That night, the arm began to sing.
It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation of vibration that travelled from Kael's fingertips up to his shoulder, rattling his teeth.
Kael sat up, gasping. The Deep Waste was illuminated by the rift in the sky, casting everything in sickly neon blues and pinks.
He looked at his left hand.
The bandages had fallen off. The skin where the landshark had bitten him—and where the artifact's energy had flowed—was no longer skin.
It was black glass.
Obsidian scales, tiny and perfectly tessellated, covered his forearm. They weren't dead matter; they flexed when he moved his fingers. Between the scales, faint purple light pulsed with his heartbeat.
"It's spreading," Elric's voice came from the dark.
Kael didn't jump. With the new arm, he had felt Elric waking up. He felt the old man's fear like a cold draft.
"It saved us," Kael said, flexing the hand. The movement was smooth, silent.
"It's eating you," Elric said. He crawled closer, drawing his dagger. "We have to cut it off."
"No."
"Kael, listen to me. It starts with the flesh. Then it takes the mind. I've read the histories. The Ash-King's captains... they became monsters."
"And they ruled the world," Kael whispered.
He looked at the world through his new eyes. He didn't just see rocks anymore. He saw the structure. He saw that the air was thin here, and thick there. He saw a path of stable reality weaving through the chaos, leading straight to the inverted Spire.
"Put the knife away, Elric."
"I can't let you become one of them." Elric lunged. It was a desperate, clumsy strike.
Kael caught the wrist. His obsidian hand clamped down. He didn't squeeze hard, but the grip was absolute. Stone against bone.
"I said no."
Kael looked into Elric's eyes. He saw the reflection of a monster. A boy with one human arm and one arm made of night.
"You're strong," Elric wept, dropping the knife. "Gods, you're strong."
"I have to be." Kael let him go. "We have a path to find."
"A path? There are no paths here."
"There is. I can see it."
Kael stood up. He pointed to a ridge of jagged glass that looked impassable. But to Kael's eyes, he saw the faint, glowing footprints of something ancient.
"The Old Road," Kael said. "The pilgrims used it. Before the Ash."
"How can you know that?"
" The arm remembers," Kael said.
The words frightened him more than the scales. The arm had memories. It remembered walking this road. It remembered the taste of the air before the corruption.
...home... the arm whispered.
Kael picked up his pack. He didn't put the bandage back on. what was the point of hiding iron?
"We walk," Kael ordered.
Elric followed. He looked smaller now. Defeated. He wasn't the mentor anymore. He was the baggage.
And Kael... Kael was the carrier.
They walked the Old Road. The monsters of the Waste—things with too many eyes and things with none—watched them from the shadows. But they didn't attack.
They smelled the Void on Kael. And they knew better than to bite a wolf that was turning into a dragon.