The ruins of Korr-Vael were half-swallowed by the jungle. Trees had split its towers. Vines now wrapped around shattered crystal obelisks like constricting serpents. The air shimmered faintly, not with heat—but with residual ether distortion. This place hadn't been abandoned. It had been contained.
Kael stared up at the broken archway of what used to be an Arcalchemist's Atelier. A faint glyph still glowed above the entrance: a triangle within a circle, flanked by three weapon sigils—sword, grimoire, and spear. It pulsed softly, reacting to his presence.
"Yep," Iris muttered beside him. "That's cursed."
"You said this place would have what I need."
"I said it might," she corrected. "But only suicidal maniacs wander into sealed ruins without a team. Or armor. Or pants that aren't still damp from swampwater."
Kael stepped forward.
"Weapons call to me. This place... feels like it's whispering."
Iris rolled her eyes but followed, bow drawn. "If the walls start whispering anything lewd, I'm shooting something."
They entered.
The air grew cooler, crisper. Not from decay, but from static alchemic charge. Magic had long ago saturated the stones. In one corner, a shattered forge still hummed with dormant runes. On the walls, massive pipes fed into sealed arcane reactors, once used to fuse elemental essence into weaponry.
But Kael wasn't looking at the machinery.
He was following the hum.
The echo led him to a pedestal at the far end of the chamber. There, covered in dust, rested a grimoire.
It was unlike any he had seen. Its cover was blackened steel, etched with violet threading that formed alchemic circuits. No title. No clasps. But the air around it buzzed like trapped lightning.
"Careful," Iris warned. "A lot of these are booby-trapped. Or worse—bound to undead librarians."
Kael reached out—and the grimoire opened itself.
The room dimmed.
A voice echoed.
"Haaaaah… finally. Someone with fingers."
Kael flinched. "…Did the book just moan?"
"That's it. I'm out." Iris turned to leave.
"Wait!" Kael snapped. "It's not attacking."
The grimoire flipped its own pages, fluttering excitedly.
"Ohohoho. Been centuries since I've tasted new mana. Mmm. Yours is... rough. Untempered. Raw. I like it."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "Are you sentient?"
"Call me Volarus," the book replied, voice smooth and male, though with a bizarre smugness. "Third-generation etherborne alchemic core. I contain over 9,000 binding rituals, 73 weapon-forging blueprints, and at least four scandalous limericks about flamecasters. Want to hear one?"
"No," Kael and Iris said in unison.
Volarus chuckled. "Suit yourself."
Kael reached toward the page as a spellform began to take shape. But the moment his fingers touched the glyph, a surge of pain lanced through his palm. He staggered back, clutching his wrist.
"Ghh… it burned me?"
"You tried to access core data," Volarus chided. "You're not attuned yet. I'm bound by a seven-sigil synchronization sequence. Only Arcalchemists or… Echo-Bloods can force resonance."
Kael's gaze hardened.
"Then let's force it."
He knelt, placed both palms on the pages, and focused.
Not on magic, but on the weapon itself.
He didn't cast.
He listened.
The book shuddered under his touch. Glyphs burst to life across its open spread, forming a triangular ring of rotating sigils. Arcane letters realigned, as if rewriting themselves to Kael's identity.
Iris stepped back. "Kael… the room's responding."
The runes on the walls flickered to life. Pipes hissed. A dull tremor ran through the floor. The pedestal sank, lowering them into a subterranean vault bathed in violet-blue light.
"Oh," Volarus whispered. "You're not just Echo-Blood. You're Heirbound. You don't just hear weapons—you inherit their legacy."
Kael blinked. "Heir… what?"
Volarus flipped to a glowing page. Diagrams appeared—swords disassembling into elemental cores, then recombining into new forms. It wasn't just enchantment. It was transmutation of weapon identity.
Alchemy that rewrote what a weapon was.
"This," Volarus said, "is Arcalchemy—the original fusion of will, essence, and form. And now that you've unlocked me... we can begin."
Kael grinned faintly.
"Then teach me."
Later, after hours of training glyph sequences and translating combat blueprints, Iris flopped onto a smooth stone bench, exhausted.
Kael was still cross-legged, channeling mana into a projected schematic of a chained spear-scythe hybrid.
"You're gonna burn your brain out," she muttered.
"I'm close to replicating the spear's phase-shift grip."
"Great. Just don't phase-shift your pants again."
Kael paused. "You still going on about that?"
"Listen," she said, flicking a pebble at him. "I see one more muddy thigh flex, and I'm launching you into a tree. I'm seventeen. I have hormones."
Kael smirked. "That's the first time you've called yourself seventeen. I thought you were 'emotionally twenty' yesterday."
She stuck out her tongue.
Volarus giggled.
"Ohoho. I sense tension. Shall I list mating rituals of early Len'Carian hunters?"
"NO!" they both yelled.
Far away, in the silver towers of the Academia of Cael'Rai, a woman in a white coat opened a shimmering case.
Inside was a severed gauntlet still pulsing with corrupted ether.
She smiled.
"He found Volarus. Good. Let him grow. Let him remember what he was made for."