Night had long since settled over the workshop, casting long shadows from flickering light panels across scattered tools and mech parts. Freddy had already left, the old book back in his arms, and Jean and Rennick sat on the couch, eating reheated stir-fry and rice from metal bowls.
Jean looked up between bites, squinting at his friend. "What's got you all spaced out, Boss? You've barely said ten words since reading that book."
Rennick blinked, pulled from his thoughts. He chewed slowly, then finally said, "Tomorrow, we start the mech design—"
Jean cut him off with a lazy flick of his spoon. "That's it? You've been brooding for hours over something I've been waiting all week for? Come on, boss. You're acting like you've never designed a mech before."
"I'm not nervous," Rennick said flatly, though his expression remained focused. "But this time, I want to do it differently. I want us to design this mech while keeping the Guardian's story in mind—everything from his rise to his fall, and how he rebuilt himself after losing it all."
Jean raised an eyebrow. "Wait, you're serious? You want us to base the design on a story?" He leaned back theatrically. "Boss… you're not getting into that voodoo nonsense from the galactic net, are you? Because next you'll be telling me mechs have souls."
A vein twitched on Rennick's temple. "Will you shut up and let me finish?"
Jean laughed, holding up his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright. Joking aside, why though? Why go through the trouble of adding lore to the design?"
Rennick exhaled and looking at him, eyes narrowing slightly. "You don't need to understand why. Just think of the story while you work, like getting inspired from the story. Keep the Guardian's journey in mind as you fine-tune the systems. That's all."
Jean tilted his head, skeptical—but not entirely dismissive. "Weird… but harmless, I guess. Fine, I'll give it a shot. But, I'll only do this until it does not interfere with the design process."
"As long as you take it seriously, that's enough."
A quiet lull fell over the workshop as they finished their meal. Soon after, Jean waved goodbye and left for the night, leaving Rennick alone under the humming lights. He sat in silence for a moment, then turned back to his terminal.
He opened his design suite and stared at the empty project file. Slowly, he typed in the name:
Tempered Path
A fitting name, he thought, for what this mech was meant to become.
He closed his eyes and breathed in, letting the story settle into his thoughts. The Guardian—Caelum—wasn't born a hero. He'd been a street rat, a scrapper with no name and no future until a retired soldier took him in and handed him a sword.
From there, every scar, every victory, every defeat carved something deeper into him—until the boy became a man, the man became a knight, and the knight became the bulwark of Westhaven.
But in the end, he couldn't protect what mattered most.
And yet, he didn't break. He didn't lash out. He changed. He shed the shield and forged himself into something sharper—not out of vengeance, but out of necessity. He became the sword that struck when no other defense remained. He became the path forward for those left behind.
The Tempered Path.
Rennick leaned forward, his fingers hovering over the controls. His mind raced—not with code or components, but with how to translate that journey into form. What would a mech forged in loss but reborn in resolve look like?
How could a mech teach its pilot the same lessons?
It couldn't be static. It couldn't coddle the pilot with automation or predictable handling. No, it had to challenge them—adapt to their improvements, but never carry them completely. Like Caelum's sword style, the mech needed to balance strength with restraint. Precision over brute force.
"How can I design a mech," he thought, "that helps its pilot grow… without doing the work for them?"
It wasn't enough to just slap parts together. If the mech was to embody the Guardian's legacy, its structure and software had to reflect that philosophy.
The feedback systems had to reward control.
The limb actuators had to allow grace as well as power.
The sensor suite had to demand situational awareness.
The targeting systems had to encourage mastery over reliance.
And the spiritual thread… the image of the Guardian—his path, his discipline, his grief-forged resolve—would have to be woven into part of the mech.
"This isn't just a variant," Rennick whispered to himself, the first lines of his schematic starting to form on the screen. "This is his second life."
Rennick chuckled softly at the thought, a breath of admiration slipping through his lips.
"His story… it's like a phoenix," he murmured, eyes reflecting the faint glow of the screen. "Rising from the ashes—reborn, not as what he once was, but as what he needed to become."
He leaned back, letting the imagery form clearly in his mind's eye. Caelum stood tall in the darkness, weathered knight's armor dulled by time and battle. A tattered cloak hung over his shoulders, frayed at the edges, bearing the faint insignia of a fallen city. His blade was simple—unadorned, practical—but its edge gleamed with relentless discipline. His eyes, sunken yet steady, held the weight of loss and the clarity of purpose.
A man who had learned that sometimes, the only way to protect the innocent… was to strike first.
Rennick stared at the empty design canvas on his terminal, the beginnings of a vision slowly unfurling across it. He could almost feel it—not just see the mech—but feel its stance, its balance, the way it would move with quiet grace before erupting in swift, decisive offense.
…
The next day, the workshop was abuzz with quiet determination. Rennick sat at his terminal, eyes scanning over the partially loaded model of the Westhaven Guardian. With each click, he began stripping it of its old roles—removing the thick, tanky outlines of a defensive knight—and reshaping it for something new: a swordsman.
The core frame would remain. It had to. But now, it would serve a different purpose.
"There won't be any problem keeping the internal frame, right?" Jean asked as he started modelling the replacement leg on his terminal.
"That's right," Rennick replied without glancing away from the screen. "It's a bit thicker than standard for an offensive loadout, sure—but with proper musculature, it'll work in our favor. A stronger stance. More grounding for high-torque maneuvers."
Jean nodded, already pulling up schematics for the ankle and knee joints.
Meanwhile, Rennick's focus narrowed. He'd moved past the subsystem routing and was now working on the artificial musculature. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the imagined image of Caelum—the tempered wanderer with a blade—blend with footage of real-world swordsman mechs: precision footwork, flexible torsos, arms that flowed like water but struck like iron.
Start with the legs, he reminded himself. As the legs were the most important part of a humanoid mech.
He began reinforcing the major joints, adding stress-absorbing buffers and layered control lines. The knees were recalibrated for more aggressive angle tolerances, while the ankles were tuned for directional shifts and lunging. The internal skeletal structure was subtly angled forward—just enough to give the stance a sense of motion even while still.
Next came the lower back and shoulders, where he wove alternating strands of synthetic muscle fiber in a crisscross pattern. It needed to twist and absorb force while remaining taut. The core musculature was treated similarly, designed with torque efficiency in mind—every degree of rotation counted in a sword clash.
Then finally—the arms.
Rennick took his time here. Starting from the shoulders, he layered and sculpted each artificial bundle like a craftsman binding cord to a sword hilt. The biceps and triceps were tuned for acceleration and deceleration, the elbows reinforced with impact buffers. The forearms received dense muscle groupings—more than usual—while the wrists and digits were refined for advanced micro-control.
"Grip strength... rotational momentum... recoil compensation," he muttered under his breath, manually adjusting the strength distribution charts.
It took them two whole days.
Two days of continuous iteration, simulation failures, manual tweaking, and recalibration. The musculature design consumed them, but by the end, a new physicality had emerged on the schematics. The old Guardian was gone. What stood in its place was something leaner, sharper—a blade waiting to be drawn.
While Rennick obsessed over the musculature, Jean worked on the torso, reconfiguring the engine, fuel cells, and power relay arrays to fit into the more agile layout. He rerouted the old reactor's mounting brackets, adjusting for better weight distribution, and ensured that every subsystem had thermal clearance from the heat vent upgrades.
They were nearing the finish line.
Rennick modeled the proto-head last. A sleek, minimal design—no bulky antennae or extravagant faceplates. Just a hardened visor with vigilant eyes glowing slightly behind them, angular and focused, with reinforced sensor housings tucked neatly behind armor flanges.
He stared at the near-complete model, catching his breath as the final lines of the internal architecture synced and locked into place.
Only one major task remained: the armor.
And with it, the final transformation of Caelum—from shield-bearer to swordmaster.