Nest blinked his eyes and found himself back at his desk. “What the-” Had he been dreaming? He didn’t remember falling asleep, or waking up for that matter.

  “That was the hidden tree and the knife, it was-” He trailed off as he looked back down at the project he had been working on.

  The first thing he noticed was the large hunk of dark wood that was in his left hand. The lioness he had been carving for his mother was gone, sitting further down the counter where he’d dropped it.

  In his right hand, his old carving knife had also been replaced.

  Blue and black metal swirled in an otherworldly fashion. When he looked directly at the pattern, it didn’t move. But, when the knife was at the corner of his eye, he could swear the waving layers drifted and changed. “Ardite?” Nest had met his share of sinners in his life. Many of the clan’s most prominent business owners were sinners who had invested enough time and effort into their people that they had worked themselves into positions of prominence.

  Dwarves were already a long living species. Maybe not as long as the elves, but a couple hundred years of life was nothing to scoff at. Add on the life expectancy of a sinner? Well, if you were incapable of reaching prominence in those centuries of life, there was no helping you.

  “I’ve seen soul steel before, but I’ve never held it. I’ve never had a chance to inspect it.” Nest’s curiosity was piqued as he flipped the blade around in his finger.

  The dwarven people were also one of the more sensitive when it came to feeling the natural flow of spirit energy. The free floating power of the universe that allowed sinners and dungeons to do what they did.

  The power flowing through this blade was something else entirely. Sure, there was spirit energy within, but that wasn’t the issue. It’s what the spirit energy was doing. The way it moved and behaved. It was like watching a construction team at a distance as they worked. Without context, the moving teams might simply look chaotic, but once you could see the structure coming into existence, you understood what was happening.

  Nest felt the spirit energy leave the knife, moving directly into his hand where he could practically see it flowing up his arm and towards his head.

  He watched it, visualizing its movement until it reached its destination.

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  The point at the back of his skull. Where his head met his neck.

  Nest’s eyes widened as he realized what he was seeing.

  It was like a brightness. A light in the darkness that scrubbed existence clean. “A spirit?”

  That’s exactly what he was seeing. Something had happened and the spirit energy within his body was pooling in one spot. It was being purified in that collection point of infused flesh sinners called their spirit.

  “Why is this happening? How-” He paused, remembering the pull that had drawn him to the tree. He remembered the feeling of claiming the knife and agreeing to bond with it. “Am I a cultivator now? Am I a sinner?”

  “What?” Nest turned his head. Had he just heard something? “Is anyone there?”

  After a few moments of silence, the dwarf stood and walked to the entrance of the store. He threw the door open and looked for whoever had been speaking, but he was alone.

  The darkness had begun to settle over the town in his region of the mountain. For this time of year, his work day would have been over before the sun started going down, so clearly some time had passed since he had spoken to Tjork.

  He turned again, looking into the shop. “Who said that!” He held up the small knife threateningly, but no one was within. “I know I heard something. I don’t think I’m going crazy. The only problem is that crazy people don't know they’re crazy.”

  As he walked back to the store counter, his heart leapt again. This time he didn’t yell. He didn’t go searching for the noise. He simply remained quiet and listened.

  As he got closer to the counter, the sound grew. What was it? What was happening? He looked around the countertop, assessing that the noise was coming from there.

  As his eyes moved across the items strewn on the surface, they caught on something and lingered. It was the lion. The small figure he had been carving and was nearly done with.

  The young dwarf picked up the figure and inspected it. For a long moment, it remained silent, until the sound came again. It wasn’t an audible noise, but something in his mind that was connecting him to the small beast. He looked at the blade in his hand and could feel the instincts within him kick in.

  He brought the blade up to the lion and began to carve away the final few slivers that held the beast from completion.

  After a few moments, and some clean cuts with the ardite blade, he knew he was done. He sat the lion down on the counter. He went to inspect the blade. It was far higher quality than the one he had been using before. He hadn’t known how long it had been without a user, but it was as sharp as any blade he’d ever held. Nest flicked his thumb across the blade, feeling the impossibly potent edge.

  Then his heart leapt from his chest. “Heavenlies above!” He jumped back in surprise, nearly falling to the ground.

  The small lioness figure was pacing across the counter. It moved fluidly, like you would expect from a living animal, not a piece of wood.

  After a moment, it stopped, sniffed some papers, then flopped down and was sleeping in seconds.