The blade split in Kael's hands—not snapped, not shattered, but split like hot clay under breath. Riku saw it happen from the ridge's overlook: the long arched edge of Blackridge steel began to quiver mid-swing, then melted into a stream of dull silver. It slithered through the air in a serpentine arc, reforming—less than a second later—into a curved short-sword.
The woman holding it wasn't even a fighter.
She was Maru, a weaver barely cleared for outer trench duty, standing there with the new weapon in hand, as if it had always belonged to her. The curved edge glowed faintly with inner veins of red, and for a moment, Riku thought he saw her eyes flash—not with fear, but recognition.
It had chosen her.
Maru blinked and looked down, startled. The fight—such as it was—had paused. The two beasts she'd been fending off had backed away. The larger one even lowered its head before dissolving into haze.
Below, Kael dropped to one knee beside another fallen weapon that had reshaped. The process repeated across the field. Axes grew points and narrowed into spears; hammers shrank into daggers; even shields softened their edges and coiled inward like rolled parchment before snapping back into something new. Dozens of weapons—once standard-issue, hand-crafted by Kael's forge—were unmaking and remaking themselves.
Not all of them waited to be held.
One began shifting midair without a wielder at all.
Riku left the overlook, descending fast and silent to the inner line where Kael was already dissecting a reshaped glaive. Kael didn't look up, didn't stop moving. His fingers traced the weapon's hilt with the reverence of a man holding something that shouldn't exist.
"This one used to be Irel's," he murmured, voice tight. "The one we made after the third siege. It's not just shape—it changed purpose. Structure. See this grain?"
He turned the blade to show a crosshatch of pale silver lines, almost like frost patterns frozen in motion. "These aren't smith marks. They're... mineral fractures. Crystallized like forged time. I didn't make this."
"You did," Riku said quietly. "But not here."
Kael finally looked up. "Then where?"
Riku didn't answer.
Instead, he stepped forward to the weapon lying on the nearby stone slab—the first one that had started shifting on its own.
It quivered as he approached.
Not like a trembling thing in fear. But like something excited to be seen.
He stopped a foot away. The weapon curled slightly toward him.
Then—
A pulse. Not sound. Not sight. Pressure, blooming inside his mind like a whisper pressed directly into the folds of thought.
Choose me.
Riku blinked. His lips parted slightly. He hadn't expected to feel it.
Not like this.
It wasn't a voice. It was the suggestion of a voice—a familiarity that bypassed recognition and went straight into marrow. It felt like a decision he hadn't made yet. Like the shape of something he would one day need.
The weapon pulsed again.
Choose me. I know your weight. I know what you'll become.
Kael looked up sharply. "Did it just—"
"Yes," Riku muttered.
He reached forward.
The weapon unfurled like a flower responding to sun, its form splitting into three branching possibilities—glaive, knife, flanged mace. But none of them solidified.
It was waiting.
For what?
For him to declare.
He didn't.
Instead, Riku stepped back.
"I won't choose yet," he said aloud, to the forge, to Kael, to whatever was watching. "Let it settle. Let it understand me first."
Kael stared. "You think it's learning?"
"I think," Riku said, "that it was always meant to return. Like the mask. Like the mirages. This isn't evolution. This is memory. But memory… sent forward."
The night fell slowly.
That evening, Riku held a private council in the upper watchroom, the reformed weapons arrayed on the floor like offerings. Each one bore a new shape. Some carried strange etchings, like codes half-formed. Kael had already diagrammed a few—none matched any known language.
Sira, watching from a corner, asked the question no one else had.
"What happens when one of them stops obeying?"
No one answered.
But outside, in the lower courtyard, Maru stood alone.
She gripped the curved blade she hadn't asked for.
It hummed faintly in her hand, and in the moonlight, her shadow looked larger than her body.
Twice as tall.
And holding a different weapon.