A few hours earlier.
Kai and Martin stared at each other across the replica throne room, the air thick with layered spellwork and floating runes that shifted like constellations.
Martin, whose body was still stone from the neck down, glared at him.
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
Kai casually shrugged, lifting a shoulder as if they were discussing lunch.
"I kid you not," he said dryly, tone so light it made Martin visibly tired of his entire existence.
Martin sighed, slow and sharp. "This is both incredible and incredibly stupid."
Kai snapped his fingers and a medical blood bag appeared in his palm, the tube swinging. He pierced it with a fang and started drinking as he walked toward the center of the room while drinking from the straw.
"Most great experiments," Kai said with that lazy, dangerous calm, "are conducted with at least a loose relationship to sanity."
On the floor, in the middle of a carefully drawn circle, the Leo Blade lay surrounded by crawling runes. They moved like living ink, orbiting it in tight, geometric paths.
Magic trembled through the room like pressure before a storm.
Martin looked at the circle and then at Kai. "Containment of essence is one thing. Conversion of its nature is another. You're talking about forcing god-touched metal to change its… laws."
Kai tilted his head, eyes flickering with interest.
"Essence can be contained, redirected, diluted and concentrated," he said. "Laws are just habits with better branding."
Martin gave him a flat look. "Cute. That doesn't answer the question of obedience."
Kai finished the bag, let it fall away into nothing, and crouched beside the Leo Blade.
"Obedience," he repeated. "That's the annoying bit."
He traced a line in the air; the runes shifted around the blade, adjusting, narrowing and compressing the space.
"This god," Kai went on, "isn't one that obeys. Not fear, not worship, not threats. Chaos beings don't respond to chains the way lesser things do. They delight in breaking them."
Martin shifted slightly on his stone pedestal with his hand eyes hooded.
"Then explain to me," he said slowly, "why you think this will work."
Kai rose to his feet.
"Because," he said, voice measured, "you don't make a chain for a thing like Raynard. You make… conditions. A cage that isn't a cage. A prison that's also a bargain. You construct the rules so that the only path left to him leads exactly where you want him to go… a sort of a binding law or a vow"
Martin's lip curled, amused despite himself. "So you're not trying to control the god. You're trying to control the options."
"Exactly." Kai gestured, and several diagrams on the walls slipped, overlapped, and merged. "Think of it like this: two structures with incompatible blueprints. You can't force one to obey the other without collapse, but you can overlap them. You make the framework: yours. You make the fuel: his."
Martin's eyes glinted. "You're talking about merging properties. Layering god-essence over an already existing construct. Let it keep its nature but redirect its application. Offensive power into… compliance."
"Close," Kai said. "Offensive power into enforced usage. He can rage, fight, resist, but all of that is still energy. Everything he does becomes input. The cage doesn't fight him. It feeds on him. The more he tries, the tighter reality sets."
Martin smiled faintly. "That… sounds familiar."
Kai shot him an amused look. "Please. I learned from the best mistakes."
"So," Martin pressed, "two objects. I am already very familiar with one but what if the l others… what, exactly?"
Kai glanced toward the second object resting further in the circle: small, inert, but wrapped in a secondary array of runes.
"Let's say it's something that can exist in both states," Kai replied. "World-bound and concept-bound. Material enough to hold form. Abstract enough to be tied to rules, not just space."
"In other words," Martin said, "if the Blade is the sword, that—" he nodded toward the other object "—is the scabbard."
Kai smirked. "More like the operating system. We're just installing a new executable and lying about what the hardware was built for."
The runes around the Leo Blade pulsed in slow waves. The entire room seemed to exhale.
Martin's gaze sharpened. "Your compromise structure is flawed," he remarked. "If the merging parameters aren't perfectly aligned, the Leo Blade's god-essence could destabilize the secondary object. Overlap becomes rejection. You get a magical implosion. Or worse, a sentient artifact that doesn't answer to you."
"Please," Kai murmured, "give me a little credit."
He lifted his hand.
A faint clicking sound cut through the air like a lock turning.
Both of them looked to the center.
The Leo Blade shuddered in and slowly lifted off the ground. Runes swarmed it, clinging to the metal like a storm of glyphs. The blade lengthened, stretched, then blurred, its edges flickering between too many shapes at once.
Martin's eyes widened. He leaned forward as much as stone allowed.
"Well," he breathed. "I'll admit. That is… interesting."
Kai tossed the now-empty blood bag away.
"Alright," he said lightly. "Phase one."
He held out his hand toward the levitating blade and began the first incantation with his voice low, each syllable sinking into the metal.
The Leo Blade trembled.
Cracks of light etched themselves across its surface, thin and branching like veins of lightning.
Then, with a sound like crystal screaming, the Leo Blade shattered.
Not in chunks or in shards.
But Into powder.
Glittering, silver-white dust hung suspended in the air, frozen in the shape the blade once held.
Kai didn't pause.
He moved seamlessly into the second part of the spell. The air cooled, charged with the clean, sharp tang of raw magic.
An indestructible object can be created through this spell by binding it to a source of strong and protective magic that is long-lasting.
His voice deepened, resonant, as he spoke:
"Vescaram Anta Intacurum,
Vescalis Dissendis Divinitum.
Ex Tutum Tatum, Dimentum Talos.
Dox Toxem, Dox Malum.
Dox Divinitum."
The powdered remains of the Leo Blade responded.
They stirred, swirled, broke shape and flowing like liquid metal. The dust streamed through the air in a spiraling dance, drawn not by gravity but by Kai's magical intention.
It moved toward the second object resting on the floor.
Martin watched, rapt.
The powder wrapped around it in slow, deliberate layers, coating every side, every edge, every smallest angle. It didn't just cling to it but it sank in, seeping through the surface as if the object were porous on a metaphysical level.
Runes flared, then vanished, leaving behind a faint glow that throbbed like a heartbeat.
Martin whispered, half to himself, half to Kai:
"Layered infusion without rupture. Sequential binding. You're not just coating it… you're rewriting its fundamental nature while preserving its conceptual axis."
His eyes were bright with horrified admiration.
"One wrong proportion and the Leo essence would have devoured the host matrix. It's… delicate and reckless."
Kai smiled faintly, eyes fixed on the process.
"Delicate is what separates art," he murmured, "from accidents."
The last of the powdered Leo Blade vanished into the object. The glow stabilized and the circle went still.
Kai stepped closer, studying it with quiet satisfaction.
"Well," he said. "One god-killing edge, successfully repurposed."
Martin stared at it, then at Kai.
"And you think this," he said slowly, "will hold the fox."
Kai's smile sharpened.
"Oh no," he replied. "This won't hold him."
He glanced up at the runes painted all over the walls and ceiling. The vast, intricate spell-web that tied his pocket realm, the Leo remnant and something far beyond all together.
"This," Kai said, "will make sure that when I drag him into the trap… every single thing he does only fuels it."
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