"Why do you think the instructors haven't said anything about our armors?" His tone was half suspicion, half confusion, like the silence around the subject unnerved him more than any reprimand might have. Vaeliyan asked, his gaze heavy as if he already knew the question would not have an easy answer. "I know they're the new generation, which makes sense that they wouldn't know that. But you'd think they'd wonder why our armors looked the way they did. Especially Lambert. This is her pet project, her baby. It makes no sense that they haven't." He dragged a hand over his face, frustration leaking through the edges of his voice.

Varnai sat curled on the stool, arms tight around her knees, chin resting lightly on the ridge of bone. She didn't look at him when she answered, but her voice carried the clarity of someone who had also been turning this question over. "Yeah. You get what I'm saying, but you'd probably want to talk to Chime about that. She's Lambert's apprentice, and she's the one who has to deal with the little details. She would know if Lambert's been tracking something." Her eyes flicked up briefly, then fell again to her knees.

He shifted and gave a short shrug, his hand running across the edge of the counter as if searching for something solid to ground himself. "I can only imagine it's because these were experimental armor sets. This generation of armor is literally the only ones who have it. So, they probably don't know that they're linked to our soul skills. They might have just assumed that they had something to do with our DNA when they were creating them. They always said the armor was a reflection of our genetic patterning, but if that's true, then why do they match what we see inside ourselves?" He leaned forward, his voice taut, as if daring her to contradict him.

He pressed his elbows against his thighs, staring at the floor like the answer might appear there if he looked long enough. "Remember when they told us the armors are the closest anyone has ever come to recreating nanites?" His voice carried a sharp edge, like he was drawing a connection he wasn't sure he should even be saying aloud. He let the words hang, testing her reaction.

She nodded slowly, tilting her head with deliberate thought. "Yeah, I remember. But what are you getting at? Because right now it sounds like you're trying to walk yourself into something you don't want confirmed."

He shrugged, one shoulder jerking upward, tension bunched and awkward. "I don't know. I just think that… so, nanites make up fragments and fragments have micro markers that indicate what they do, right?" His eyes narrowed, voice dropping lower, as if quieter words could protect him from the weight of his own suspicions.

She gave a careful nod, not interrupting. Her eyes narrowed slightly, attentive, lips pressed into a thin line that suggested she was following his trail even if she hated where it led.

He continued, leaning further into the thought. "We know that soul skills are what are stored in a fragment if something has it. So, do you think that is why the armors, which are basically clones of us, are made to look like our soul skill? Because if that is the case, that's not our DNA, is it? That's something else shaping them, something deeper. The armor isn't echoing our blood; it's echoing our monsters."

Varnai tilted her head and finally looked at him, face caught between curiosity and concern. "Do you think the nanites are merged with our DNA now? That would explain the resemblance, but it also means something far more invasive. It would mean the soul skill itself is etched into us on a level we can't peel away. It wouldn't just be reflection. It would be rewriting."

He blew out a slow breath, shoulders sagging under the weight of her words. "I have no idea but I want to know. We could always ask. I'm sure Lambert doesn't sleep, but I'm willing to give her more of my sweet, sweet red juice if that's what it takes." His attempt at levity only partly covered the unease vibrating beneath his words.

Varnai let out a laugh, quick and sharp, like air escaping from a bottle. "Yeah. She would probably say it was for the process." Her lips twisted, and her eyes narrowed playfully as she reached out and mimed tilting an invisible cup against his arm. "As she tried to drink it from your veins." Her attempt at humor was a shield, but not one that held long.

He barked out a humorless snort, shaking his head. "Don't. Don't tempt her. I already think she'd try it if she thought it would help her research."

She met his eyes again, sharper this time, all humor drained. "If the nanites are linked to our fragments, then that changes everything for us. It makes the armor less like a tool and more like a tag. If someone figures out how to read those markers, they can know what you are before you speak. They can know how you break. They can know how to break you. Imagine what that means if an enemy ever gets access to the readouts."

The words dropped like stones into his chest. He sat back, face tightening, jaw locking. "That is the worst part. Not that the Nine could use it. Not that a House might try to buy it. It would be worse if someone in the Citadel could read us like a ledger. We are already exposed enough. If we're tagged like cattle, then there's no way to fight clean."

She held his gaze, her voice low and steady, her chin lifting in defiance of the thought. "Which is why we do not ask right now."

His brow furrowed, the lines deep. "Why not? If it's that serious, why not drag it out into the open before someone else does?"

She uncurled her arms slowly, voice firm but calm, carrying the authority of someone who had thought this through more than once. "Because we have that class with the High Imperator tomorrow. If we push at the armors now, the entire instructor corps will descend on the house to see what the hells is going on. Nobody will sleep. It will be a full kerfuffle, and you will not be allowed to leave your rooms without three instructors and a scribe watching you. It would be chaos dressed up as discipline."

He gave a dry, reluctant laugh that faded quickly. "So timing matters."

"Timing always matters," she said, tone clipped, each word precise. "It's not just about what you want to know. It's about when it's safe to ask, and when you can't afford to ask at all."

He rubbed his hands together, restless energy leaking through his posture. "Maybe Velrock has some of the incense. Maybe you could ask him for a small favor."

"Couldn't you just get a cookie from Imujin?" she questioned, raising her brows. "Didn't he give you one before? That would be easier than sneaking incense."

He nodded once, his mouth twisting. "Yeah. But he won't give it to me unless the other apprentices are there. He says it's some sort of bonding ritual. And right now, I don't want to sit through a ritual. I want answers. I don't want ceremony, I want truth."

Varnai shifted, expression easing into something that almost looked like patience. She stretched her legs out slowly, tapping one bare foot against the floor in a steady rhythm. "Then we wait. We learn what we can without jolting the whole house awake. We keep what we found between us unless the answer is small enough not to set off a line of inquiries like tinder. Once we start that fire, it won't stop burning."

He let the words settle, then exhaled hard, the sound harsh in the still kitchen. "Fine. But I still want to know. I don't want this to vanish into silence."

"So do I," she admitted after a pause, her tone softer but no less certain. "But not tonight. Tonight, we let it rest before it swallows us."

He watched her, searching for even a flicker of doubt, but she gave him none. The bond with the others tugged faintly at the edge of his thoughts, a constant reminder of duty and fear and the cold pull of timing. Finally, he pushed himself off the stool, standing only to pace a few steps and then stop again, hands clenching and unclenching. He lingered in the kitchen, staring at the counter, his mind roaring but his body trapped in stillness. He wanted to act, to test, to demand, but instead he stood there in the dark with only Varnai's steady presence keeping him from pushing too far.

Varnai leaned forward, voice deliberately firm, sharper than before. "If you actually ask Imujin later, I will make you sign something that says you will not go diving into yourself by trying to suicide yourself to do it. I mean it. No reckless plunges into whatever abyss waits inside you."

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He managed a small smile, the kind that barely curled his mouth, but the sincerity behind it carried. "Deal." He let the word fall between them like a truce neither wanted but both needed.

The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was thick, pressing, filled with the weight of unanswered questions and the steady beat of restraint. They sat in it together, knowing this wasn't the end of the conversation, only a pause until the next inevitable step forced its way into the open.

Vaeliyan sat down at his workbench, setting out a sheet and picking up a pencil. He was about to start sketching a blueprint for what he wanted, lines already forming in his mind, when he stopped short. Like an idiot, he had forgotten that he had a skill that could do this far better than his clumsy diagrams. He frowned and tapped the pencil against the wood, once, twice, letting the habit steady him, then let out a slow breath and set the tip to the page without moving it. He couldn't pull the skill up the way he once could. It was a passive now, always on, humming below the surface like a second set of senses he did not have to name. Even if he couldn't call it forth on command, he could still remember the exact explanation of what it could do, word for word, and the memory alone shifted how his hands wanted to move.

Living Framework (Passive): Evolved from Crafting. Blueprint recognition is no longer summoned but constant. Materials reveal their seams, stress lines, and balance points the instant they are handled. Faults show themselves as clearly as cracks in glass, pressure paths as visibly as joints under strain. Assembly follows instinct. Parts slide into place as though guided, weight distributes along the correct channels before collapse begins. Disassembly yields clean stock, ordered and ready. Building is no longer trial, but reflex: design lives with the work, flowing through every motion.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the tools he had already laid out, letting his eyes pass over each one in turn. He didn't need a drawing to tell him what to do anymore. The design was already alive in his hands, written into the grain of the wood, the edges of the metal, the way weight wanted to sit if he let it. He could feel how a joint would seat, how a fastener would bite, how a curve would take load and release it. All he had to do was begin, yet he did not move. He let the stillness hold for another breath and listened to the way his mind arranged the work without him forcing it.

What to build, he wondered for himself. He wasn't sure anymore. He had thought he knew what he wanted, but then the conversation with Varnai had knocked the thought off its rails and it had not found its way back. Every time he reached for it, it slipped, as if it preferred to live half-formed rather than be named. Maybe he could upgrade the Umbrella. That had been his first instinct, probably. He wasn't sure how or why, only that pushing the design further felt like it could make sense if he was patient. He could turn it into a blade, maybe. Each spoke becoming a sharpened edge when it was closed, the whole thing compressing into something that could cut, then opening again into what it already was. The thought lingered and he let it, testing angles in his head, testing the way a spine might run through the center. He pulled up the image, a mental design taking form, and it did look good. Promising, even. He could see the lockup, the catch, the rotation, the way the hand would seat. But he knew he was missing too many of the materials he would need for a construction that ambitious. He was not going to begin something only to stop halfway because the stock was wrong. The idea had weight, but not tonight.

The Emperor's voice pressed through memory: he should get over his fear of blades. The Umbrella, though, was the weapon he carried only when he enjoyed himself, and he knew it. It was a habit and a joke and a comfort, a thing he used when he let himself play. A toy more than a partner. If he made it into a sword, would that be a real step forward, or would it turn the fear into a showpiece he could pretend was growth. He shook his head and let the mental blueprint fall apart on purpose. No. The Emperor had not told him to dress the fear as pleasure. He had told him to overcome it. He might build the sword when it meant something, but not tonight, not like this, not because it was clever.

The thought of the Emperor did what it needed to do and pulled his focus back into a cleaner line. He let the abandoned pieces drift and shaped a new plan in his mind that did not fight him. The blueprint rose sharp and clear, snapping into place with the ease that came when he stopped forcing it. He let a smile touch his mouth without showing teeth, and he rested his hands flat on the table to feel the small tremor in his fingers settle. He did not need to sketch the first stroke. He could if he wanted, but he did not need to. The work would come the moment he chose to pick anything up.

Then, unbidden, his thoughts moved to the Yellow Jacket. The jacket was bound to his Legion armor. That was a fact, not an idea. What if he made a mod for it. What would the armor become when he shifted back from Warren to Vaeliyan. What would it become if that link enforced itself in a way he had not planned. He held the questions and did not answer them. The possibilities spiraled through his head, not wild, just many, each one leading to another small change he could already feel in his hands. He sat at his workbench and kept still while the work inside him continued, quiet and exact, until he had the shape of what he would do next and the patience to wait for the right moment to do it.

Vaeliyan did end up staying up all night, hunched at the forge long after the others had turned in. The tools never stopped moving in his hands, metal clinking and scraping, sparks snapping, the rhythm carrying him deeper until he no longer noticed the passage of time. By the time morning came and the rest of the house stirred awake, they could feel the weight of his exhaustion pressing against the bond, a heavy drag that clung to him and tugged at their own thoughts. His focus was frayed, his body stiff from stillness, and yet his mind still circled the designs he refused to let go of.

Then came the sudden spike, he popped a handful of stims, dry-swallowed them, and the effect rippled out almost instantly. His body didn't change, he no longer suffered fatigue the way normal people did, but his thoughts sharpened with an artificial edge. The haze clouding his concentration snapped apart, replaced with a wired clarity that buzzed through his head. They all felt it through the bond: a rush of alertness that wasn't natural, the kind that narrowed focus too tightly and made the edges of thought cut harder than they should. It wasn't rest, not even close, but with the weight of everything piling on him and the pressure of what they all had to face, none of them could fault the choice. At least he had been doing something productive with his sleepless hours, or so they assumed, since no one could make sense of the blur of his work.

Sylen walked over and, without hesitation, grabbed him directly from the forge. She didn't speak at first, just reached down and lifted him bodily away from the bench as if he weighed nothing. He had been too deep inside the work to notice anyone gathering. His body twisted on instinct, arm pulling back, ready to strike at whatever dared drag him away. The bond spiked with the flash of violence before his eyes cleared and he recognized her. His expression shifted from hard-edged aggression to sheepish confusion in the span of a heartbeat. He realized what had happened, he had slipped into one of those states again where nothing existed beyond the piece in front of him, the kind of focus that turned everything else into background noise.

"Oh," he muttered, blinking hard, forcing the forge-haze to clear. His voice was hoarse and uneven. "Is it time to go to class now?"

"Yeah," Sylen said, steadying him and setting him back on his feet. "And you need a shower first. So, we're doing that, and then we're going." Her tone was firm, but the grip on his arm wasn't unkind.

He didn't fight her on it. He rubbed a hand over his face, shoulders sagging under the strain of hours locked in one place. His words carried the same bone-deep fatigue. "Can somebody make me some pancakes while I'm in there? Because I'm a lot hungrier than I thought I was." His tone was flat, but the request was genuine, almost childlike in its simplicity.

"I got some in the synth right now!" Jurpat called over from the kitchen, his voice muted by noise of Bastard, Styll and Momo devouring their breakfast.

"Awesome. Thank you," Vaeliyan replied, already turning toward the hall. His steps were deliberate but restless, mind still buzzing too fast to let him be calm.

The shower was quick but sharp enough to cut away the forge haze clinging to him. He let the water run over him until the steam filled his lungs and forced him fully back into the present. When he emerged, hair still damp and sticking to his temples, a plate of pancakes waited for him, steaming, golden, and heavier than he expected. He ate fast, the food disappearing in steady bites until he realized the hunger had been deeper than he'd admitted. The others felt the slow return of balance through the bond: jittery but steadier, wired but holding.

After breakfast, he gathered his things, pulled on what he needed for the day, and fell into step with the rest. They gathered together at the door, the estate behind them already humming with the memory of his restless night. With shoulders squared and the faint smell of machine old still clinging to him, Vaeliyan stepped out with them into the morning light, and together they set off for class.

As they stepped off the pad, they saw a young man standing in the courtyard of the Citadel. The red walls loomed tall around him, carved statues lining the walkways like silent sentinels. Red grass shimmered with the lightest hint of dew, each blade glistening in the early glow. He tilted his face toward the rising sun, black hair flowing in the gentle breeze, a figure caught in quiet reverie.

Then he turned, and his smile broke across his face like it could fracture light itself, dazzling and sharp as the sun's rays glinted against it. For a moment the courtyard felt brighter for his presence alone. But as his eyes landed on the group emerging from the pad, the expression faltered. His smile fell away, confusion hardening across his features as he froze in place, staring at them as though these were not the people he had expected to see.

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