Elias didn't sleep that night.
He sat in his kitchen, nursing his fourth cup of coffee and staring at the kukri laid across his scratched wooden table. The blade caught the pre-dawn light filtering through his fire escape window, ordinary as any knife he'd ever forged. No golden glow. No supernatural hum. Just steel and leather wrap and the faint ache in his shoulders from hunching over his workbench.
Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he'd been so focused on this one piece that he'd missed something obvious—some flaw in his process, some contamination in the steel that had caused... whatever the hell had happened to that bone.
The rational part of his mind, the part trained by a decade of methodical craftsmanship, insisted on systematic testing. If he was losing his grip on reality, he needed to prove it. If he wasn't—well, that possibility felt too large to examine in the gray morning light.
By seven AM, he was back in the workshop, pulling finished pieces from their wall mounts. The chef's knife came first: eighteen inches of carbon steel with 'Food is Love' etched in Chinese characters along the spine. He'd delivered it three months ago to a bride who'd wanted something "meaningful" for her new kitchen. The irony wasn't lost on him now.
He ran his thumb along the engraving, pressing firmly against the letters. Nothing. No pulse of light, no sudden download of impossible knowledge. Just the slight roughness of etched steel against calloused skin.
The wrought-iron trellis proved equally mundane. He'd hammered 'Vines Embrace' into the metalwork with painstaking care, creating negative space that played with light and shadow. Beautiful work, if he said so himself. But when he pressed his palm against the words, willing them to respond, he felt only cold iron and the slight give of rust prevention coating.
One by one, he tested every inscribed piece in his workshop. A letter opener with Latin phrases. A decorative horseshoe bearing Irish blessings. A set of fire tools inscribed with German proverbs about hearth and home. Two dozen pieces of commissions, each bearing words or symbols requested by clients who'd paid extra for personalization.
All of them dead. All of them ordinary.
Only the kukri held that patient, predatory awareness.
Elias set the blade on his workbench and stepped back, running both hands through his hair. What made this one different? Same steel stock he'd used for months—1084 carbon steel from his supplier in Pennsylvania. Same forge, same quench tank, same tools. Hell, he'd used the same files to carve the Nepali script that he'd used for the German proverbs just last week.
The only variable was...
He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his commission notes, looking for the marine's original request. There it was, in his own handwriting: Kukri knife, traditional weight and balance. Customer insists on "Bone Breaker" in Nepali script along fuller. Willing to pay 50% bonus for "authentic cultural accuracy." Wants it "to feel real."
"To feel real."
Elias stared at the note until the words blurred. What did that even mean? Every blade he forged was real—real steel, real effort, real skill. But maybe the marine had meant something else. Maybe there was a difference between carving foreign words as decoration and carving them with... intent? Understanding?
He thought about the hours he'd spent getting the Nepali script right, consulting dictionaries and bothering Mrs. Gurung until he could correctly write each character and understand its meaning. 'हड्डी भाँच्ने' [1]Bone breaker. He'd known what the words meant when he carved them, had shaped each letter with that meaning held firmly in his mind.
The other inscriptions had been different. Beautiful, yes, but essentially meaningless to him. Latin he'd copied from reference books. German he'd run through translation software. Irish blessings he'd found on Celtic craft websites. Words without weight, decoration without understanding.
But 'हड्डी भाँच्ने'—he'd carved those letters knowing exactly what they promised.
The realization settled in his stomach like cold lead. If understanding mattered, if intent shaped the effect, then he needed to test the blade properly. Scientifically. And he couldn't do that with workshop scraps and leftover femurs.
By nine AM, he was walking down Court Street toward DiMarco's Butcher Shop, the kukri wrapped in an old towel and tucked into a canvas messenger bag. Brooklyn was waking up around him—coffee shops raising their metal grates, early commuters hurrying toward the subway, the familiar urban symphony of car horns and construction noise. Normal sounds in a normal world where knives cut things through pressure and physics, not impossible rules etched in golden light.
The bell above DiMarco's door chimed as he entered, and the familiar smell of sawdust and cold meat hit him like a wall. Tony DiMarco looked up from behind the counter, his massive forearms crossed over an apron that had seen better decades.
"Elias! You're up early. What can I do for you?"
"I need bones, Tony. Variety pack, if you've got them."
Tony raised an eyebrow. "Testing new designs again? You know I got plenty of scraps if you need them for your metalwork."
"Something like that." Elias forced what he hoped was a normal smile. "Whatever you can spare. Beef, pork, lamb if you have it. Different sizes."
Twenty minutes later, he was back in his workshop with a paper bag full of bones and the uncomfortable certainty that his neighbors already thought he was eccentric. Adding "bulk bone purchaser" to his reputation probably wouldn't help.
He spread the bones across his workbench like a grim buffet: beef ribs, pork shoulder blades, lamb leg bones, even a few chicken drumsticks for variety. The kukri lay beside them, patient as a coiled snake.
The first test was simple repetition. He selected a beef rib—thick, dense, yellowed with age—and brought the blade down in a clean arc. The bone dissolved on contact, crumbling to powder just like the workshop femur. No resistance, no effort required. The impossible made routine.
The second bone confirmed it. The third made it undeniable.
But the fourth test revealed the first limitation.
Elias stacked two pork shoulder blades, one atop the other, and struck with the same controlled motion. The top bone disintegrated instantly, but the blade stopped at the second, cutting into it with the normal resistance of sharp steel meeting dense calcium. No dissolution. No supernatural effect.
He tried again with different bones, different angles, different amounts of force. The pattern held. The first bone the blade touched crumbled to dust. Anything beyond that first contact behaved according to normal physics.
'One target', he thought, filing the limitation away. 'Direct contact only.'
The material tests came next. He'd raided his workshop's scrap pile for variety: strips of leather, chunks of hardwood, scraps of copper and aluminum, even a piece of concrete from a sidewalk repair project. The kukri cut through them all with the clean efficiency of well-forged steel, but nothing more. No dissolution, no supernatural effects. Just the satisfaction of a properly sharpened edge doing what edges were meant to do.
'Bone only,' he amended his mental notes. 'One target, direct contact, bone only.'
By noon, his workbench looked like the aftermath of an archaeological disaster. Bone dust coated every surface, and the shop vacuum was working overtime to clear the air. But Elias felt something approaching satisfaction for the first time since the golden light had changed everything.
Rules. The blade followed rules, just like any other tool. It had limitations, boundaries, predictable behaviors. That made it comprehensible, if not exactly comfortable.
He held the kukri up to the light, examining the edge for damage. After dozens of strikes against materials that should have chipped or dulled even the finest steel, the blade remained pristine. Not a nick, not a roll, not even the microscopic wear that normally accompanied extensive use.
'Rule Integrated: Bone Breaker.'
The knowledge pulsed in his mind again, as clear and certain as it had been the night before. But now it felt less like madness and more like... specification. A blueprint. A user manual written in a language older than words.
Elias set the blade down and reached for his coffee, his hands steady for the first time in twelve hours. Whatever was happening to him, whatever had awakened in his workshop that night, it followed patterns. It could be understood, tested, maybe even controlled.
He thought about the wall of finished pieces, all those inscribed words sitting dormant in metal. About Mrs. Gurung's patient pronunciation lessons and the marine's request for something that would "feel real."
About the difference between carving decoration and forging truth.
The afternoon sun slanted through his windows, painting everything in shades of gold that reminded him uncomfortably of the light he'd seen dancing in Nepali script. But Elias didn't look away. If he was going crazy, at least he was going crazy systematically.
And if he wasn't...
He pulled out his phone and started scrolling through his commission queue, looking for other clients who'd requested words in languages they actually understood. The list was shorter than he'd expected, but not empty.
Not empty at all.
[1] I don't really know nepali, sorry for google translate