The Nexus has a way of making learning feel like pain. The frame tested him.
With the frame upright, the forge pulsed with expectation. The floating blueprints rearranged into diagnostic logs and a million tiny, flashing warnings. Karl had to run the linking calibration by hand — no automated sync, no shortcuts. He lined up energy nodes, translated torque harmonics into movement glyphs, and threaded Vythra lines like sutures through carbon-fiber tendons.
He set first to the ankle torsion calibrators. Micro-gears whirred; the mech flexed as if testing its balance. It swayed slightly. He adjusted the feedback loop, letting the feet find a resting pressure against the mirrored floor. The mech's center of gravity shifted, settling into a patient, measured poise.
Then the spine.
This was the bargain: the spine had always been the heart of Erevos — the place where kinetic intent locks into mechanical reality. Karl threaded the main Vythra artery through the spinal shaft, the glowing filament slipping into channels he'd carved out with his will. It met the trinity node with a chime like a bell struck in slow motion.
The moment the artery engaged, the whole body hummed. Tiny servos flexed; joints recalibrated. A wave of warmth washed through the frame as if the metal had drunk sunlight. The mech's chestplate expanded and contracted once, slowly. The head's optical sensors blinked, adjusting to the ambient cobalt glow.
Karl felt a dizzying bloom of emotion — part triumph, part exhaustion, part something he had not yet named. He placed both hands on the mech's sternum, feeling the faint, alien throb of the Engine Soul cocoon nested inside.
"Okay," he breathed. "We're linked."
That was the promise — and a problem. Linking meant the mech would read him; it would echo his rhythm, amplify his will, and return it as motion. If he panicked, the frame would panic. If he hesitated, the machine would stutter.
He tested mobility.
"Move the right leg," he thought, and the mech obeyed. A step forward, deliberate. Every joint flexed under his command, smooth and merciless in its precision.
He allowed himself a grin, then tested the left arm, extending and closing it into a fist. The knuckles spit sparks; the gauntlet contracted like a muscle fiber. He felt the response as a pressure at his palm and a ripple at the Trinity Core — not just mechanical, but spiritual. The Engine Soul and Gear Drive harmonized in that tiny sensation.
Then the glitch happened.
A phantom lag — so small it might have been a dream — crawled up the left shoulder. The arm hesitated mid-swing. In the space of a heartbeat, the mech's momentum reversed; the arm swung down hard, hyperextending at the elbow. A sickening buckle of misaligned torque sent a tremor through the frame.
Karl heard the micro-alarms in the Nexus sing like insects. He felt the Trinity Core thrumming wildly, warning: imbalance. His chest tightened. The left elbow dislocated in simulation, ligament arrays screaming in silent agony. The mech toppled on one knee.
He cursed, every syllable steel and fire. This was the cost of a mistake: not mere failure, but catastrophe writ small.
He dove, hands ripping through shifting nanite mist, and seized the arm's control conduit. He forced the Vythra currents to reverse, pumping stabilizing energy into the joint with everything he had. The frame shuddered, groaned, and then obeyed. The elbow snapped back into place with a wet, mechanical clack.
He collapsed into a crouch, chest heaving. The air tasted like ozone and old solder. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the mech's cooling chest, the connection rawly intimate.
"You almost killed us both," he whispered, not certain whether he meant the mech or himself.
A low chime sounded. The Nexus acknowledged his correction. The micro-alarms silenced one by one, resigned.
He sat back on his heels and let his breath come in ragged sobs and relieved laughs. The frame stood there, breathing with him now, patient and waiting.
There was an ache in his hands from hours of fine-tuned control, a numbering numbness in his fingers, but the pride that steadied him was bigger than the fatigue. He'd bridged the pieces. He'd sewn the legs to the torso, the arms to the shoulders, the head to the neck. The body was whole.
Yet even whole, it remained unfinished — a newborn with all the wrong instincts. Around the mech, small screens of holographic diagnostics pulsed with incremental tasks: micro-synchronization, adapter coherence, safety interlocks. Each was a promise of more work and more peril.
Karl rose, legs shaky but steady, and walked a careful circle around the frame like a father inspecting a sleeping child. He placed a palm on the mech's thigh, feeling for micro-resonance. The chassis thrummed under his palm — a steady, patient echo of the Trinity Core's song.
"Welcome," he said softly, voice breaking on the word. "You're not just a weapon. You're not just revenge. You're… ours."
He stepped back. The Nexus, which had tested him through a hundred small deaths and triumphs, let out a soft, acknowledging trill — like a smile.
Silence returned, but it was not empty. It was full of coiled possibility, of things yet to try and failures yet to survive. The mech's optical lenses looked down at him, reflecting his exhausted face in a set of cerulean tints. For the first time in an eternity of engineering and grief, Karl did not feel alone.
He had built a body from the language of pain and memory — from nightmares and blueprints and stubborn love. Now it would learn to move. Now it would learn to obey, to protect, and perhaps someday, to forgive.
The Nexus hummed. The trinity node at his waist slowed its revolutions, settling into the rhythm of the new whole.
Karl inhaled, tasted victory and rust, and prepared to take the first true test: walking out of the forge — into a world that had been waiting without him.