Ever since the assassination attempt, Nathaniel had felt off.
Not sick in a physical sense. There was no pain, no weakness, no sign of injury when he looked himself over. Still, something lingered beneath the surface. Something wrong.
He stood at the washroom sink, staring down at his hands. The porcelain was white. Clean. Unmarked.
In his mind, they were covered in blood.
That part was familiar. The sensation itself did not disturb him. He had felt the iron-coded fluid on his skin before. He had fought. He had bled. He had been drenched in it more times than he could count.
This was different.
It was the thought behind it that refused to leave him.
They had been human. Neo-human, just like him. Not monsters. Not constructs. People who had been torn apart.
By him.
His focus drifted, uninvited, to one body in particular.
Magnum.
He could still see it. The way the flesh had split. The way the body had given in under force he had not fully intended to unleash. The memory did not blur or soften. It remained sharp, as if his eyes had burned the image directly into his retinas.
He tried not to think about it.
It did not work.
The false innocence he carried as an amnesiac had not vanished yet, but it was thinning. Cracking at the edges. Something heavier was taking its place.
This had not been an accident.
It had been his first genuine kill.
The weight of that truth settled slowly, pressing inward, sinking deep into his psyche where it refused to be ignored.
He walked back to his desk at the center of his room. Blue light from the display washed over him as he worked in silence, eyes moving across the gauntlet blueprints spread before him. These were designs meant for the second generation gauntlets, refinements he had been planning long before tonight.
His thoughts drifted to Magnum.
More specifically, to what he had taken from him.
Impact Reverb.
He understood it now. Not just the effect, but the principle behind it. The way force could be absorbed, redirected, returned with intent rather than waste. His fingers moved almost on instinct as he considered how to integrate it into the gauntlets. The work was precise. Detached. Comfortable in a way that his thoughts were not.
Being a knight came with risks. Everyone knew that.
It was why most high ranking knights relied on physical enhancement or possessed overwhelming augments. Power mattered, but permanence mattered more. The ability to walk away after each battle with yourself still intact decided how long you survived.
Every job carried risk. A lab worker handling nuclear reactors. A construction worker navigating steel frames and scaffolding hundreds of meters above the ground. One mistake. One misstep. One hazard fully realized, and the result was injury or death.
Knights were no different.
Last week, Polaris had impaled him. Skewered clean through limbs and dangerously close to vital points. If he had not used resin to dampen the blow, he would have died. He could regenerate. He always could.
Others were not so fortunate.
Those closest to him did not have that luxury. At best, they had the technology of the Knight Association to rely on. Even that protection had limits. Cost. Resources. Allocation. Not everyone wore suits comparable to those used by the Grandmaster or the Marshals.
And he was not one of them.
He was Nathaniel Alderman. An A rank knight of Squad 4. A tool. A blade placed where it was needed, with no real say in what followed. Replaceable, given enough time and resources. There was always someone stronger. New candidates rose from the general population every year, eager to fill the gaps left behind.
The squad selection system only reinforced it.
Being chosen by a Marshal turned overseer was luck at best. At worst, it was money and favors changing hands behind closed doors. Squads One and Two made that painfully clear, with members of the royal family at their core and nobles following suit.
Nathaniel stared at the blueprints, the light reflecting faintly in his eyes.
He kept working.
He looked over the finished design. It would work. He would fabricate it to his specifications in the foundry at Arkham's Works when the opportunity came.
His gaze dropped to his hand.
Dark silver liquid began to pool across his palm. It moved slowly, almost thoughtfully, resembling a heavy mercury that reflected the blue light in warped streaks. Whatever this substance was, it seemed to be emerging from his own cells, seeping even from dead skin along his palms and the soles of his feet.
He did not pull away.
From the gathering mass, a thin line extended outward. It began to glow with Uratsu, like the tip of a smouldering iron. The strand was only a few micrometres wide at its apex, thinner than a hair, yet he could feel it clearly.
The sensation was precise.
He projected a few more strands, each forming with deliberate control as he slowly drew the main mass back into himself. The substance responded to intent rather than force, shaping itself with an ease that felt unsettlingly natural.
If he gained enough control, he could manipulate it as fluidly as resin. Perhaps even more so.
This carried far greater freedom.
A name surfaced from somewhere deeper than conscious thought. Something he used to call it.
Norvanite.
The word settled with a sense of familiarity he could not fully explain. This substance never forgot. It remembered shape, stress, intent. That alone told him what it truly was.
Norvanite was not a single material. It was a fusion.
Alkanite and raw mage steel.
The mage steel was easy to understand. It resembled ordinary steel in appearance, but it was an exceptional conductor of Uratsu and other forms of energy. Clean. Stable. Reliable.
Alkanite was the opposite.
It looked like a dark, unstable mercury. A cannibalistic substance that consumed energy rather than storing it. It behaved like a pseudo living thing, shifting, adapting, feeding whenever it was allowed to do so.
Together, they formed something else entirely.
A living metal.
He searched his memory for more. For formulas. For failures. For warnings.
Nothing came.
Beyond that, he could not recall.
As for Valarie, he would need to think on it further.
Taking responsibility for another human being, or a thrall, felt strange. The entire concept of Uraforge was strange. Nothing about it sat comfortably with him, no matter how logical it appeared on the surface.
As for Valarie, he would need to think on it further.
Taking responsibility for another human being felt heavier than any weapon he had ever carried. Calling her a thrall did not make it easier. The word implied ownership, control, and intent, none of which reflected how it felt in practice. She was not equipment. She was not a tool. She was a person whose survival now intersected with his own.
Uraforge itself unsettled him. The process was efficient. Elegant, even. It bound, reinforced, and preserved life in ways the Association would call miraculous. Still, the permanence of it lingered in his thoughts. Once done, there was no clean way to undo it. Choice became history.
Valarie did not seem afraid of him. That almost made it worse.
She followed instructions easily, trusted without hesitation, and looked at him as though her future had already been decided. Whether that trust was genuine or a byproduct of imprinting was something he did not yet know. He was not sure which answer disturbed him more.
Ginah noticed.
Every time he found himself alone with Valarie, Ginah's gaze lingered. Not openly hostile. Not accusing. Just observant. Measuring. As though she were watching for something to go wrong, or for something to reveal itself.
Did she think he was sneaking off with her.
Or was she questioning why he had chosen someone so close to their own age.
That thought dug deeper than it should have. Imprinting was not meant to be personal. It was a process. A necessity. Still, he could not deny how it looked from the outside, or how easily suspicion could take root.
Nathaniel exhaled slowly.
He had survived impalement. Assassins. Biomes. things he barely understood.
This felt harder.
Because this time, the damage would not be confined to him alone.