I'd been wrong.

Jessie was sobbing. But they weren't tears of joy. Sometime in the last four days—or the last two hours, she'd gone straight to pissed.

I grunted as her blows hit my chest and a nurse tried to—carefully—pull my sister off of me. Then, once I had room to breathe, I propped myself up on one elbow. "Hi, Jessie."

She was small for a fifteen-year-old. Skinny—not thin, but skinny—people would think we took after the same person, but she was a lot more like the man I'd called Dad, while the one who was my father stood out in my hair and chin. Swollen red joints; today was a really good day, since she could move after therapy. Curly blonde hair, pale skin from too much time on a computer and not enough outside, and the stink of sweat; tonight, it was a mix of exercise from her therapy and the reek of fear and anxiety.

Jessie's health problems had started young. While they were only confined to her joints, on her worst days, she needed a wheelchair to get around. I'd made sure our flat was close to an elevator for those days. Even on her best ones, she had to keep a cane nearby. She was just fourteen, and none of the best doctors or healers in Phoenix had any idea what was wrong with her—not even the Governing Council's S-Ranker, The Spark of Life.

Right now, I knew exactly what was wrong with her, though. Me.

"I stayed up all night. All. Night, and you didn't come home. And then, at like eleven, someone's pounding on the door, and it's Tara, and you're in the hospital. I'm the one who's supposed to be in here, not you! I haven't slept in days!"

"I'm glad Tara checked on you," I said quietly—partially because her hug/tackle combo had driven the air out of my lungs. But I wasn't mad at her. I couldn't be.

This.

I needed to fight. Fencing, dueling, boxing—they'd been ways to let out my anger a year ago. Now, they were ways to let out something else. Regrets? Grief? I didn't want to explore it. But Jessie? This is what I'd been fighting for. The smiling hurt my face, and Jessie's voice felt like a drill straight to my temple, she was so loud, but I didn't care.

"She's been here every day," Jeff said. Then he stood up, a little wobbly, but vertical. "I'll give you two some space."

"No, don't leave me with her! She's crazy!" I joked.

My sister hit me again, and Jeff snorted. "You can handle her better than anyone I know. Good luck."

Jessie glared at me as Jeff squeezed past her, brown eyes staring from under her messy, tangled hair. "You owe me big. Do you know what it's like to come in every day and stare at your brother, and not know if he's going to wake up? Four. Days. Four days of feeling like everything in my life had been put in a washing machine. And since when is Tara your emergency contact instead of me?"

Then her glare faded, and an impish smile appeared on her face. "Unless…"

"Unless what?" I asked, wincing in anticipation.

"Unless you and Tara are dating!"

"No. Absolutely not."

I'd given Tara's number to the Governing Council, since she was the only neighbor with keys to my apartment, and the only one I trusted with my sister. She was great with her—almost like a big sister herself. She was five or six years older than me, but just like me, she was on her own. A lot of people in our building were. It seemed to attract people with nowhere else to go and no one else to rely on.

But I knew I could rely on Tara. The small, fiery woman was good people.

It took a long time to get Jessie off that track. The truth was, I didn't have time for dating, and I hadn't for a while. Over the last year, Jessie and I had moved three times, and every free minute had been spent in the Governing Council's libraries and gyms, getting stronger and making absolutely sure my Unique merge would fix Stormbreak.

Over the next half-hour, though, she got calmed down enough to tell me about school. They were learning quadratics, Hemingway, and mitosis and meiosis. Then, as soon as she told me that, she was off, spilling all the latest drama in the online games she loved so much. I just let her go. She needed to talk to someone, and I was here—even if my eardrums were still in recovery.

She didn't ask about the portal. I knew that was just a front. Jessie was patient when she wanted to be; the questions were there, she was just willing to hold on to them until I was ready.

Even so, she was still a lot, and I wasn't recovered enough to be a big brother for long. Mercifully, the nurse shooed her out. "Your bus comes in eight minutes, Jessie."

"I've gotta go, but I'll be back after school tomorrow." Jessie hobbled over to the door and gripped her cane.

"And therapy?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Nope. I'm down to four times a week. Doctor's orders. See you tomorrow, Kade."

I kept my eyebrow raised until she was gone and the door closed again. Then I reached under my pillow. The weird core sat there; as soon as I was healthy enough to leave, I'd be able to use it.

It took two more days before the hospital discharged me.

And the whole time I was stuck there, I couldn't merge my skills. There were weakness Bindings everywhere to prevent injured delvers from straining themselves too much and reopening wounds that were half-healed. The weird core under my pillow grated on me the whole time.

They weren't wasted days, though. I broke through the mana burn by the end of the first one, then started focusing on flexibility. My eyes recovered, and my eardrums healed until normal sounds sounded normal. One of the perks of being a delver was faster-than-normal healing, and I was determined to be at the top of my game when I got discharged.

Or at least, as close to it as I could get.

Tara was there to pick me up. She drove a two-door that could have been sporty if it wasn't obviously bottom of the line, but she had a car, and besides, she'd offered.

"I owe you big," I said as I dropped into the passenger's seat.

She grinned. "I'm going to wait until you're really back on your feet. Then you can pay me back."

"Just let me know when." I leaned back and stared out at Phoenix.

Like its namesake, it had risen from the ashes.

After the Portal Blitz two decades ago, when the delvers had cleared the city street by street over the hottest summer on record, there'd been almost nothing left of Phoenix. Most of the survivors had wanted to leave; it was hot, miserable, and dangerous. But there'd been a few who'd stayed. Then more. And it was all because of one reason.

Loop 303.

There'd been a time in Phoenix's history when its planners had been prepping for a huge expansion. They'd built a road in the middle of nowhere with intersections and stop lights. The 202 and 101 had long since been eaten by Phoenix's insatiable appetite for space, but they'd been forward-thinking with the 303. The road had been built, and the growth had moved toward it.

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So, after the Portal Blitz, there were hundreds of construction machines and millions of tons of concrete ready to be repurposed, and no growth.

Once again, a forward-thinker had chosen Loop 303 as their line in the sand. A huge line of concrete, rebar, and defiance all the way around Phoenix, with the road on the inside. Outside the wall was monster territory from a thousand uncleared portal breaks. But inside the massive barrier, Phoenix continued to exist.

It couldn't grow outward anymore, though. So it had to grow upward.

At least the building we lived in threw its shade onto the parking structure Tara stopped in. She walked with me until we got to my door, then said her goodbyes.

I opened my door.

The apartment was trashed—fast food wrappers, dirty clothes, and a dishwasher that was full but hadn't run. I sighed, kicked a pile of socks toward the laundry basket in the corner, and cleared a patch of floor in front of the couch that doubled as my bed. Jessie had let the basics fall through the cracks while I was gone, but that was…understandable, under the circumstances.

When I had a small, clear space, I pulled the strange core out of my pocket.

It was time.

I had a good idea of what to expect.

Skill merges were a lot like chemistry or alchemy, but in reverse. Add all the elements of a merge together through sheer grit and force of will, then empower the wanted parts with Mana and let the rest burn away to get a pure, distilled skill.

A Unique skill merge was a little different.

Other delvers had gotten bad skills or decided to merge their Uniques for a chance at more power. A surprising number didn't—even the S-Ranks. Most of the time, a Unique skill was worth way more than its rank showed, and a really good one would get the guilds' attention. But even so, there were enough duds that delvers had merged them before.

And, according to them, the experience was universal in only two respects. It was different every time, and it was universally difficult.

I'd been ready for that for a while, though. I popped an old mouthguard from my boxing days into my mouth, bit down on the stale, hard rubber, and stripped down to my shorts—just in case trying to merge Stormbreak was as tough on my body as some of the skill merges I'd read about. I'd already double-checked that my Mana and Stamina were both topped off.

Everything I was about to do was a risk. But I'd done everything I could to prepare for it, to mitigate what dangers I could, and to know, with as much certainty as I could, what I was doing.

Then, after making sure the floor was clear around me, I broke the core.

It melted into a puddle on the floor, the portal metal liquifying without producing any heat at all. The spark disappeared completely. I'd expected that, but even so, the moment of panic before I got myself under control was shocking.

I breathed, calmed myself, and got to work. I have five skills to merge with the D-Rank core, and I had to do it quickly—before my Stamina ran out. Worse, I had to start with Stormbreak. Technically, I could have started with any skill, but I wanted Stormbreak's traits to dominate the merged skill, not any of the others'.

The skill was a storm. Not a rainstorm, but the kind that ripped up from the south in late summer, filling the air with sheet lightning that turned the night to day over Phoenix and pushed walls of dust across Mesa. An out-of-control force of destruction no one could fight. All anyone could do was go inside and wait for the storm to pass.

I'd have to fight it the whole merge.

As I grabbed it with my mind and shoved it into the core puddle, my system went haywire. Static. Strange numbers and stranger symbols. Just like I'd suspected, the system itself didn't want me to merge these skills. I couldn't tell where my Stamina was; I needed to finish the merging before I ran out. And then I'd need enough mana to power the new skill. Merged skills were hungry—and thirsty.

The next skill was Mana Sense. I'd picked it from a list of similar skills; any of them could have done the job, but the way Stormbreak interacted with mana implied that an understanding of mana would be necessary to get the skill under control. If I was right, it—and most of the skills I'd be adding to the merge—would stabilize the final skill. If I was lucky, they'd stabilize the process as well. I added Mana Sense to the puddle, and its dark, furious clouds settled as a kaleidoscope of color washed over them.

Not much, but a little. And in the storm I was creating, any amount of calm helped.

Skill Control followed, then Arjun's Script. Another reinforcing element to keep the whole mixture from exploding during the second step, and the first of two structures to guide its creation. Arjun's Script had served me well; it had gotten me into enough E-Rank dungeons to finish my initial build, and into the D-Rank I'd needed for the core. I hoped the symbols that formed around the ever-collapsing pool of stormclouds would continue to serve me well in a new form.

My system made no sense. I felt exhausted, like I'd been sparring for hours. But it hadn't been that long, had it? What was my Stamina at? Did I have enough? I tried to check, but it said I had 10,000 Stamina, then negative twenty-five. Then 'Y-23.' So, I was running blind.

I couldn't go back now, though. One last skill. Tonya's Binding. Aside from Stormbreak, it was the most important to the merge, and I'd saved it for last because of that. Once I added it, the structure of the merged skill would be locked in place, and I could start crafting the details with Mana.

I reached for the chains in my mind. Tonya's Binding had always been about entrapment and restriction, at least as I'd used it. But chains weren't just for binding. They were also for connecting and supporting. It was this role I wanted them to take in the structure of my new skill.

Tonya's Binding clicked into place, and the structure was complete. A storm, bound in layers and ever-changing. It seemed small. Far smaller than I'd expected; it looked like a marble on the floor. I had no idea where the majority of the portal metal had gone, but inside the marble, a faint purple spark slowly came to life.

And my system popped back.

Stamina: 12/130, Mana: 143/200

An exceptional core has been used. Prepare yourself.

Prepare yourself? What did that mean?

Before I could so much as brace, the tiny storm exploded outward. It filled my studio apartment, and I jerked back suddenly. Something crunched under me; I hardly felt it, though. I stood up. The mountains west of Phoenix were jagged and inhospitable; I was on top of one, with no way down.

And all around me, the storm raged. Thunder shook me to the bone. Lightning arced across an endless sky, leaping from one cloud to another. I gasped for breath as wind ripped at my clothes and threw rain at my face like missiles. All around me was the storm; I stood at the center of an angry, furious tempest, and every bit of its fury crashed down on me.

I tried to weather the storm. Then I tried to rage against it, to fight it. Every ounce of energy, all of the frustration and anger I had, I used. But no matter how hard I fought, I couldn't fight outshout the thunder or outrace the wind. All I was accomplishing was…nothing.

And worse, the merge threatened to shatter.

I was losing it.

There was something here. Something I needed to learn—and until I learned it, I couldn't finish this merge.

So I kept fighting. But I started thinking. As lightning poured down around me, and I strained to hear over the howling wind and deafening thunder, I tried to understand what I needed to learn. What I was doing wrong. And eventually, it hit me.

Stormbreak. It had to be Stormbreak.

I didn't need to fight the storm. And I couldn't flee from it. I didn't want it gone; I wanted it under control.

I wanted a weapon, not a bomb.

That was why I'd bound the merge with Skill Control and Tonya's Binding—not so I could throw it away, but so I could use it. To hold it together in a single, controllable form. Now, I needed to create that form—that avenue for control.

A sword. The image appeared in my head before I could consciously decide on it.

I'd been a foil and epee fencer before Dad died and my system awakened. It was the first time I'd been able to take the battle trance and turn it into something constructive; before that, I'd been a schoolyard brawler. But fencing? Fencing was perfect. I could sink into that focused state, take hits and give them back, and let my instincts take over—but not too far.

No. Fencing required that my mind and instincts both be in tune. A sword would be the perfect manifestation of the storm's power.

The skill had to do more, though. A weapon and armor wouldn't be enough; I'd put too much effort into it to only manifest Stormbreak's power in such limited ways, and while Scripts and Bindings had been helpful for supporting others, I wanted the opportunity to support myself with them, too. I needed magic—even the limited placeholder of Scripts.

The storm began to shrink around me. My mana drained down as I pushed the dregs of it into the merge, and the marble I'd created from five skills and a strange core stabilized again. I took a deep breath and reached out to touch it; lightning arced from it to my finger, but it didn't hurt. It felt…right.

It entered my body just above my heart, and the system notification appeared.

Unique Skill Merged: Stormsteel Core

A storm rages inside of you, Kade Noelstra. It threatens to break free. Longs for battle. But through great effort, you have chained it and subjugated it. Now, bit by bit, you must harness its power. Through training, learn to manifest the storm as summoned and shaped weapons and armor using your mana, and walk the Stormsteel Path.

Merged Effects: 1. Create lightning-based Bindings and wind-based Scripts. 2. Summon and manifest a Stormsteel rapier and armor.

Upgrade Effects: 1. Each rank increases the maximum number of imprinted Scripts and Bindings. 2. Each rank increases the damage and toughness of manifested storm armor and weapons, and reduces their cumulative Mana costs. 3. Each rank increases your maximum Mana pool.

Exceptional Merge Effects: 1. Stormsteel Core will alter any and all further merges, creating opportunities for synergy between different merged skills.

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