The next morning, Evelyn laid her spear across the table before either of them put on a coat.
The weapon took up most of the space between the plates they had already cleared. Its broad leaf-shaped blade had been wiped clean, the long shaft showed the dull wear of repeated handling, and the reinforced butt rested just short of the table’s edge. Nothing about it looked broken.
That was the problem. Yesterday, the returning patrol had carried enough damaged gear to show what repeated cold could do to equipment that still looked usable.
Snow sat beside Averik’s chair, watching Evelyn turn the spear a quarter turn under the morning light. Her ears moved when metal touched wood.
Evelyn’s fingers stopped near the fitting beneath the blade.
"Averik..." She looked at Snow, then back to him. "Corvin was the one who gave her to you when she was young, wasn’t he?"
"He was." Averik glanced at Snow.
She hesitated. "Do you think he could’ve known something was wrong with her? The Corruption, I mean. Maybe... maybe he gave her to you because of it?"
Averik leaned back in his chair.
Corvin had given him Snow. Roderic had later warned him not to trust the man who took his place. Later, the Blood Moon had turned Averik’s first Taming into a Corruption crisis centered on the same wolf. Put those facts beside each other and they looked ugly.
"Maybe," he said. "It fits badly enough that I’m not ignoring it. But, that doesn’t make it proof."
Evelyn lowered her gaze to Snow for a moment. The wolf had lost interest in the spear and was now staring at the empty plates instead.
"I know." Evelyn’s voice stayed soft. "I just keep thinking about what would’ve happened if your Bloodline hadn’t awakened."
"Then Snow and I might’ve had a much worse night," Averik said. Evelyn’s mouth tightened.
Averik reached across the table and caught her chin between his fingers before that thought could pull her any farther. Evelyn looked up at once.
"If Corvin knew what he was handing me," he said, "I’ll find out eventually. And when I do, he can pay for it himself. Until then, he gets suspicion. Nothing more."
Some of the tension left her face. Not relief exactly. She didn’t look as if she’d mistaken that promise for mercy.
"Would you tell me when you decide you have enough proof?" she asked. "I’d rather be beside you than hear about it afterward."
Averik held her gaze. "You’ll be there if I want you there."
Her expression softened immediately. "Then I’ll wait for you to decide."
Averik let go of her chin and stood. "Coat. Spear. We’re leaving."
"I’ll get them." Evelyn rose with him, a small warmth returning to her voice. "Give me a minute~"
Averik glanced toward the door. "Make it quick." Snow pushed to her feet the moment they moved toward it.
Averik looked at her. "Watch the house. Don’t cross the gate until we’re back."
Snow stared at him, then at the door, before lowering herself beside the hearth. The offense in the look would have been more convincing if she hadn’t obeyed immediately.
Averik pulled the door open. "Save that glare for whoever comes through it."
Evelyn hid a smile while she pulled on her coat.
By the time they crossed into District 1, the morning traffic inside Vardel had thickened. Carts rolled through rutted snow while workers moved timber, repaired clothing, sealed food crates, and pieces of equipment Averik couldn’t name from a glance.
Caedren met them inside the Unit 1 compound with a folded route sheet under one arm and a strip of dried meat between his teeth.
His eyes went to the spear. "You brought it."
Evelyn adjusted her grip on the shaft. "I am"
"Good." He bit off the end of the meat and pointed with the rest. "Workshop’s through there. Second door past storage. We’ve got two Architects working. One’s still low Sequence. The older man’s the one you want."
Averik glanced at the route sheet. "Busy?"
"Always." Caedren swallowed. "Which is why I’m giving you the door and not a tour."
Averik looked past him toward the workshop door. "Better." Caedren gave him the faintest look of approval, or amusement. It was difficult to tell which. "Thought you’d say that."
He was gone before they reached the workshop.
Heat hit Averik first when Evelyn opened the door, followed by metal, oil, scorched wood, and the dry mineral smell of stone dust. The room was broader than the quarantine chamber at the gate and far more crowded. Spears, axe heads, buckles, broken lamp housings, metal braces, lengths of wire, cracked plates, and half-finished pieces of equipment occupied racks and benches without making the place feel abandoned to clutter. Everything seemed to be waiting for a hand that knew why it had been kept.
A second Architect worked at the far bench with their back turned, fitting a small metal brace around a damaged housing. Nearer the center of the room, an older man looked up from a dismantled heater unit.
Gray had spread through his hair and close-cut beard, but his hands moved quickly when he set down a narrow tool. His eyes went past Averik to the spear almost immediately. "You’re the pair Caedren sent about a spear?"
"My spear," Evelyn said. "I need to know what long days outside will do to it before I trust it for Unit work."
The older man wiped his fingers on a cloth. "Put it here."
Evelyn laid the weapon across the cleared edge of his bench.
He didn’t touch the blade first. He took the shaft near the head, pressed a thumb against the metal socket, then moved down to the grip and finally the reinforced butt. He twisted the shaft, flexed the fitting, listened to a couple of faint clicks Averik barely caught, and frowned at nothing in particular.
"How long have you used it?" he asked without looking up.
Evelyn answered. "Long enough that I don’t want the balance changed unless it has to be."
That got a brief glance from him. "Yeah. People who don’t care about balance are usually asking me to fix a weapon they shouldn’t be using."
Averik rested a hand on the bench. "What’s wrong with this one?"
"Nothing yet." The Architect rolled the spear half a turn and tapped the fitting beneath the blade with one fingernail. "Steel’s serviceable. Shaft’s straight. Butt reinforcement is ugly but solid. The places that’ll annoy you are the joins, the grip, and anywhere meltwater gets in before it freezes again. You take this in and out of heated rooms long enough, moisture works into places you don’t see. Then it goes back outside and locks there."
He looked at Evelyn. "You already run Essence through it when you fight?"
"Of course." She touched the shaft near her usual forward grip. "I reinforce it when I need the shaft to take more force, and I carry Essence into the strike when it’s worth spending. Holy too, when I’m fighting something that needs it. Keeping ice out of the fittings isn’t worth feeding it all day."
The answer came quickly enough to make it sound like he’d had the same argument before. "Then I’m not replacing what you already do. I’m taking the dull work off you."
Averik looked over the racks behind him. Several pieces of equipment had been stripped to their frames. One spearhead had been cut away from a split socket. A leather grip hung open beside a tray of warped fasteners.
Averik nodded toward the weapon. "What can you do without turning her spear into another problem?"
The older man looked at him. "That’s a better question than asking what I can do."
He hooked a stool with his boot, sat, and pulled the spear closer. "Started as a Constructor, then an Artificer." He tapped the socket. "I can still build the pieces and give them a function. At Sequence 5, I can make the structure, the Essence feed, and the effect behave as one system."
Averik glanced at the old measuring tools hanging beside newer Essence-work instruments. "You did this before Awakening?"
"I worked as an architect before the apocalypse. I was young, but I knew structures and systems." The man tapped the spear socket. "That knowledge still matters. Essence doesn’t make a bad joint stop being bad."
Then he shrugged. "Doesn’t give me free metal or free Essence, either. I still need stock, room to work, and something the person carrying it can keep fed."
He set the cloth aside. "I’ve built a few guns too. They work fine. It’s the ammunition I hate. Every trigger pull burns a round somebody has to manufacture again. For most Unit work, we’re better off using weapons for long use, we can repair, recharge, and put back in the same hands tomorrow. And also, projectiles or raw physical attacks without essence won’t do much to them, especially devils. Even if they could, they’d just regenerate immediately. Yeah, same as those of us who’ve Awakened."
Averik knew the trade already. His father’s revolver was worth keeping, but every round came out of a reserve he couldn’t replace casually.
"Show me the choices," he said.
The Architect nodded toward a locked rack at the back of the room. "I can build her a proper artifact spear from better stock. The base would be stronger and the Essence channels cleaner, with more room to add functions later. It’ll also eat material I don’t replace easily and take a workshop slot I could use on several smaller jobs."
Averik tipped his chin toward the locked rack. "How much better?"
The Architect rubbed a thumb over the old socket. "Enough that you’d notice. Not enough to make this spear worthless."
Averik almost smiled. At least the man wasn’t trying to offer him great material by pretending the current weapon was trash.
"What about keeping this one?" he asked.
The older Architect pulled a piece of chalk from beside the bench and made three short marks on the wood beside the spear: one level with the head fitting, one below the grip, one near the butt.
"You could say the mechanism is almost the same as the anti-freezing artifact we use. I keep the weapon she knows. Replace the interfaces that’ll give us trouble. Then I give it a small intake and buffer. It pulls Essence from the air automatically when there’s enough around, stores it, and lays a thin coating over the spear when she starts the loop. A regulator keeps the draw steady."
Evelyn leaned slightly closer. "Would that change how it moves?"
"Not enough if I place the weight correctly. You’ll tell me if I’m wrong before you leave."
"And the coating?" Averik asked.
"Strengthens the weapon while it’s active. Carries Essence through the hit without making her spend her own reserve on that strike. More importantly for the cold, snow and ordinary ice have a harder time taking hold on a surface already carrying active Essence."
Averik’s gaze returned to the chalk marks. "How far does the buffer take?"
The Architect gave him a dry look. "Depends how hard she uses it."
Averik waited.
The man sighed through his nose. "Slow intake, small buffer. Leave it on a light coating and it’ll last. Push the reinforcement hard and you’ll empty it. If the air can’t replace what you’re spending, either wait or top it up directly."
That made sense. It also had failure points Averik could understand.
Averik tapped one of the chalk marks. "What happens if she puts Holy through it?"
The older man’s expression soured.
"Her Holy still goes through it if she’s feeding it. I’m not building anything that gets in the way of that." He tapped the marked fitting. "What I can’t give you is a Holy effect that lives in the spear and runs without her."
His mouth tightened. "I wish I’d awakened Holy Affinity. Then I could make artifacts with Holy effects myself. There are a lot of things in this fortress I’d build differently."
He nodded toward the far side of the workshop. "When something behaves strangely enough, I pull a Sage into the problem. This isn’t strange. It’s a spear that needs better internals."
Evelyn looked at Averik. "I like this one. If the refit keeps the balance close, I’d rather learn what it can do before we spend rare material replacing it."
His gaze dropped to the spear.
His Frost could keep ordinary ice off it whenever he was there. Evelyn already reinforced the weapon herself, could carry Holy through it when the fight called for it, or put Sentinel protection around it if something actually threatened the weapon. They all worked. None was a good reason to spend their attention on ordinary ice.
He wanted Evelyn dangerous without requiring his focus for every ordinary piece of field equipment, and making her burn Essence all day was stupid. His revolver already depended on ammunition he couldn’t replace casually. Putting the same weakness into her spear when a cheaper answer was sitting in front of him gained him nothing.
"Refit it," Averik said. "Keep the balance. Make the parts we expect to wear replaceable. If the system fails, I want the failure to cost a component, not the whole spear."
The older Architect’s eyes sharpened a little. "Now you’re speaking my language."
Evelyn smiled faintly. "Please keep the grip where it is if you can. I can adjust to a little weight, but I’d rather not relearn my reach for no reason."
"That won’t be a problem." The man looked at her hands, then the spear. "Show me your normal grip. Both positions you use most."
Evelyn did. He watched once, shifted one of his chalk marks, then called the other Architect over to hold the shaft while he checked clearance around Evelyn’s hands.
That was the last part Averik needed to watch. "When?" he asked.
The Architect glanced toward the benches waiting behind him. "Late afternoon if nobody brings me something on fire."
Averik glanced at the dismantled heater on the next bench. "Does that happen often?"
"Often enough that I stopped calling it interesting."
Averik left the spear with him.
When he and Evelyn returned late that afternoon, the weapon was waiting on the same central bench.
The hours between had changed the room more than the spear at first glance. The heater was gone. Cracked plates had disappeared from a rack. Someone had added more damaged buckles to a tray near the second Architect. Outside the workshop windows, the pale winter light had already begun to flatten toward evening.
Evelyn reached the spear before Averik did.
The modification was modest. New fitted collars sat where the Architect had marked the vulnerable points, and narrow inlaid channels ran between them without turning the shaft into a piece of jewelry. The grip remained where Evelyn expected it. Whatever had been added had been worked into the weapon instead of hung from it.
She lifted the spear. Averik watched her face, not the weapon, as she worked the point through a short sequence in the open space beside the bench, reversed the shaft, and settled into her usual grip. Her shoulders loosened.
"A little different," she said. "But not enough to fight me."
The older Architect folded his arms. "If you told me it felt exactly the same, I’d assume you weren’t paying attention."
Evelyn glanced toward Averik with the beginning of a smile. "I’d notice if someone ruined my spear."
"I know you would," Averik said. Her smile warmed.
The Architect pointed to a fitted section beneath the forward grip. "Give the buffer a little Essence through there. Don’t flood it."
Evelyn set her thumb against the fitting and did as he said.
For a moment, nothing visible happened.
Then her eyes narrowed. Averik saw the change in her grip before he saw anything on the spear.
"The loop took over," she said. "I stopped feeding it, and the coating’s still there."
The Architect nodded at the fitted section beneath her hand. "Buffer took the first charge. Regulator’s holding the flow."
Her fingers tightened once around the grip as if following the current through the shaft. The spearhead looked the same. That pleased Averik more than a bright display would have.
The older man set a scarred practice plate against the end of the bench. "Short thrust. Don’t try to kill my table."
Evelyn gave him a flat look, then stepped into the thrust.
The spearhead struck with a hard crack.
Impact knocked the plate against its brace. The point didn’t bite deeply. Evelyn drew the spear back and looked at the blade, then at her hand on the grip.
"I didn’t feed that strike." Evelyn looked from the point to the fitting beneath her hand. "The buffer carried it through without another push from me."
"That’s it." The Architect tapped the regulator housing. "The buffer pushed its own charge into the contact. Hit harder, spend more."
He took a shallow tray from beneath the bench. Packed snow and crusted ice filled it. He pressed wet snow and a hard piece of ice around the forward fitting, worked it against the metal for a few breaths, then let go.
The crust broke loose instead of clinging to the active surface. Water streaked the fitting, but nothing locked around it.
"Ordinary weather," the Architect said. "That’s what this solves. Don’t take it into a stronger Frost effect and come back complaining that I promised you immunity."
Evelyn rolled the spear once in her palm. "I know. Weather is one problem. Someone using Frost at me is another."
The Architect shoved the tray aside. "Right. Sorry."
Evelyn ran her thumb once over the grip. "If the buffer drops while I’m outside, I can recharge it directly, easy"
"Yes. Top it up when you have the chance. The intake will recover some on its own, but slowly."
"All right." She tested the balance once more, then turned to Averik. "Would you let me test it outside with you tomorrow?"
Averik watched the spear settle back into her grip. "That’s why we’re here."
The workshop door opened behind them.
Caedren stepped in, carrying a rolled map this time instead of a route sheet. His gaze went to Evelyn’s spear, then to the damp snow still sitting in the tray.
"Still in one piece after the bench?" he asked.
The older Architect snorted. "The bench wasn’t trying very hard."
"Gate team starts after sunrise tomorrow." Caedren looked at Averik. "I’m taking a preparation group through the outside lane. Get prepared."
Averik looked at Evelyn’s hands around the shaft. She had already settled into the new weight.
He met Caedren’s eyes. "We’ll be there."