Back in his room, Jacob spread the new gear across the bed like trophies. The brigandine coat lay in the center, dark fabric hiding narrow plates that whispered softly when he moved it. The greaves and bracers flanked it, and the two blank blades leaned against the wall, waiting their turn.
The helm would come later. For now, he would make what he had as close to unbreakable as his current skill allowed.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, etching tool resting across his knees, and let his eyes linger on the coat.
In his mind, the strengthening rune rose first, familiar and solid, the same core that braced ploughs and hammers. He took that pattern and wrapped it around the coat the way he had done with the sword, not as a flat diagram, but as a shell that hugged every plate, every seam, every stitch that mattered. Hardness to stop penetration existed in that structure already, a refusal to yield when something tried to punch through.
Durability came next, but he refused to simply stack it on top. He peeled out the parts that worked toward bending without breaking, threads that encouraged metal to flex and fabric to relax instead of tearing. Those lines slid between the ribs of the strengthening pattern, filling gaps and rounding edges, so that when a force landed, it would not pass straight through. Instead, it would spread and soften, turning a clean cut into a glancing scrape and a hammer blow into something the body could survive.
He shaped a third aspect from his field experiments, a gentler cousin to the self-mending rune on the sword. Not enough to repair a shattered plate, but enough to help the coat recover from strain, to keep tiny fractures from growing and leather from cracking in the cold. That layer curled deeper, close to the fabric and the padding, where damage usually started.
Only when those three worked together in his thoughts as one twisted shape did he let the lightness rune approach. He wove it around the outside, thin and even, telling the armor to ignore a portion of its own weight without becoming fragile. It did not lift the coat so much as remind it how to sit on his shoulders as if it belonged there.
He placed the tool against the inside collar and began the work in stages, anchoring different aspects on different faces. Plates first, then seams, then the cloth itself. Magic flowed in slow, steady currents, threading through the layers until the merged pattern finally settled into place.
When he lifted the coat, it felt wrong for a second, too light for what he knew it contained, yet carrying a sense of undeniable strength that made his skin prickle.
"If anything in that dungeon hits me," he thought, turning it in his hands, "it is going to have to earn the bruise."
He set the coat aside and drew one greave into his lap.
The merged pattern did not fit here, not exactly. Legs needed different help than ribs and spine. He pictured a kick landing on his shin, a bad step in uneven stone, something slamming into his knee from the side. The strengthening core wrapped close to the bone, a vertical lattice meant to hold against straight-on force. Around that, he threaded the softer durability lines to catch twisting and torque, anything that wanted to turn a joint the wrong way.
He left small gaps at the bends, deliberate places where the magic thinned so that knees and ankles could still move. Too much protection, and he would be safe and useless at the same time.
The bracers took the pattern even better. Arms were simpler. He built them to take a sword edge or a monster's claws on the outer forearm, letting the impact slide instead of bite. The self-recovery strand sat there too, thin but present, to keep hairline cracks from waiting for a worse day.
Lightness went on all of it in the end, not enough to make him float, just enough that his limbs would still feel like his own when he had been swinging a blade for an hour.
Only the absent helm bothered him.
He stared at the folded hood that hung from the coat. Cloth against stone was not a fair trade, but cloth with a little help was better than bare skin. He etched a smaller, tighter version of the pattern into the lining at the back of the neck and around the sides, favoring deflection over raw hardness. If something searched for his throat, it would at least not find it easily.
When he finally laid the full set out again, the room felt smaller, crowded by the potential. The blades at the wall waited, but tonight was for surviving the first blow, not striking the last.
Jacob sat back down on the floor, cross-legged again, armor spread around him like a silent audience.
Gerald's voice came to him in pieces. Not the exact words, but the feeling behind them. Stop trying to force things. Sit and breathe. Relax.
Fine. He could at least try.
He closed his eyes and let his hands fall, palms up on his knees. For a while, all he found was the usual clutter. Lists of things to do before Thornhold. Worries about the dungeon. Little flashes of excitement whenever he thought of the brigandine coat.
He pushed those aside, out of the way, as he smoothed dirt before drawing a rune, one stray stone at a time.
Breathe in. Breathe out. He listened to the rhythm of his lungs, the soft thump of his heart, the itch in his left shoulder where the strap of the coat always wanted to sit.
When he thought about magic, habit tried to shove runes in front of his eyes. Lines, circles, patterns. He let them rise, then let them dissolve. This was not for shaping. This was to see if there was anything underneath, some raw piece he kept skipping past.
Slowly, the room took on a different sort of shape in his mind.
The coat was a steady weight at his side, not physical, but present, like a low note held in the background. The bracers and greaves were smaller, sharper, the way a set of nails felt in the hand. The sword in the corner was a bright edge, easy to find. Even the broom downstairs tugged at him faintly, a memory of swept straw and guided motion.
All the things he had touched with his power hummed in some quiet way, as if part of him had been left behind in each of them.
Beneath that, under skin and bone, there was something else. A pressure that did not match his heartbeat. Not moving out, but in, as if the world itself were leaning toward him, just a little.
He focused on that, frowning, and the pressure thickened, like air before a storm.