Soul Forged

The buzzing filled Abeni's closed eyes. At first it came as a single line of noise, like an old television left on static. Then it multiplied, sound arriving from every direction at once, filling the space behind her eyelids with vibration.This is what K9 meant, she thought. The specters that gave territories form, their essence humming through reality's fabric like strings in an impossible instrument.Takeshi and Hiroki could hear it too now - their senses finally attuned to the frequency of wrongness that permeated this place. But for Abeni, eyes shut against the fluorescent glare, the sound transformed into something more.Each buzz carried texture, weight, meaning. The noises bounced off each other like beads of mercury, joining and separating in patterns that began to make a terrible kind of sense. Individual threads of sound wove together in her mind, building pictures from pure vibration.The pushing and pulling of energy, the tension between forces, the pulse of power through unseen channels - it all crystallized into a visual network behind her closed eyes. The territory's true form revealed itself not in light or shadow, but in symphony.She could see it now: the web of reality itself, stretched and distorted into this prison of eternal work. Each thread hummed with its own note in the horrible chorus.K9's choice made brutal sense - train them in whispering not just as a skill, but as survival. In this twisted space where their own Wraiths felt distant, muffled, learning to whisper was like learning to breathe underwater before drowning.Hiroki and Takeshi sat cross-legged on bathroom tile that might have been clean once, their essences flickering as they strained to hear what Abeni was beginning to see. Each bathroom break became a lesson in reaching across the void to touch what had been stolen from them.Reconnect with your Wraiths, K9 had said, his wisp dancing through the fluorescent light, and you'll have a chance at breaking free. Plus, - that knowing smile - teaching you gives our resident monster a chance to practice.It was efficient, in that ruthless way K9 approached everything. Train them to reclaim their stolen bonds while honing Abeni's rare talent. Each lesson served multiple purposes, like a knife that could cut in several directions at once.Hiroki sat with his usual restless energy barely contained, essence simmering beneath his skin. K9 watched him struggle with the delicate art of listening - like asking a blast furnace to whisper."Forgers," K9 mused, his wisp curling thoughtfully, "they're usually about as subtle as an explosion. Especially ones like you, kid. Your essence can burn other essence - most Wraiths sense that and run the other way."Yet there he sat, eyes closed in concentration, picking up the chaotic symphony of corrupted emotions that filled this place. Not just hearing it, but understanding it as music rather than noise.Impossible, K9's wisp seemed to hum. Beautiful."Focus," he instructed, watching Hiroki's essence flicker like a candle fighting wind. "All those sounds - find the one that's yours. The one that's been calling since you walked in." His voice dropped lower. "It's bound to your soul. Find it, and those flames might answer again."Takeshi observed from his own bathroom, perfect posture maintained even in meditation. A bastard noble, yes, but K9 had seen enough runts of prestigious litters to recognize the hunger in him. The need to prove something. Usually, that's where the real talent hid. And the boy was sure talented.In the strange light of the bathroom sanctuary, Takeshi's eyes opened with recognition. Among the chaos of whispered voices - a choir of the damned and displaced - one voice rang clear. Stoic. Familiar. His lips curved into a smile that hadn't been manufactured by this place.With a gesture refined by years of practice he couldn't quite remember, he called out a name that felt like coming home: "Umbrel."K9's knowing smile widened as the shadowy Wraith materialized beside its master. "You almost went rogue, you little kid," Umbrel's voice carried fond irritation."Sorry about that," Takeshi's perfect posture somehow softened without actually changing."It's fine," Umbrel settled into its familiar place at Takeshi's shoulder. "Seems the effort sharpened your ears, child."It was true - the territory's chorus had become crystal clear. As a Conductor, Takeshi's newfound ability to hear arcane essence with such precision put him in rare company. He couldn't touch the maelstrom directly, but awareness alone was a weapon few possessed.Across impossible space, other reunions played out. Arkan's sarcastic drawl filled Hiroki's bathroom with welcome heat. Lady's refined presence brought purple light to Abeni's sanctuary. With each connection restored, their borrowed weapons returned - gifts from before this twisted place had tried to remake them."Now," K9's burnout affect cracked with genuine anticipation, "we learn to forge. To transform essence into steel."The bathroom's fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped thoughts, casting three identical yet separate spaces in sickly illumination. Steam rose from corners where it shouldn't - there were no pipes here, no real plumbing, just the territory's approximation of what bathrooms should be. Yet heat gathered, drawn by their combined essence, making the mirrors fog with impossible condensation.K9 brought his hands together, and shaping his fingers in multiple arrangements that looked like he was weaving a sign, like something ancient, that Abeni asked him what he wasdoing, and K9, whose wisp had begun to to trail a veil of shadow around them, encircling them in it, said that it was an old sealing technique of ancient soul smiths. It was called the crucible pot.The crucible pot gathered rogue essence into it. It was a territory of some kind but different. Here the purpose was to help a fledgling soul smith reshape their soul according to their desire. It was heavy handed, crude, and he did not tell them this, but it was dangerous since the pressure inside would have been so intense, it could break one into pieces.But K9 was no longer holding back on these children. They had a glimmer in them that he had not seen anywhere else, and they were the reason he did not regret coming here after the long stretch of time that he had been here.Men like him, men in the Obsidian cult, latch themselves on to precarious situations because they believed that it would spawn a rare gem. He had initially infiltrated this place because he received word about an unusual territory set up in a factory, when he broke into the space, he marveled at the intricacy, the level of power it took to set up, but more so about the fact that the person who set it up was completely new to this and so he could not control it efficiently.He stayed because he wanted to study it. The Crimson hand had sent multiple soul smiths into the space, because they too were just ruthless and knew a gem was lingering nearby. These smiths were seasoned, not exactly high ranked, but they knew their stuff. Yet they were immediately subsumed by the place and it didn't take long for them to be 'fired'.That was fine, he stayed and he watched. And at some point, the wielder of this space had noticed him too. It was interesting that way. He wanted to see this gem get sharper, and gleam brighter.Yet, not too long after, the crimson hand would send in three soul smiths. Young children. He remembered thinking about the hypocrisy of it all. All those words they would use to proclaim about the grand ambition of securing a safe and nurturing path only for them to send children into the grinder.But there was something to these kids. They were not swallowed by the space immediately. They were unique. Now he knew why. He was going to sharpen them, down his own path, that vow he made then and there. Until they were strong enough to survive the storm that was coming, that endless night, he vowed that he would bind them to the obsidian cult.K9 sat on his usual windowsill, shadow wisp trailing the blackness that enveloped them and dancing through the steam. His burnout affect had slipped entirely now, replaced by something older, more serious. A teacher's face, though not necessarily a kind one."Forging," he said, voice carrying across three spaces at once, "isn't about hammers and anvils. That's just metaphor. What we're really talking about is giving shape to need.""Everyone thinks it's about power," K9's wisp curled through the steam like punctuation. "How much essence you can gather, how strongly you can shape it. But that's backward." He gestured at the fog-heavy air. "Power without purpose is just noise."The fluorescent lights caught each student's essence differently - Hiroki's heat making shadows dance, Takeshi's gravity bending light in subtle ways, Abeni's purple aura turning the steam into something almost alive."What you're really looking for," K9 continued, "is a room inside yourself. A space where everything you are, everything you need, everything you're afraid to want - it all comes together." His voice dropped lower. "Some call it the soul's forge. The place where desire becomes real."The steam thickened, as if the very air responded to his words. In their separate yet connected spaces, each student felt something shift - not in the bathroom's physical space, but somewhere deeper."Close your eyes," K9 instructed. "Find that room."The steam pressed against Hiroki's closed eyes, but the darkness behind them began to take shape. Heat rolled through him, not the usual simmer under his skin, but something deeper - a warmth that felt like memory.There, Arkan's voice echoed. Can you see it?In Takeshi's space, the air grew heavy, but not with his usual gravitational force. This weight carried intention, drawing him down and in, past the perfect posture and calculated grace, to something that felt like truth.Abeni's purple essence swirled through her closed eyes like invitation. The territory's pressure lightened, just for a moment, showing her a door she hadn't known was there."That's it," K9's voice seemed to come from very far away. "The room's always been there. Waiting. Everyone's looks different, feels different. Because everyone's need is different."The fluorescent lights buzzed a strange harmony as three students found their way deeper, past the territory's lies, past their own pretenses, to spaces that felt both foreign and achingly familiar.Time compressed in Hiroki's forge-space like metal under heat. Seconds stretched, folded back on themselves, each moment heavy with the weight of creation. This wasn't just visualization - his body felt every phantom hammer strike, every pulse of fire through his essence."This is why they were called Forgers first," K9's voice seemed to echo from the walls themselves. "Why we're all still called Soul Smiths, even those who never make weapons."Sweat beaded on Hiroki's real body, sitting on bathroom tile, while his inner self stood before flames that could reshape reality. Each breath came harder, like the air itself had turned to molten metal."Because everything about power," K9 continued, "starts with learning to remake yourself."The heat in Hiroki's forge-room built like a star being born, pressure and possibility becoming indistinguishable from each other. This was what it meant to give shape to need - to take everything you are and put it under the hammer.Takeshi's forge felt like standing in the eye of a storm. Gravity pulled from every direction - not crushing, but compressing. Refining. His essence, usually so precisely controlled, condensed under pressures that had nothing to do with physical weight."Soul Smithing isn't just about making weapons," K9's voice drifted through the maelstrom. "It's about understanding that everything - power, emotion, will - can be forged into something new."In the real bathroom, Takeshi's perfect posture finally cracked, shoulders bowing under forces only he could feel. Pressure built against his skin, inside his lungs, behind his eyes. Creation, he was learning, demanded more than precision."The first Forgers learned this," K9 continued. "That to shape power, you first have to let it shape you."In Abeni's forge, space itself seemed to breathe with emotion. Her purple essence didn't burn like Hiroki's or compress like Takeshi's - it pulsed, each wave carrying echoes of every connection she'd ever made or broken or yearned for."Some forges are quieter," K9's voice rippled through her space. "But quiet doesn't mean gentle."On the bathroom floor, Abeni's hands trembled. Creating connections, she was learning, meant first feeling their absence. Each pulse of her essence brought another memory - friends lost, bonds severed, the constant performance of perfect amiability that drew people close to her but somehow also alienated her from everyone else."The strongest chains," K9 said softly, "are forged from the spaces between people."Her essence continued its rhythm, each beat drawing pieces of herself closer together, preparing to shape something that could bridge the gaps she'd spent years pretending didn't exist.In Takeshi's storm of pressure, points of clarity began to emerge. His essence gathered around these nodes like stars being born from cosmic dust. Each point held perfect balance - not just gravity, but the weight of everything he'd been carrying."The weapon chooses its form," K9's voice barely penetrated the quiet roar of compression. "You just have to listen."Gravity curved around these growing points of light, drawing lines between them like a constellation of purpose. In the physical world, the air around Takeshi's still form bent slightly, reality acknowledging what was being born.Abeni's purple forge pulsed slower now, deeper. Her essence no longer scattered in waves but began to weave itself together, each strand carrying a different tone of connection. Past loneliness plaited with present understanding, forming something both flexible and unbreakable."Some weapons," K9's voice seemed to smile, "aren't meant to break things."In three separate bathrooms that somehow shared the same space, three different lights grew stronger - orange heat, gravitational distortion, and purple resonance. Each one carrying the shape of something that hadn't existed before, something born from need and truth and the weight of becoming.