Eamon didn’t waste ti.
He tied his hair back, rolled up his sleeves, and let his fingers hover above the tools. Each one pulsed in a rhythm he didn’t understand, like they were alive, waiting for him to touch them. One looked like a hamr, but it had no weight. Another looked like a chisel, but it moved on its own, twisting slightly in the air.
He picked up the hamr. It settled in his hand, cold and quiet. The kind of quiet that ant it had seen more than it wanted to.
He looked at the broken shard again—spinning slowly above the forge, still glowing with the mory of what it had done. Of what it had failed to do.
Then he started.
The first hit wasn’t loud. It didn’t ring. It felt like cracking the surface of a dream. The shard rippled, not physically, but in mory—flashes of the fight, the scream that wasn’t sound, the eyes that didn’t blink, the girl bleeding in the alley, Cain’s voice yelling sothing, Mabel’s hands shaking—
He pushed past all of it.
Struck again.
The forge responded, lighting up in pulses of emotion. Not flas. Just... emotion. Rage. Regret. Loss.
It was like working with ghosts.
He didn’t know how long he kept at it. Ti didn’t move right here. There was no sun. No sky to track. Just the shifting world, the humming silence, and the forge.
The shard cracked open under the pressure of mory. Not broken—transford. From a weapon that rembered what it saw... into sothing that learned from it.
That was the first key.
He didn’t write it down. He didn’t need to. His hands rembered what his mind couldn’t explain. This wasn’t talwork. This was sothing deeper. Sothing between life and death.
Eamon shifted to the next tool. A scalpel of bone and ti. He used it to slice the shard’s edge—not physically, but spiritually. Stripping away the part that resisted. The part that feared failure.
He whispered as he worked—not prayers, not spells. Just thoughts. Quiet ones.
"She was seventeen. Had dreams. Didn’t even scream when it grabbed her."
He cut deeper.
"It didn’t kill her. Just... opened her. Like it wanted to see what was inside."
The shard glowed brighter.
"She didn’t deserve that."
His hands stopped shaking.
By the ti the first piece was done, it no longer looked like a shard. It looked like a truth carved into shape. Thin, black like obsidian, with veins of light moving through it. Not gold. Not silver. Just... light. Raw and searching.
Eamon let it hover beside the forge and started on the second.
Each new shard took more out of him.
Not energy. Not sweat. Just... him.
Every blow of the hamr pulled sothing loose. Every cut with the scalpel peeled a layer. Not skin. Not muscle.
History.
He lost count of how many pieces he made. Three? Five? Ten?
Each one was different.
One glowed with fury, the kind that made your chest ache.
Another humd like a lullaby, sad and still.
One bled when he touched it. Not blood. mory again. A mory of soone screaming for help too late.
And one was cold—so cold he nearly dropped it. A weapon made of guilt. The kind you never speak about.
At so point, soone ca.
He didn’t look up at first. Just kept working.
Then the voice spoke. Soft. Old. Genderless.
"You understand it more than you think."
Eamon looked up.
An angel stood at the edge of the platform. Not armored. Not glowing. Just wearing a robe that looked woven from night sky. A script angel, maybe. Holding a thin tablet made of smoke.
"You brought the blueprints?" Eamon asked.
The angel nodded. "Yes. But you’ve already deviated."
Eamon wiped his hands. "Not intentionally. It just... happened."
The angel studied the shards floating around the forge. "They’re different. Not just tools. They’re... judgnts."
Eamon’s eyes narrowed. "You said you wanted sothing that could kill it."
"We did. We do." The angel stepped forward, tablet floating beside them. "But these are more than weapons. These are truths made sharp. Are you sure you can handle what they’ll beco?"
Eamon looked at the shard that bled.
"No."
The angel didn’t press. They just left the tablet near the forge and disappeared like smoke in the wind.
Eamon didn’t touch the tablet. Not yet.
He wasn’t done.
The next shard ca harder. He had to pour a part of himself into the forge just to make it respond. He let it take his mories this ti. One specific one.
His mother’s face.
She was never part of the war. Never part of the monster stories. Just a woman. Warm hands. Long nights. Tired eyes.
She died screaming.
Not because of the creature. Because of a church fire. Lit by humans. The sa kind that prayed to Heaven and asked why it let the world rot.
He forged her mory into a blade. Pure white, with no edge. Just a shape. It humd with the kind of sorrow that made your chest cave in.
He didn’t na it.
Didn’t have to.
The forge slowed.
The air felt heavier now. Like the world itself was breathing with him.
Eamon leaned against the platform and finally looked at the tablet the angel left.
The blueprints shimred.
They were... ridiculous.
Parts of them looked like language. Others looked like sound. One section was written in heartbeat patterns. Another was just a tear, pressed between pages.
It was a map of how angels would’ve built the shard. Efficient. Clean. Without emotion.
Eamon shoved it aside.
He wasn’t building divine weapons.
He was building sothing dirty.
Sothing real.
Sothing that hurt back.
He reached for the next tool—sothing like a wrench made of wire and whisper. It adjusted resonance. The kind of thing that didn’t work in the real world. Here, though?
It was perfect.
He used it to tune the shards—one by one. So when they were used, they wouldn’t just kill. They’d remind the target what it was. What it had done.
mory was the forge.
But remorse was the fire.
He kept going.
Alone.
The forge, the shards, the silence.
He didn’t know when he’d see the others again. Didn’t know what wish he’d make. Didn’t even care anymore.
This wasn’t about a reward.
It was about building sothing that mattered.
Eamon picked up the bleeding shard. Stared into its pulse.
Then turned back to the forge.
And kept hamring.
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