Afternoon sunlight slanted through the ninth-floor windows of the Red-River Guild Tower.
A gentle breeze stirred the linen curtains, carrying the faint scent of drying mountain mint and roasted chestnuts.
Eighteen hours had passed since the battle at the wind-vein cavern.
Kaelen Vance lay comfortably inside his hemp hammock, rocking with a slow, soothing rhythm.
His right arm had completely recovered from the overload strike. The nerve numbness had dissolved after six hours of quiet rest, leaving his fingers nimble and relaxed.
Deep within his dantian, the cracked bronze shell of his Stage 2 container shattered into thousands of golden light specks.
The fragments melted into a stream of pure, liquid celestial gold.
The liquid gold flowed across the three boundary tracks, re-forging the spiritual mechanism into an intricate three-stage valve.
