The adrenaline from his midnight escapade lingered, a cold residue in Elias's veins. He'd outsmarted the Sentinels, a fleeting victory that only underscored the escalating stakes. His focus was suddenly pulled away by a frantic, unannounced visit from Juro. The young Artificer looked pale, his usually meticulous clothes disheveled.
"Analyst Thorne," Juro whispered, his voice thin with panic, "it's the core. My brother's core. It… it pulsed again."
Elias felt a chill. The unstable bootleg Earth Core, which he had temporarily stabilized, was supposed to be quiet, at least for a while. "Pulsed how?" he pressed, his gaze sharp.
"A specific frequency," Juro elaborated, fumbling with a small, specialized sensor he'd clearly smuggled from his workshop. He held it up. The device whirred softly, then emitted a series of rapid, distinct beeps. "I recorded it. It matches. It matches the Sentinel's resonance."
Elias's blood ran cold. The low-level karmic resonance he'd felt from the Sentinels' armor during his midnight encounter—the very subtle hum that indicated their internal tracking system—was now emanating from the unstable core. This wasn't a coincidence.
"My theory," Juro continued, his eyes wide with dawning horror, "is that the Artificers' Union is tagging unstable cores. They're allowing these bootlegs to circulate, knowing they'll eventually become volatile. And when they do, they emit this specific resonance. It's a way to track illicit users, to flush them out without direct confrontation."
The implications were devastating. Elias's own bootleg Earth Core, the very tool he was using to mask his manipulations, was a beacon, a ticking timer broadcasting his location to the Sentinels, to the Union, to anyone with the right receiver. His seemingly perfect alibi was a snare. The Stoneborn design, initially seen as a source of unique power, was now a fatal flaw.
He had to act fast. He couldn't risk the core exposing him, not now, not with the Sutra Corps deadline looming. He couldn't destroy it; that would leave a significant karmic void, easily detectable. He needed to bury it, to suppress its signal.
His mind immediately went to a place of profound karmic density, a location where the natural flow of spiritual energy was so overwhelming that it could potentially absorb or mask the core's illicit resonance. A place where life and death met, where the very fabric of existence was constantly in flux.
"Juro," Elias said, his voice clipped, "where's the oldest, most active cemetery in Jadeheart? The one with the deepest concentration of residual karmic energy?"
Juro, though bewildered, quickly provided directions to the ancient Necropolis of Whispering Souls, a sprawling, centuries-old burial ground on the city's outskirts.
Later that night, under the cover of a moonless sky, Elias made his way to the Necropolis. The air was thick with the weight of countless departed souls, a swirling vortex of fading karmic threads. He chose a spot beneath a gnarled, ancient weeping willow tree, its roots delving deep into the earth. With a small, enchanted shovel, he dug a deep, narrow hole. He carefully placed the bootleg Earth Core into the damp earth, burying it among the decaying bones and spectral echoes of generations past. The core's erratic pulse immediately dimmed, its malevolent glow swallowed by the overwhelming spiritual density of the hallowed ground.
He packed the earth back over it, his movements precise and silent. The core was gone, its deadly signal hopefully muffled beyond detection. He had shed a crucial, dangerous tool, but in doing so, he had learned another bitter lesson: every power came with a price, every secret a hidden string. And the Artificers' Union, far from being neutral suppliers, were now revealed as cunning manipulators in their own right.