"…That blade," the skull said. "Should not be here."
Dusk's lips parted before he consciously decided to speak.
"What do you mean?"
The basin did not answer.
The wind did not shift.
The floating debris did not tremble in warning.
The skull gave him nothing.
Silence pooled between them, thick as the dark surface below.
He stood at the lip of the depression, boots planted on ashen stone that felt brittle beneath his weight. The stone was pale, almost bleached, its surface flaking in thin powder that clung to the leather of his boots.
It did not feel ancient.
It felt emptied.
Across the basin, the sabre remained where it had been—driven through the crown of a skull no larger than a tall man's torso. A meter and a half, perhaps. Not monumental. Not mythic.
Just large enough to remind him it had once belonged to something that did not belong here either.
The thickened surface below reflected the sky imperfectly. The dark above rippled faintly across it, distorted by a viscosity too heavy to be water. The reflection lagged, a fraction delayed, as though memory itself moved slower in this place.
Then the smell reached him again.
Iron, dulled by time.
Wet mineral.
And beneath it, something faintly sweet—decay stripped of its violence, reduced to a quiet persistence that refused to leave.
Bone fragments floated in the basin. Ribs curved like broken smiles. Vertebrae rolled gently against one another with soft, muted clicks. Shards of skull turned lazily in the sluggish liquid, some polished smooth, others jagged and raw.
Nothing splashed.
Nothing disturbed the surface beyond the smallest tremors.
He shifted his weight.
Leave it.
He could turn back. The ruin did not bar his path. The tower still loomed somewhere beyond this collapsed geometry. The basin was not a gate.
It was a choice.
The skull murmured.
"It is not meant for you."
Its voice did not echo. It leaked.
Dusk's eyes remained on the blade.
"Nothing here is."
He stepped forward.
Not onto the basin.
Onto bone.
A rib fragment close to the edge bore his weight with a hollow creak. The viscous surface beneath it trembled, but did not swallow. He adjusted instinctively, telekinetic threads tightening around his ankles and spine.
They felt thinner.
Not broken.
Just… diluted.
He ignored it.
Another step. A vertebra. Then a flat shard of something that might once have been a shoulder blade.
Each landing was measured. Controlled. The smallest possible force transferred downward. His movements were economical, almost surgical. He did not trust the surface. He did not trust the bones.
He did not trust the blade.
The floating debris above drifted slightly as he moved deeper into the basin's center. Not dramatically. Not in reaction.
Just aligning.
His telekinetic sense brushed outward automatically, mapping weight, pressure, resistance.
And near the sabre—
It blurred.
Like static creeping into a signal.
He paused on a fragment no wider than his boot.
Extended his threads deliberately.
They reached.
They thinned.
The closer they drifted toward the blade, the less precise they felt. Not snapped. Not cut.
Muted.
His control fuzzed at the edges. Fine adjustments dissolved into approximation.
He retracted the threads.
Extended them again.
The same result.
Dusk paused for a brief moment.
He stepped again.
Closer.
The skull beneath the sabre became clearer with proximity. The bone was not polished. It was scarred. Hairline fractures spidered outward from the point where the blade entered. The surface bore shallow grooves, as if something had scraped against it repeatedly before the final strike.
The sabre itself remained utterly without ornament. No inscription. No flare at the guard. The hilt was wrapped in dark material that did not reflect light. The blade's edge seemed slightly misaligned with reality, its outline occasionally thinning, then sharpening again.
Incomplete.
Like a thought interrupted mid-sentence.
He landed on the rim of the skull.
It shifted slightly under his weight, sinking perhaps a centimeter deeper into the viscous surface. The basin accepted the change without protest.
He stood above the blade now.
Close enough to see the fine grain of the metal.
Close enough to feel the air change.
It was colder here.
Not in temperature.
In density.
The space around the sabre felt… reduced.
His telekinetic threads contracted involuntarily, hugging closer to his body as though instinctively avoiding extension.
He tested them once more.
Sent a thin filament toward the hilt.
It blurred halfway.
Lost coherence.
He could still feel it.
But not command it precisely.
Erasure.
Not of matter.
Of intent.
The skull's voice came again, softer this time.
"It does not like being touched."
That made sense.
The thinning.
The distortion.
The refusal of his control to fully exist near it.
Dusk lowered himself carefully until both boots rested fully atop the skull's crown.
He felt it then.
The difference.
Usually, even when still, his telekinesis hummed faintly in the background. A constant presence. A quiet reinforcement at joints and spine. A subtle tension that kept the world from pushing too hard against him.
Here—
It quieted.
Not gone.
But suppressed.
The hum diminished into something distant, like hearing your own pulse underwater.
His body felt heavier.
Gravity felt honest.
For the first time since awakening in this place, his balance relied entirely on muscle and bone.
No invisible correction.
No silent support.
Just flesh.
It was… disorienting.
Not frightening.
Just raw.
He inhaled slowly.
The smell of iron felt sharper up close. The faint sweetness beneath it clung to the back of his throat. The air seemed reluctant to move, thick around his lungs.
He looked down at the hilt.
His missing hand ached faintly in phantom protest.
He ignored that too.
He did not reach with telekinesis this time.
He let the threads retract fully, accepting their reduced state rather than fighting it.
Then he bent slightly.
And closed his remaining hand around the hilt.
The reaction was immediate.
Not explosive.
Not dramatic.
The thin hum inside his head collapsed into near silence.
His telekinetic field did not vanish entirely—but it thinned to a threadbare presence, distant and restrained. As if someone had placed a ceiling above his will and lowered it without warning.
His spine felt unguarded.
His joints unassisted.
His body… unreinforced.
The blade did not warm.
Did not pulse.
It simply rested in his grip, matte and indifferent.
For a heartbeat, he considered letting go.
Returning to the version of himself that was stronger—augmented, extended, reinforced.
He did not.
He tightened his grip instead.
The basin trembled faintly beneath him.
Above, floating debris shifted a fraction.
He pulled.
The sabre slid free of the skull with a muted resistance. No grinding. No dramatic crack.
Just a slow, deliberate release.
The skull beneath his boots dipped slightly deeper into the viscous surface, relieved of the pressure pinning it in place.
Dusk straightened.
The blade felt balanced.
Not heavy.
Not light.
Precise.
He held it at his side.
Telekinesis whispered faintly at the edge of perception—still there, but restrained, like a limb bound too tightly.
He flexed his fingers.
No surge of power followed.
No rush.
Only absence.
A translucent window surfaced before his eyes.
-----------------------
In the drowned basin of bone, a blade is reclaimed.
What was nailed into death now rests in living flesh. The steel remembers the wound that birthed it.
Where it passes, intention thins. Where it lingers, will erodes.
You have obtained an aspirant(D)-ranked Fragment : Somnolemt Wrath.
------------------------
No celebration.
No praise.
Just acknowledgment.
His gaze lingered on the phrase.
Will erodes.
He exhaled through his nose.
Of course.
He tested the blade.
A single, controlled swing through the air.
It made no sound.
But the space it passed through felt… thinner.
As though something had been removed without spectacle.
Not cut.
Subtracted.
He felt it in the subtle resistance of the atmosphere, in the way his perception hesitated half a fraction too long before catching up.
"You accept it," the skull said quietly. "Though it thins you."
Dusk's eyes remained forward.
"I accept what remains."
The telekinetic threads around him remained diminished.
He could still sense them.
Still command them.
But their range felt shortened. Their precision dulled near the blade.
A trade.
He turned carefully atop the skull, adjusting without invisible correction. His balance wavered a fraction before stabilizing through muscle alone.
The world felt heavier.
More honest.
He stepped from the skull onto a floating rib fragment.
No telekinetic cushioning.
Just a controlled landing.
The bone dipped.
Held.
He did not fall.
The basin remained quiet behind him.
The sabre hung at his side, wrong and incomplete.
The floating debris above drifted slightly out of alignment, as though something had been removed from their center.
He did not look back.
The blade did not feel like victory.
It felt like contamination.
Not of the world.
Of him.
And he carried it anyway.
==================
Yo.
It's your author again.
Another off-schedule drop — as mentioned before. Once my national exams are over, updates will return to a consistent and stable rhythm.
Until then, take this as momentum.
If you have feedback, feel free to leave a comment. I read everything. And if you're enjoying the story, consider adding it to your library — it helps more than you think.
If you want an overall explanation of where this novel and the MC are heading, check my rating comment. I laid it out there.
Enjoy.