The underground of the ruins went on far longer than the single chamber that housed the core.
Beyond it, tunnels branched off in every direction, most of them half-collapsed and choked with rubble and rusted scrap. The warriors picked the widest hall they could find and cleared it out, hauling the wreckage aside until there was enough space for all hundred of them to lie down without stepping on one another.
Then a few of the brothers got to work on the barriers.
The first went up like a film of pale water stretched across the hall, and the moment it closed, the faint sting of corruption that had followed them since the surface simply stopped. A second barrier settled inside the first, and the crushing weight of the mana-saturated air eased off Ashen's chest until he could finally breathe without thinking about it.
He let out a long, shaky sigh and loosened his focus on Trinity Harmony for the first time in days.
'Heaven…'
His head was still throbbing, but a break to relax was much appreciated in his current circumstances.
◉
A few hours later, Ashen sat cross-legged in the middle of the hall, the core resting in his palm.
It was heavier than it looked, and warmth radiated from it, like a stone left out in the sun. The rings ticked steadily around it, brushing against his skin with every rotation, while the mana pouring out of it made the hair on his arm stand on end.
Around him, a hundred grown men were watching. Some of them openly. Most were pretending to sharpen their weapons or mend their gear, all while their eyes kept drifting back to his hand.
Bram, still pale as a corpse from the day before, had propped himself up on one elbow to get a better look. Orin, meanwhile, had stopped eating altogether and was staring with naked curiosity.
'Look at them, acting like children after all the time and effort they spent portraying themselves as battle-hardened men…' Ashen shook his head with an amused smirk.
It had all started with his proposition back in the core chamber.
"Overwrite the mark," Adam had repeated slowly, trying to make sense of the sentence Ashen had just spewed.
"Think about it, Father." Ashen had pointed at the spinning sphere. "The Unborn Heir marks everything its minions make. Every Penitent, every Censer, every bolt and every ring. That's millions in this ruin alone, and if there are more colonies out there, then it's trillions."
"Do you think he carves an elaborate signature into every screw? It has to be something simple. Something he can stamp on and forget."
"It's still the mark of an Outer God."
That was Adam's only argument against his son's proposition, but it was plenty convincing on its own. Solely because the two words 'Outer God' sufficed as an argument.
"I know."
"...If you fail, it probably won't be a Harvester that comes for us."
"I know that too."
Adam had gone quiet after that. For a long time, he simply looked at the core, then at his son.
Had it been only about the risks, he would have refused on the spot. Tampering with the work of an Outer God was the kind of thing only truly desperate, mad men did right before they disappeared, along with their entire settlement.
But in this godforsaken world, what human wasn't desperate? Sanity was a luxury none of them could afford, and those who tried to attain it were all dead by now.
So, to survive… a little bit of madness had long since become a mandatory requirement.
Besides… Adam had not survived this long by turning his head away from every danger.
In this world, where every hunter was someone else's prey, even the choices that looked safe could lead a man to ruin. He could forbid Ashen from touching the core, smash it to pieces, and walk away with a clear conscience. And perhaps one day, years from now, he would find himself backed into a corner where that very core could have saved them, only to die there regretting his so-called safe choice.
On the other hand, if they were unlucky, meddling with the mark could bring down something far larger than a single Harvester.
There was no right answer. There was only the one he could live with.
"Until the end of this expedition," Adam had said at last. "If you haven't found a way to deal with the mark by the time we turn back home, we destroy it. No arguments, and don't even think about bringing on those tears. It's not cute anymore."
"Deal!"
"I said no tears, brat. Why are your eyes watering already?"
"It's the mana pressure, obviously."
As for how Ashen was going to get rid of the mark?
Well. The core was made of metal. And who was he?
The Iron Tender.
…Fine, that had been his epithet back in the Sixth Step, and he had since climbed past it. But the skills had stayed with him, so there was no harm in calling himself that.
◉
He began with Patient Eye.
There was no point in treating something before he understood what was wrong with it, so Ashen did nothing for the first hour except stare at the core. To the brothers watching, it probably looked like he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.
But the longer he looked, the more the core revealed itself.
First came the structure. Layer upon layer of metal folded inward, the rings feeding into one another in a loop so perfect it made his head spin to follow it. Then came the flow of mana, pouring out from a center he could not quite see.
And then, buried deep near that center, he found it.
A small knot in the grain of the metal. A crude, angular sigil pressed into the core's structure, like a brand seared into the hide of cattle. The metal around it bent and warped to make room for it.
When he concentrated enough, he was able to see a network of fine hair lines sourced from the mark and traveling down every millimeter of the metal.
But Ashen only chuckled amusedly.
'I was right. It's simple… stupidly simple.'
The Unborn Heir had stamped it there and moved on, the same way a farmer brands his herd without ever learning their names.
But there was something else, and it wiped the grin off his face.
The mark carried a concept.
It was faint, almost too faint to notice, a cold and smooth sense of belonging woven into the sigil. This is mine. This returns to me. Ashen felt it brush against the senses of his Patient Eye and quickly pulled his attention away before it could notice him back.
He didn't brood for long on the discovery and focused on what mattered right now.
To Patient Eye, the mark was a deformation. A scar in the metal, a wound in the grain that the core's structure had been forced to grow around.
And a scar in metal was exactly the kind of thing his skill was made to fix.
'Living Temper.'
He fed his nurturing mana into the core gently, like a farmer would water a seedling. It seeped into the metal and spread through the layers, and he guided it toward the warped grain around the sigil.
The metal responded. Slowly, so slowly he would have missed it without Patient Eye, the grain began to straighten. The puckered edges around the brand began to smooth themselves out, the metal reaching inward to reclaim the space the mark had stolen.
Then Ashen hesitated.
Living Temper worked best on metal left undisturbed, and the core was the least undisturbed object he had ever seen. Its rings never stopped ticking, not for a single second.
He looked again, far longer this time, and Patient Eye eventually gave him his answer. The endless rotation was the core's nature. To this thing, spinning forever was the same as lying perfectly still. It was simply how it rested.
'Thank goodness. I was afraid I'd have to teach a perpetual machine how to take a nap.'
Speaking of naps.
'Resting Forge.'
The core grew heavier in his hand as the skill took hold over it, wrapping it in a dormant state that muffled the world around it. Inside that stillness, the core would slowly refine itself according to its own nature. And a crude brand stamped on by an outsider was no part of its nature. It was something to be refined away.
The skill was considerably more effective when its user also remained at rest.
So Ashen lay down on his back, set the core on his chest, folded his hands over it and closed his eyes.
The hall went very quiet.
"…Is he sleeping?" someone whispered.
"He's working," Ashen said without opening his eyes.
"He looks like he's sleeping."
"That's how it works. Ask Father."
He didn't need to look to know that Adam was rubbing his temples. Somewhere to his left, Bram was wheezing with laughter and complaining that it hurt his ribs.
'Laugh all you want. For once in my life, my concept and my job are in perfect agreement.'