Chapter 164 - The Gilded Chains

The Veiled Blade's awakening had created ripples through the Wasteland of Essential Extraction that extended far beyond the immediate disruption of administrative processing. The composite figures had dissolved back into their component sand, their extracted characteristics no longer held in coherent patterns by the bureaucratic machinery that governed this realm. The essence-drinking grains had withdrawn their microscopic mouths, recognizing that the blade's wielder now existed outside the normal categories of consciousness awaiting integration into cosmic machinery.