The Idea wasn't a soft "maybe" kind of idea.
A click kind of idea, the same way a mechanism locks into place when you finally see the missing piece. His eyes narrowed slightly, his mind already running through heat transfer, binding, the way materials behaved under stress.
He placed the scales on the ground and simply hammered one.
Not with the intention to fit it into the floor, no, but to break it.
It immediately turned into fine powder.
The sound was sharp, brittle, like breaking ceramic. The scale shattered into dust that glittered faintly in the blue light, and Kael paused for half a second to watch it spread.
He then grabbed another one and did the same.
After he did so to about a third of his stash, he swept the powder into a rough pile, careful not to scatter it too far. It clung to his fingertips slightly, like ground glass, and he had to resist the urge to rub his hands clean on his pants.
This wasn't dirt. This was material.
