The Grimoire lay untouched by time, as though the ruin around it had simply failed to claim it.
Tsshh.
Arion swept his palm across the silver-stitched cover. The leather was warm, supple, alive beneath his fingertips. Something old stirred in his chest—a memory buried beneath layers of exhaustion and survival.
He remembered the first notebook his mother had pressed into his small hands: cheap leather, soft corners already rounded by use, half-filled with her elegant sketches of atoms spiralling like galaxies and stars collapsing into black holes.
"Every discovery deserves a home," she had said, voice soft with that quiet certainty he had worshipped.
He had filled that book until the spine cracked and the pages blotched with ink, coffee rings, and frantic doodles—equations crowding sketches in the margins, each page packed with the kind of mess that only made sense to him.
Those long evenings in their cramped kitchen: the smell of solder and burnt toast, wires snaking across the table, her laughter cutting through the smoke when an experiment spat sparks at the ceiling.
The ache in his chest sharpened. Science, she had told him, was another kind of faith. You build, you test, and then you decide whether reality agrees.
Now, standing in the heart of a dead madman's sanctum, he was touching a relic that had survived the end of its world, and the parallel hit hard enough that he had to steady his breathing before it showed on his face.
He exhaled, slow and deliberate. "You'd lose your mind over this, Mum."
The words came out half-choked. Even the joke died there, swallowed by the quiet hum of the silver shard above.
…
Steady once more, he tried the cover again. It refused to yield, sealed as if guarding secrets older than the stones themselves.
He slammed the tome onto the desk with a dull thud, muttering curses under his breath. Every corner of this temple felt like a riddle wrapped in another riddle.
He studied it anew. The only anomaly was the silver shard embedded in its spine—glistening with trapped starlight, pulsing faintly like a living vein.
Humm.
He tapped it.
The shard answered instantly, a ripple of energy brushing through his Vitalis with a resonant thrum—heartbeat meeting current, intimate and unmistakable. A coded signal pinging straight into his core.
I wonder…
He drew Vitalis into his palm and brushed the shard once more.
Vmmm.
The response was immediate, alive, almost eager. Threads of essence erupted upward in a silent bloom of light, weaving symbols and text into the air like a constellation of thought given form.
—— ❖ ——
❖ [Shard Codex]❖
[Grimoire of Vitalis]
Attuned: [Arion]
[Common]
Tool/Grimoire
[Vitalis Traits]
Pages drink true knowledge and never stain or rot; the tome answers eager hands.
Unusually resistant to most elements, resists time and weather alike.
Knowledge Is Infinite: When fed genuine knowledge, the Grimoire conjures a spectral quill and records without cost.
[Luminary Boons]
Page of Memory—Once per day, the Grimoire allows the use of a prepared spell without any Vitalis cost. Only if the wielder meets its tier.
[Temperament]
Attentive, curious—rewards honest pursuit; rejects falsehoods and hollow scribbles.
[Description]
Slate-and-leather binding stitched in silver thread; the edges of its pages glimmer like wet ink, and the quill's feather glistens faintly when writing.
He wrote until the ink ran dry, and the Grimoire refused him—for his words had become an echo of madness.
—— ❖ ——
Arion stared, wide-eyed—the first time he had witnessed writing manifest without a hand outside his own journal.
"Grimoire of Vitalis," he read aloud, voice hushed with disbelief and wonder. "So that's your name."
Attuned… to me?
"My Vitalis," he murmured, cupping his chin. "Some kind of signature imprint?"
A short, incredulous laugh escaped him. "That explains why you wouldn't open for just anyone."
His gaze dropped to the final line.
Echo of madness…
For the briefest moment, the study felt less abandoned and more watched.
He smirked. "I wonder who that was meant for."
When he lifted his hand, the floating text dissolved, threads of light unravelling back into the shard.
He tried the cover again. This time it opened smoothly, pages whispering apart as if the book had simply been waiting for its rightful reader.
Yet every sheet was blank—pristine, expectant.
"Huh. No previous owner? Or maybe it wipes itself for confidentiality."
He shrugged, leaning closer with the quiet thrill of discovery.
"Let's see what you can do, then."
He placed both hands flat on the open page, mimicking the weight and motion of a pen. Faint ink began to bloom beneath invisible strokes, lines forming with deliberate confidence. Then, in quiet approval, a spectral quill shimmered into existence—weightless, perfectly balanced, warm in his grip as though it had always belonged to him.
As the final stroke settled, the ink shimmered, sank into the paper, and bonded with his handwriting. A soft thrum pulsed through the spine—an unmistakable note of approval.
The quill twitched once, alive, deciding.
On the first page he wrote his inaugural entry:
—— ❖ ——
Attunement—Signature Imprint
Hypothesis: the shard's lattice does not merely respond to Vitalis; it seems to record it. Every wielder may carry a distinct structural signature—subtle enough to be recognised by the shard once contact is made. By feeding that signature into the crystalline lattice, alignment appears to occur.
It may not be ownership.
It may be recognition—some form of structural compatibility written into the shard's make.
—— ❖ ——
"Nifty little fella," he murmured, eyeing the silver shard with fresh affection. "You and I are going to get along."
A glint at the desk's edge caught his eye. Beneath a torn sheet of parchment lay another shard—green, smoother, its oval core slowly rotating like a contained star.
It felt familiar, yet different. Designed to slot into something larger.
Curiosity ignited. He reached out, channelling a thread of Vitalis toward it.
Vhhhmm.
Thumm—
Whshh!
Light exploded outward, twisting into solid form. In a heartbeat the shard birthed a brilliant quarterstaff where it had lain, the weapon humming with restrained power.
The hum did not end with the staff. It carried through the desk and into the walls, low and lingering.
Somewhere beyond the study, a faint echo answered it—bone shifting against stone, soft and distant, as though the ruin had stirred in its sleep.
Arion barely registered it.
He barely noticed. In a room of tools, notes, and impossible design, something in him slipped back toward the part of himself that had once belonged in places like this.
Strange as it was, this ruined study, once used by the Madman himself, felt closer to home than anywhere else he had stood since arriving in this world.
"Wow," Arion's breath caught. "Talk about a dopamine kick."
He grinned at the Redox Spark still hovering on his shoulder. "I don't think I'll ever get tired of this. How about you, buddy?"
The little flame quivered, its glow flaring brighter for a beat.
—— ❖ ——
❖ [Shard Codex]❖
[Quarterstaff of Recall]
Attuned:[Arion]
[Uncommon]
Weapon / Quarterstaff
[Vitalis Traits]
The staff shines brightest when its enemy moves to its wielder's rhythm—Vitalis flow intensifies in rhythm with opposition, turning balance into momentum.
Channels minor kinetic flow from the wielder's Vitalis for improved leverage and accuracy.
[Luminary Boons]
Recall—Anchored through a Vitalis resonance imprint. When thrown or displaced beyond reach, the staff obeys the imprint's recall, reversing its course through Luminary flow until it strikes the wielder's palm once more. Obstacles offer no resistance—only distance delays its return.
[Temperament]
Loyal, ferocious—answers precision and rhythm; resists erratic Vitalis signatures.
[Description]
A quarterstaff of deep red-tinged hardwood, its grain threaded with faint essence shimmer. Dark metal fittings reinforce both ends—plain but enduring, etched faintly with circular groove lines that pulse when Vitalis is channelled. When thrown, the air behind it ripples faintly as if pulled by an unseen tether.
It never left his hand — even when he no longer had the strength to hold it.
—— ❖ ——
Arion lifted the quarterstaff. The wood felt strong, reliable, warm against his skin, the faint shimmer of Vitalis dancing beneath the grain like living veins. Dark metal caps crowned each end, etched with precise circular grooves that caught the shardlight.
Unc would've lost his shit over this.
He laid it flat across his palm, testing balance. Perfect. With a sudden drop he let it fall—only for his foot to flick upward, catching and flipping it neatly back into his grasp.
"It's absurdly even," he murmured. "Whoever made this knew what they were doing."
He grinned wider. "You'd have acted like a kid with this, Unc."
He twirled it through his fingers—smooth, fluid, instinctive. Even in this new body the motion felt natural, subconscious muscle memory steering the wheel with effortless grace.
"Beautiful. No visible warps. No obvious tool marks."
He ran his thumb along the grain. Faint warmth answered, Vitalis threading through microscopic channels. He had seen similar conduction in laboratory rods back home, but never in living timber.
Whoever made this had understood the material far better than most—and somehow learned how to make it answer force like it belonged there.
Clnk.
He braced one end against the floor and pressed. The staff flexed, then hummed with soft resonance.
"The recovery is clean. Better than it has any right to be."
He released it. The wood sprang back; he caught it mid-arc, spinning it once, twice, eyes tracking every rotation for drag or fatigue. Only a veteran who had broken dozens of staves would test it this way.
When he finally stopped, a satisfied grin split his face.
"Okay—I'll admit it. Worth every single headache."
Recalling how it had materialised, he channelled Vitalis into the embedded green crystal. The staff blurred, deconstructed into pure Essence, and folded neatly back into shard form.
"And here I thought you couldn't get any better."
He repeated the process with the Grimoire, watching both treasures shrink to harmless, gleaming shards. He tucked them carefully into the inner pocket of his robe, close to his heart.
The air shifted.
A ripple passed through the suspended ash, and for a moment the ruin seemed to settle around him. Shards buried in the walls flickered once, faint as dying stars. For a heartbeat he thought he heard it—whispers, the rustle of pages turning somewhere far below.
"Well… this can't be everything, right?"
He scanned the devastated study, eyes gleaming with renewed purpose.
"Now… if I were an insane madman…"
He began searching with obsessive energy.
Secret button beneath the desk—nothing.
Hidden lever behind the shelves—nothing.
Push-in stone brick for a secret door—still nothing.
"Damn it. I've tried every obvious cliché."
He paused, frowning, then straightened. A slow, dangerous grin spread across his face.
"No. I have to think like a real madman."