrous attempt at self-enhancement. Grond wasn't weeping anymore; he was rocking, clutching his head, his heavy breathing ragged. His pain wasn't just physical; Kael could sense the frantic, knotted nature of his spiritual existence—a relentless, internal screaming that threatened to overwhelm his sanity.
A corrupted code is a fortress of misery, Kael realized. You can't fix it from the outside.
Kael dropped to one knee, forcing eye contact with the brute. "I'm going to need to understand the pain," Kael murmured, his voice low. "Tell me where it hurts the most."
Grond's eyes, bloodshot and pleading, fixed on Kael. "It's... the core," he choked out, his voice hoarse. "My purpose. It keeps twisting. Like metal snapping inside my soul."
Purpose. That was the spiritual core of a being's code.
Kael took a deep, shuddering breath. He reached out and placed his hand flat against Grond's massive chest, right over his heart. This was the moment of Grafting.
The Soul-Graft
Kael closed his eyes and pushed his consciousness through the barrier of skin and muscle, straight into Grond's Soul-Code. He didn't just look at the code; he forcibly linked his spiritual being to the chaotic threads of the other man.
A shock wave of sheer agony hit him. It wasn't the dull ache of a bruise; it was the sharp, metallic crunch of bone snapping, the hot, searing acid of spiritual failure, and a wave of pure, unadulterated rage—Grond's reaction to his weakness.
This is the price of entry, Kael told himself, fighting the instinct to recoil. He felt Grond's pain graft onto his own consciousness, a foreign, spiking entity now nested in his mind. For a blinding moment, Kael was Grond: obsessed with brute strength, furious at the betrayal of his own body, and consumed by the incessant, rhythmic torture of his internal circuits failing.
He found the corrupted section: a dense, gray knot of threads where the [Strength-Matrix] had violently overwritten the [Motor-Control] threads.
Un-weave it.
Kael used his own Will—the pure, sharp energy he'd been suppressing—to pull at the gray threads. The effort was excruciating. Every thread he pulled felt like tearing strips of his own skin. He could feel his Anima—his own life force—straining against the foreign pain trying to take root in his identity.
A small, thin whine escaped Kael's lips. The pain on his chest became real; he felt a burning sensation right where his hand met Grond's.
"He's bleeding the cost," murmured a Weaver in the crowd, drawing closer. "Look at his chest."
The Scars
Kael ignored the whispers. He finally severed the central knot of the Glitch. The threads flared, but this time, they didn't rupture. Kael used every ounce of his discipline to replace the severed section with clean, stable passive threads—not adding strength, just restoring control.
He snapped his connection back. The agony receded, leaving him slumped against the brute, gasping for breath, drenched in sweat.
When Kael pulled his hand away, a faint, translucent blue-purple glow vanished, but a trace of the exchange remained. Right across his collarbone, a thin, reddish-black line had formed, like a tiny crack spreading across porcelain. It was faint, but visible: A Weaver Scar. It was a physical mark, mapping the path of the pain he had just grappled with.
Grond remained motionless for a moment, then slowly opened his eyes. He lifted his massive, trembling hands. He rotated his shoulders. A look of dazed, profound relief washed over his face.
"The pain..." Grond whispered. "It's quiet. Just... quiet."
Kael tried to stand, but his knees buckled. The psychic rage from the Graft had bled into his own mind; for a terrible second, he wanted to smash his hand into the obsidian platform, driven by Grond's residual fury. He fought the violent impulse, gripping his own shoulder until his nails bit into his flesh.
Terris stepped down from the platform, his heavy footfalls echoing in the sudden silence. He stopped directly in front of Kael, his Ruptured arm brushing Kael's forehead.
"You're gifted," Terris conceded, a flicker of something like respect in his eyes. "You held the link cleanly. But you bleed the cost easily. That Scar is a reminder: You wear the pain now." He gestured toward the newly formed line on Kael's collarbone. "Now for the payment. Sera. Bring the map of the Solus Perimeter."
Kael looked up, his indigo-tinged eyes locking onto Terris's dark ones. He had the map, but he had paid a terrible toll. He was closer to finding Elara, but also closer to becoming the mindless thing the Theocracy hunted. The taste of Grond's rage lingered on his tongue.