Chapter 125: The Pact
A blood contract is not something you do lightly. It’s not something you do cheaply. And it’s not something you do in the ruins of a burning city unless every other option has already closed its door behind you.
"What do you mean, a blood contract?"
I had to ask, even knowing the answer. The choices were stacking against the possibilities.
Elisser reaches into her inventory and pulls out a stone. Blood-red. Bright like a fire star trapped inside glass. The light it throws off is too warm for its size.
A Blood Stone. Rank S.
I look at it. My stomach drops a floor.
"Boris. Get me somewhere to lay all this out."
Boris barks at a guard. They drag a slab of broken wall—a chunk of masonry the size of a trap door—and lean it flat between us. Improvised table.
Elisser lays the armor across the slab. Leather with plated scales of black abyssal metal. Light. Lighter than I expected for anything forged from a Rank A alloy. The scales overlap like fish skin—each one individually cut and fitted. Beside the armor she places a small dagger with a thin, clean blade.
I reach for the armor.
The cane cracks across my knuckles.
"Ow—son of a—
" "Pact first."
I swallow the rest of the sentence. Give her the look I save for people who hit me with blunt objects. She doesn’t blink.
"First you tell me where you got a Leviathan Blood Stone in the middle of this isolated desert."
Elisser changes.
The theater falls away. The posture—the cane-swinging, the yelling, the old woman running the room—drops for a second. Her gray eyes go deeper. Her hand tightens on the cane.
"A long time ago, I was here at the gate. Repairing some ballistae. And I saw a man trying to walk out into the desert alone."
She stops. Breathes.
"I tried to stop him. But he told me the greatest joy in his life was his son. And that his wife was expecting."
My father?
A deep silence settles between us. Nothing but the sound of the funeral pyre in the background and warped metal being pried out of rubble.
Elisser continues.
"If that were all, I wouldn’t remember. Everyone here has a wife or a son waiting for them back home. But I saw something in his eyes I hadn’t seen in years. A resolve. Sharp and clean. And then he gave me this—" she looks at the Blood Stone, "—to shut me up."
"So that’s why we found out days later... You’re impossible," Boris growls.
Elisser ignores Boris. "I yelled at him. Told him I didn’t need it. That he was being an idiot."
She wipes her face with the back of her hand. I can’t tell if it’s tears or sweat.
"Then he said, ’When you find someone who fills your heart with the same fire my family gives me, give it to them if you don’t want it.’ And he never came back. Isn’t it ironic? That person’s father was standing in front of me the whole time."
So it was him...
I stand still. The Blood Stone sits on the table between us, glowing with that warm light that doesn’t belong anywhere in this desert.
"There are too many questions without answers right now," I murmur.
"Forget the questions. Let’s do the contract, kid."
I let myself take one long breath.
A Blood Stone binds an item to its user—blood, class, and status, permanently. Extremely dangerous if executed carelessly with any item. If the item breaks after the pact, a piece of your soul cracks with it. Chronic pain. Attribute loss. In extreme cases, full class collapse.
"Wait. This is dangerous."
"You don’t trust my craft, boy?"
I look at the armor. Think about the Battle Ribbon Rhayne just stored in her inventory. If Elisser’s work were shoddy, I would have seen it in the Ribbon. I didn’t.
She’s good. She’s better than good.
And beyond that—the item was my father’s. He kept this stone for someone who deserved it. Elisser decided that someone is me. Refusing would insult both of them.
"All right. Let’s do it."
I extend my arm above the armor on the improvised table. Elisser holds the Blood Stone between us—between my outstretched forearm and the armor below. A vertical stack: armor, stone, arm.
Elisser concentrates. Her eyes close. Her bandaged hands grip the stone, fingers thin but locked steady. And the interior of the stone starts to darken. The light inside isn’t going out. It’s dying. Being consumed.
"Do it," she says.
I pick up the dagger. Breathe once. Cut the inside of my forearm.
Blood pours. It runs down my arm, hits the stone mid-fall, and drips onto the armor below. Red against the black scales, like ink being spilled on obsidian.
"Uncle does gross stuff, but this one’s extra."
I glance at Lola. Half a grin that doesn’t quite commit.
The magic starts.
The stone radiates a dark red light. Intense. The blood stops flowing—it doesn’t dry, doesn’t clot. It’s being pulled. Sucked into the stone and the armor as if both of them are drinking.
"Shit—" I grab my arm with the other hand. The suction pulls harder than I expected. My whole forearm is shaking.
"Focus, kid. You’re not losing an arm over a simple contract. Right?"
The pain starts. Not at the cut. In the bone. It travels down from the forearm to the elbow, climbs to the shoulder, and settles in my chest like a fist closing around my lung.
The armor on the table is changing. The black scales absorb the blood and their surface begins to pulse—once, twice—syncing to my heartbeat. Learning the rhythm. Deciding whether to accept me.
Oliver is watching from three feet away, both hands on his weapon, not because he thinks I’m in danger but because he doesn’t know what else to do with them. Rhayne has pulled Lola against her side, one hand over the kid’s eyes. Lola pushes the hand away.
The Blood Stone’s light intensifies. My vision darkens at the edges.
I grit my teeth. Close my eyes.
And let the contract do what it came to do.