The cold emanating from Silas Croft was not merely atmospheric; it was a spiritual weight, a pressure that seeped into the bones and froze the will. The faint, ethereal frost crawling along the silver head of his staff seemed to leach all warmth from the alley, turning the air sharp and brittle. In his presence, the distant screams and crackling fires felt like a world away, replaced by a silence more terrifying than any noise.
Aris's hand tightened around the Minoan seal stone. It was warm, a small, defiant sun against the unnatural chill. The ghost of the devoured thug hung in the air, a void of absence that was more shocking than any bloodstain. He had killed a man with a word. The knowledge sat like a shard of ice in his gut.
Elara moved instinctively, placing herself slightly in front of Aris, a gesture both protective and futile. "Croft," she said, her voice strained but steady. "This is beneath even you. Hunting us in the streets."
Croft's smile was a thin, bloodless line. "Hunting? No, my dear Dr. Vance. I am curating. The world is undergoing a… reassessment of value. I am merely ensuring the British Museum's collection remains preeminent." His glacial gaze slid back to Aris, pinning him in place. "And it seems our most overlooked asset has been hiding a remarkable talent. You didn't just authenticate the dagger, Dr. Thorne. You awakened it. And then you used its own name to turn it on its wielder. A brutal, but efficient, piece of work."
Aris said nothing. His mind was still a storm of dead languages and the echo of a man's dissolution. The 'Linguistic Osmosis' hummed in the back of his skull, a new, permanent layer to his consciousness. He could feel the history in the cobblestones beneath his feet, the faint whisper of Old English from the surrounding buildings. It was overwhelming.
"You felt it, didn't you?" Croft pressed, taking another step closer. The frost on the ground crackled towards their feet. "The cost. The spiritual burden. To wield an artifact's true power is to shoulder a piece of its history. Its pain, its violence, its sorrow. That little trick with the dagger… it will have left a mark on you. A debt to the past."
Aris's jaw tightened. He had felt it—a hollow, ravenous echo where the word "Ashmol" had taken root in his soul.
"What do you want?" Aris managed, his voice rough.
"You," Croft stated simply. "Your… catalog. You see things. You don't just feel power, you read it. You are a librarian in an age where everyone else is a barbarian smashing open the shelves. With you, I don't need to hoard every trinket. I can find the right key for the right lock." He gestured with his staff towards Elara. "And you, Doctor, will continue your work on metallic resonance. Your expertise will be invaluable in forging new… arrangements."
"Go to hell," Elara spat, her fists clenching at her sides.
Croft sighed, a theatrical sound of disappointment. "A predictable, and unwise, response." He raised his staff an inch from the ground. The cold intensified, a physical force that made Aris's teeth ache and stole the breath from his lungs. A visible mist began to form around them, and the moisture in the air crystallized on their clothes and hair.
"Let me demonstrate the alternative to cooperation," Croft said softly. The frost on the ground surged forward, not as ice, but as tendrils of palpable, soul-numbing cold that snaked around their ankles, holding them fast. It wasn't a physical binding, but a spiritual one—a deep, lethargic despair that whispered of giving up, of surrendering to the endless winter.
Aris struggled, but his limbs felt heavy, his thoughts sluggish. He could feel the heat being drawn from his body. Elara gasped, her face paling, her vibrant energy seeming to dim.
No. The thought was a spark in the freezing dark. He couldn't fight this cold with a potter's steady hands or a linguist's dead words. He fumbled in his pocket, his numb fingers brushing past the inert porcelain shard and closing around the final object he'd grabbed from the basement: the small, rusty "Gutenberg-era Printing Press Screw Plate."
He focused, his mind screaming against the encroaching frost.
[Artifact: Gutenberg-era Printing Press Screw Plate (c. 1450 CE).]
[Condition: Poor. Physical Integrity: 22%.]
[Spiritual Integrity: 18%.]
[Latent Skill Identified: 'Replication (D-tier)' - Allows for the low-fidelity copying of simple spiritual imprints.]
[Assimilate Skill? Y/N]
There was no time for restoration, no time for finesse. He had to take it raw, as he had with the linguistics. He chose Y.
A different kind of pain lanced through him—not the splitting headache of information, but the grinding, mechanical ache of repetition. He felt the ghost of a thousand turns of a screw, the press of identical pages, the monotonous, world-changing act of duplication. It was a simpler, cruder skill, but it filled him with a stubborn, industrial strength.
He looked at Croft, at the confident, cruel smile. He then looked at Elara, saw the ice forming on her lashes, the light in her grey eyes guttering. A reckless, desperate plan formed.
He couldn't fight the cold. But he could replicate its opposite.
With his free hand, he reached out and grabbed Elara's wrist. Her skin was like marble. He poured his will, the raw, unrefined power of the 'Replication' skill, not into an object, but into the memory of a feeling. He focused on the single, blazing point of warmth he had felt in the last hour—the searing, life-affirming heat of her kiss in the stairwell.
He channeled the memory of her lips on his, the pressure of her body, the shocking, defiant warmth that had pushed back the entire darkness of the collapsing world. He used the 'Replication' skill to copy that feeling, that spiritual resonance, and he pushed it into her.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, a faint, golden glow emanated from where his hand gripped her wrist. It was weak, sputtering, a candle against a blizzard, but it was real. A pocket of warmth bloomed around their connected hands, pushing back the immediate, soul-crushing chill. The frost on Elara's lashes melted, and she drew in a sharp, shuddering breath, her eyes flying open to meet his, wide with shock and a dawning, radiant understanding.
Croft's smile vanished. His eyes narrowed, the glacial calm replaced by a spark of furious intrigue. "Fascinating," he hissed. "You're not just a librarian. You're an illuminator."
The distraction was all they needed. The binding cold had weakened just enough. With a shared, wordless glance, Aris and Elara wrenched their feet free from the spiritual frost and stumbled backwards, out of the direct aura of Croft's staff.
"An intriguing first lesson, Dr. Thorne!" Croft called out, not giving chase, but watching them with the keen interest of a scientist observing a new specimen. "But remember the debt! The past always collects! And I will be seeing you both very soon!"
They didn't wait to hear more. They turned and ran, fleeing down the alley, hand in hand, the phantom warmth of his replicated kiss still a tangible shield against the night's chill. They ran until their lungs burned and the sound of Croft's voice was lost to the wind, finally collapsing, breathless and trembling, in the deep, concealing shadow of the ancient Roman wall.
They were safe, for now. But as Aris leaned against the cold, ancient stone, feeling the new, grinding ache of the 'Replication' skill in his bones and the hollow echo of the dagger's hunger in his soul, he knew Croft was right. He had incurred a debt. And the weight of the past was only just beginning to press down upon him. The warmth of Elara's hand in his was the only thing that felt real, the only thing that stood between him and the yawning abyss of the artifacts' accumulated sorrow. He had saved them, but the cost of his new power was already etched into his very spirit.