Chương 84: Chapter 71 – Binding the Fragments

Cade crouched and picked up one of the scattered fragments, turning it over in his hand. The piece was dull white, its edges jagged where it had broken apart, yet it felt heavier than it should have.

"Is this the same shell?" Cade asked, glancing up at Vorduun.

"The one I used against Brahm?"

"It is," Vorduun replied. Cade frowned, looking back down at the fragment.

"I thought you… I don't know, dissolved it or something." Vorduun's ember-lit eyes flickered faintly.

"Nothing so crude," he said.

"I merely changed its phase." Cade blinked.

"…You're going to have to explain that at some point."

"You will understand in time." That wasn't reassuring. Cade huffed but didn't press further. Instead, his attention shifted as Vorduun's presence changed. Through his [Essence Sight], Cade saw Vorduun's core pulse and a surge of brilliant white essence flowed outward through his channels, flooding into his shell. The pearlescent surface lit from within, faint lines of power tracing across the surface. As the light spread, Vorduun spoke.

"Defense is not an afterthought," he said, voice calm and steady.

"It is not something one turns to only when pressed." The ash around them stirred faintly as if responding to his words.

"My kind walks the path of desolation," Vorduun continued.

"We burn. We consume. We reduce rampant uncontrolled life to pure essence. But the world does not always yield so easily." Cade listened, still watching the glow within the shell.

"The frogs cultivate life endlessly," Vorduun said.

"They create, abandon, and create again. From their excess, strange forms emerge. Creatures with no place in the natural order. Some are weak and easily consumed, but others are not."

"We encounter them in the depths of the jungle," Vorduun continued.

"Even one who walks the path of desolation may be struck by unexpected dangers." The glow within his shell dimmed slightly.

"And in those moments," he said, "it is not your flame that saves you. It is your shell. Many of my kind still stand because their shell endured." Silence settled between them for a moment until Vorduun's gaze shifted to the fragment in Cade's hand.

"Grasp it properly," he said. Cade adjusted his grip, holding the piece more firmly. He looked back at Vorduun, questioning.

"Before, you merely borrowed that shell. It belonged to one who has long since returned to the Cycle. Now," Vorduun continued, "you will make it your own." Cade's brow furrowed slightly.

"How?"

"Connect to it," Vorduun said simply.

"Reach into it with your essence and fill it until the fragment can take no more." Cade hesitated for only a moment before focusing inward. The steady flow of essence within his channels responded immediately as his will guided a stream outward, directing it into the fragment in his hand. At first, nothing happened. This wasn't like circulating essence through his own body.

It felt foreign and awkward, like guiding the metal loop through one of those carnival wire games where the slightest mistake made everything jolt and buzz. He pushed harder and as the essence surged into the fragment— Crack. Cade flinched as a faint fracture spread along its surface.

"Too much," Vorduun said calmly.

"You are not flooding a river. You are simply filling the existing channels, taking them over with your own essence." Cade took a breath and tried again. This time, he fed the essence in slower. Carefully. Letting it seep into the fragment instead of forcing it. This attempt went better but the flow stalled halfway through. Cade narrowed his eyes as he focused on seeing the flow of essence in the fragment. It wasn't just one pathway.

There were multiple, each with different depths and branching out in different directions.

"Focus," Vorduun said.

"Do not divide your attention. Expand it to encompass both the details and the whole." Cade thought he understood what the old tortoise meant. He exhaled slowly and activated [Hyperfocused Meditation]. The world narrowed. Everything outside the fragment in his hand faded into the background as his awareness collapsed to only him and the fragment of shell. The pathways inside the shell became clearer—more defined. A complex, branching network that required precision and control rather than simply brute force.

Cade adjusted. Instead of pushing essence in all at once, he guided smaller streams into different points, adjusting the flow as needed. Some areas required more. Others less. Too much, and it cracked. Too little, and the essence stagnated. It was like solving a puzzle. He failed again and again but he didn't give up. Each time, a slight miscalculation caused another crack to appear or disrupted the flow of essence into the fragment. But each time he learned something and slowly improved.

The flows stabilized and the pathways filled. His control sharpened as his mind adapted to the structure of the shell's channels. Time passed but Cade was too entrenched in what he was doing to notice until eventually everything he had been building towards clicked together. His own essence filled the fragment completely, flowing through every pathway and holding steady. The moment the final pathway stabilized, the fragment changed.

Its dull gray exterior gave way to a subtle, pearlescent luster, the surface catching the light in shifting hues.

"I—" he started, then grinned.

"I did it." He looked up and realized the sky had darkened. Behind him, faint plumes of ash rose in the distance as the Ashen Front continued its advance, turning the jungle into white ruin. In front of him, Vorduun sat exactly where he had been, unmoving.

"Well done," the Duke said.

"You have bound your first fragment." Cade looked back down at the piece in his hand. It felt different now. Connected to him in a way it hadn't been before. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Vorduun's gaze shifted down to the ground.

"Now, fill the rest," he said. Cade followed his gaze. There were a lot of fragments. Easily a hundred. His smile faded.

"…You're kidding."

"You will fill them all," Vorduun said calmly. Cade groaned, dragging a hand down his face.

"At this rate, we're going to be here for days."

"There is a faster method," Vorduun said. Cade perked up slightly.

"Great. Let's do that."

"I could fuse the fragments to your body," Vorduun said.

"Permanently. It would grant you a proper shell, but until you learned to control it, the flow of essence through it would be difficult to manage." Cade stared at him, then let out a breath.

"Yeah… hard pass. Humans aren't really built for the whole 'permanent shell on their back' thing. No offense." Vorduun huffed.

"The original method is more difficult, but it is more beneficial in the long run. Besides, we have time." Cade glanced out toward the distant Ashen Front.

"Don't you need to, I don't know… go back and lead the front?"

"They will manage," Vorduun said.

"Brahm will not act out again. And we will rejoin them when you are finished." That wasn't entirely comforting. Cade looked down at the fragment in his hand, then back at the dozens scattered across the ground. He sighed.

"… This is going to take a while." Without another word he picked up the next fragment and got to work. Initially, he approached each one the same way he had the first—careful, deliberate, feeding his essence into the aged pathways while navigating their internal structure. Some responded quickly. Those pieces seemed almost eager, their channels simple, their resistance minimal. The essence slid into place, settled, and held with only minor adjustments.

After each successful attempt, the shell fragment regained some of its lost luster, the dull gray surface giving way to faint, shimmering pearlescent hues. Others… Cade frowned as one fragment in his hand pushed back. The pathways inside felt warped, tangled in ways that didn't align with how his essence wanted to move. Every attempt to fill it caused the flow to destabilize, forcing his essence back out as if rejecting him entirely.

"Come on…" he muttered under his breath. He adjusted. Slowed the flow. Redirected and tried again. It cracked. Cade exhaled sharply and set it aside, picking up another. Time passed. With [Hyperfocused Meditation] active, the world narrowed to the task at hand. Each fragment became its own problem—its own puzzle to solve. His thoughts compressed, sharpened, and refined into pure function. Analyze the fragment. Adjust his flow of essence. Fill the channels until they were completely full. Again. And again.

And again. Gradually, the pile of untouched fragments shrank. Some went quickly. Others took multiple attempts. A few forced him to stop entirely, recalibrate, and approach from a different angle before they would accept his essence and bind to him. But he didn't stop. He didn't even think about stopping. Didn't think about anything beyond the next fragment in his hand.

Days passed but Cade didn't notice the shifting of light across the sky or the distant rumble of the Ashen Front as it advanced further into the jungle. His attention was fully focused on filling the fragments. Until— Cade guided the final stream of essence into the last fragment, carefully threading it through the remaining pathways. It resisted at first, as many had, but his control held firm. He adjusted the flow, split it, redirected it, and it settled. The fragment filled completely.

Cade exhaled and, upon seeing that he had finished filling every fragment, he released his [Hyperfocused Meditation] skill. Pain followed immediately. A sharp, pounding pressure erupted behind his eyes, spreading through his skull like a sudden migraine. He groaned and clutched his head, the backlash hitting all at once after being suppressed for so long.

"Fuck…" He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to breathe through it. Slowly, the pain dulled from a sharp spike to a heavy throb. As the worst of it faded, a thought pushed through the ache. He hadn't suffered this kind of backlash when he used the skill during his body reforging in the Stormsap Crucible. Back then, he had pushed himself further than this—far further—and yet he didn't remember the same pounding pain afterward. Was it because the crucible's lightning had been flooding through him at the time?

Because his body had been in the middle of being remade? Or had the sheer intensity of everything else simply drowned the backlash out? After a few moments, Cade opened his eyes again and saw how different his surroundings looked. Everything was white. Ash stretched as far as he could see. The dense jungle that had once surrounded them was gone, reduced entirely to powdery ash. Only Vorduun remained unchanged, sitting in front of him in a meditative posture, eyes closed as if he hadn't moved at all.

Cade glanced up. The sun was high in the sky.

"…How long was I out?" he muttered and received no answer. Cade rubbed his temples, the headache still lingering, and looked down at the fragments scattered around him. All of them were filled now. Every single one.

"…Okay," he said quietly.

"Now what?" Vorduun hadn't said what came next and Cade wasn't about to interrupt him. So instead he picked up one of the fragments and turned it over in his hand. In his essence sight, he could clearly see his own essence threaded through it, filling every pathway. It was his now, he even felt a slight connection to each fragment scattered around him.

"So what am I supposed to do with you?" he muttered. Cade shifted slightly and pressed the fragment against his forearm, testing to see if it would stick to his skin. It slid off immediately. He tried again, this time holding it in place while pushing a bit of his will into it. It slid off again, no different than before. He tried his shoulder. His chest. Even briefly attempted to balance it against his upper back. Yet every time, the result was the same. The fragment just fell to the ground.

Cade frowned deeper, glancing at the pile around him.

"There's no way I just spent… however long that was just to make some connections to old shell fragments." He picked up a second fragment and tried aligning it with the first. Then a third. Then a fourth. Soon he was sorting through the fragments like pieces of a broken puzzle, rotating them in his hands and checking which jagged edges fit together.

"I see you are already moving on to the next step," a gravelly voice answered. Cade flinched slightly and looked up. Vorduun was watching him. Cade glanced back down at the poorly constructed puzzle, then back up.

"…I was… uhh… experimenting." The Duke's gaze drifted over the fragments, inspecting them briefly.

"You have completed the task," he said. Cade straightened slightly.

"Yeah. I think so."

"And it only took you three days." Cade blinked.

"…What?"

"Three days," Vorduun repeated.

"No," he said immediately.

"There's no way."

"You did not stop until now," Vorduun said.

"Your dedication and commitment to the task was remarkable." Cade's expression shifted.

"Right…" he muttered.

"My [Hyperfocused Meditation] skill does have a side effect of losing track of time." Vorduun's expression remained neutral.

"You completed the task," he said.

"That is what matters."

"…Wait. I haven't eaten or drank anything while sitting in what is basically a desert. Why am I not even remotely hungry or thirsty right now?" Vorduun chuckled softly.

"Because you no longer rely solely on such things," he said. Cade looked at him with a confused expression on his face.

"Your body was purified and transformed during your baptism," Vorduun continued.

"It can draw sustenance from essence in the environment, just as it can from food."

"So I've just been running off essence this whole time?" he said as he gestured vaguely at himself.

"Yes." Cade leaned back slightly, staring at the sky.

"…Huh." He thought back to his time in the Stormsap Crucible. He had spent a week there reforging his body but didn't consume one bit of food or water there either.

"That explains a lot actually." He exhaled slowly, then pushed himself upright.

"Okay," he said, brushing ash off his bare legs.

"So what's next?"

"To wield the shell again," the Duke said, "you must bring it together." Cade glanced down at the scattered fragments.

"You have filled each piece with your essence," Vorduun said.

"Now you will use that essence—and your will—to reunite them. Fuse the fragments back together to form a complete whole shell once again."