The rest of the day passed like a held breath.
I did not see Seraphine again. She remained in her office with the dwarf quartermaster and a rotating line of clerks, sealing letters, reallocating grain, and preparing the keep for a negotiation that would decide whether Blackthorn bled this winter. Every servant who passed me in the halls carried the same tight-lipped tension. They could feel the storm coming even if they did not know its shape.
My system tracked the hours with merciless clarity.
[Broken Shadow Seed – Integration: 96%]
[Full integration expected within the hour]
[Time until Warlord’s return: 2 days, 1 hour, 17 minutes]
[Host’s foundation hasImproved – Still critically insufficient against Sovereign-Class threat]
When night finally fell, I left the keep once more.
The lower markets were quieter than the previous night. Word of a fevered girl found unconscious in a tenement had already spread through certain corners of the district. People were more careful. Doors were barred earlier. The weak and the desperate had begun to hide deeper.
It did not matter.
My system found another signature within twenty minutes — a middle-aged man with a half-collapsed lung and a system so damaged it barely qualified as one. I followed him into the back room of a closed tannery, placed a hand on his chest while he begged me for coin, and took what I needed in silence.
[Third System Copy Successful] You are reading on g.com, the official source.
[New Module Acquired: Collapsed Iron Fragment]
[Abilities: Minor physical reinforcement, reduced pain sensation, severe stamina backlash]
[Integration time: 11 hours]
Three stolen systems now lived inside me. Flame. Shadow. Iron.
None of them were strong. Together, they formed something that had not existed in my body the night Kael first walked into the solar. I returned to the keep just before dawn, washed the smell of the lower city from my skin, and sat on the edge of my bed as the system delivered its latest assessment.
[Combined foundation has crossed the first threshold]
[New passive generated: Quiet Vessel]
[Effect: Host may now carry up to five low-rank system copies without immediate structural collapse]
[Warning: The qualitative gap between host and Warlord Kael Draven remains extreme]
I closed my eyes.
Seraphine’s final words from the morning returned unbidden.
What else had he left inside her?
A claim?
A promise?
Something that would make the coming negotiation even more dangerous than it already appeared?
My system offered no answer. It simply displayed the countdown in cold silver.
[Time remaining: 1 day, 14 hours, 03 minutes]
One day and fourteen hours until the warlord returned to the gates.
One day and fourteen hours until I would once again stand in the same room as the man who had forced me to watch my stepmother break.
I lay back on the bed, three stolen powers quietly burning under my ribs, and stared at the ceiling until the first gray light of morning touched the window.
Sleep, once again, did not come.