Chapter 2: The Weaver's Touch
Dawn arrived like an apology nobody asked for, pale and anemic through the shrine's broken roof. Orin woke to the taste of dried blood and damp air, his body a symphony of complaints conducted by three cracked ribs.
He examined his hand in the sickly light.
The birthstone sat there, still marked with those impossible silver specks. In daylight they looked less like stars and more like a disease, tiny points of luminescence swimming beneath the black surface. He pressed a fingertip against it, half-expecting pain.
Nothing. Just the usual slight warmth, the sense of something living nested in his flesh.
*Probably just scarring,* he told himself. *Damaged in the fight. Another thing broken about you.*
The thought should have stung. Instead, it settled into the familiar groove worn by years of similar observations. He was a catalog of broken things: broken ribs, broken prospects, broken birthstone. At least he was consistent.
The slums were stirring by the time he limped home. Home being a charitable description for the converted warehouse he shared with eleven other families, all blackstones or worse. The morning shift was already filing out toward the docks, the factories, the tanneries where chemical stink ate through clothes and lungs with equal enthusiasm.
His sleeping corner sat behind a curtain someone had sewn from grain sacks. Privacy through poverty's imagination. He collapsed onto the straw mattress and stared at the ceiling, counting water stains instead of stars.
Three hours until the weaving ceremony.
The thought sat in his stomach like swallowed glass.
The Weaving Hall occupied what used to be a merchant's mansion before the merchant discovered gambling and gravity, in that order. Now the city used it for ceremonies deemed important enough to require a building but not important enough to waste actual resources on.
Orin arrived early, which meant he waited outside with the other petitioners. Twenty-three of them by his count, all fifteen years old, all vibrating with anticipation or terror depending on their birthstone's color.
A green-stone girl clutched her mother's hand, both of them whispering prayers to whatever god handled military recruitment. Two blue-stone boys compared muscles like they were livestock at auction, already imagining their enhanced strength lifting twice what their fathers managed. A purple-stone stood alone, radiating the casual certainty of someone born knowing the world would bend for them.
And six blackstones, Orin included, clustered together not out of camaraderie but because misery recognized its own reflection.
"Heard Garrett Vance did that to you," someone murmured. Orin turned to find Maya, another blackstone, her dark eyes fixed on his swollen face. They'd shared a classroom once, back when the city pretended blackstone children deserved education.
"He had thoughts about my posture."
"Thoughts requiring his boots?"
"He's very passionate about proper alignment."
Maya's mouth twitched. Almost a smile, before she remembered they had nothing to smile about. "First weaving in an hour. You think it'll hurt?"
"Probably."
"Good." She said it soft, like a confession. "At least that's something we can feel."
The doors opened before Orin could unpack that particular piece of bleakness. An attendant, blue-stone judging by his build, gestured them inside with the enthusiasm of someone herding cattle to slaughter.
The ceremony room tried for grandeur and achieved something closer to delusion. Tapestries depicting ancient weavers hung from walls, their essence-work frozen in thread and myth. The air smelled like incense, trying to cover mildew, failing at both.
Three weavers waited at the room's center, arranged before a table loaded with crystal vials. Each vial held essence extracted from monsters, refined and prepared for human consumption. The weakest essences for blackstones, Orin knew. Probably from something like a gutter rat or a sewer newt. Just enough to activate the birthstone without wasting resources.
They called the purple-stone first. Because of course they did.
The boy strode forward like he owned the building and was considering demolition. The lead weaver, an old woman whose own purple birthstone caught the light like a threat, selected a vial that glowed with inner fire. Salamander essence, maybe. Something expensive that would enhance the boy's already ridiculous capacity.
She pressed the vial to his birthstone. The liquid flowed in, absorbed like water into sand. The boy gasped, his whole body going rigid as the essence integrated. His birthstone blazed, violet light spilling between his fingers. When it faded, he was smiling with the satisfaction of someone who'd just confirmed the universe's favoritism.
"Essence capacity confirmed at tier three," the weaver announced. "Affinity for fire manipulation. You're cleared for advanced academy enrollment."
The boy departed, already calculating how much power he'd just been handed.
They worked through the green-stones next. Two passed, their birthstones accepting the essence and revealing combat affinities. One failed, the essence rejected, her stone remaining dull. She left crying, her mother's face a mask of carefully maintained composure over devastation.
Blue-stones were quick, efficient. Their essences were cheap, their results predictable. Enhanced strength, improved endurance, the physical augmentations that made them valuable labor. They shuffled out looking pleased, already imagining the wages they'd command.
Then the blackstones.
"Next."
Orin watched Maya approach. The weaver handling them was younger, bored-looking, like this was punishment duty. He selected a vial barely larger than Orin's thumb, the liquid inside a muddy brown that suggested bottom-feeder origins.
Maya held out her hand. The weaver pressed the vial to her birthstone without ceremony. The essence trickled in, sluggish. Her birthstone pulsed once, weak as a dying heartbeat.
"Minimal capacity confirmed. Minor strength enhancement, grade one. You're cleared for domestic or industrial labor licensing."
Maya nodded like she'd expected nothing else. Maybe she hadn't. She passed Orin on her way out, and her eyes held that same hollow resignation he saw in every mirror.
"Orin Fox."
He stepped forward, his cracked ribs screaming protest. The bored weaver barely glanced at him, already reaching for another thumb-sized vial.
"Hand."
Orin extended his left hand, birthstone facing up. The silver specks caught the light, glittering.
The weaver paused. "What happened to your stone?"
"Fight. Yesterday." The lie came smooth as prayer. "Got damaged, I think."
"Looks strange." But the weaver was already losing interest, his duty more important than curiosity. He pressed the vial to Orin's birthstone.
The essence touched the black surface.
And the world stopped.
Not metaphorically. Orin felt it, the sudden crystallization of time, like reality had taken a breath and forgotten to release it. The essence hung suspended, a droplet frozen between vial and stone.
Then something inside his birthstone 'moved'.
The essence didn't trickle in. It was 'devoured', yanked through the vial so fast the glass cracked. The weaver yelped, dropping it. Orin's birthstone pulsed, silver specks swirling into a vortex pattern.
And then, clear as broken glass, a voice spoke directly into his mind.
**"VOID STONE ACTIVE. STORAGE SPACE: UNLIMITED."**
Orin's vision doubled. He was in the ceremony room, feeling his ribs scream, watching the weaver stumble backward. But he was also.. 'somewhere else', standing in a space that wasn't space, surrounded by darkness that felt less like absence and more like infinite presence.
The voice continued, calm as death.
**"ESSENCE ABSORBED: SEWER NEWT, GRADE ONE. INTEGRATION COMPLETE. ATTRIBUTE ENHANCEMENT: STRENGTH +2, DURABILITY +1, VITALITY +1."**
Numbers appeared in his mind, impossible and precise. Not written but *known*, the way you know your own heartbeat.
**ORIN FOX**
**AGE: 15**
**BIRTHSTONE: VOID [UNIQUE]**
**ESSENCE STORED: 1/∞**
**ATTRIBUTES:**
**STRENGTH: 12**
**DURABILITY: 10**
**VITALITY: 11**
**DEXTERITY: 14**
**SPEED: 13**
**CAPACITY: UNLIMITED**
**AFFINITY: VOID MANIPULATION [LOCKED]**
The vision collapsed. Orin gasped, back in the ceremony room, the weaver staring at him like he'd just grown a second head.
"What..." The weaver looked at the cracked vial, then at Orin's hand. The birthstone had returned to its usual appearance, black with silver specks. "Did you feel that?"
"Feel what?" Orin kept his voice steady through sheer force of will. Inside, his mind was screaming.
*Unlimited.... Unlimited!?. What the fuck does unlimited mean!?*
"The essence absorbed faster than..." The weaver trailed off, confusion warring with professional obligation. He picked up another vial, studying it. "Maybe a defect in the container. Hold out your hand again."
"Is that safe?" Orin asked, because a normal blackstone would ask. A normal blackstone would be terrified of broken equipment and essence contamination.
"It's fine. Just confirming the activation."
Orin extended his hand again. The weaver pressed a second vial to his birthstone, watching carefully.
The essence lasted three seconds before his birthstone drank it down like a man dying of thirst.
The voice returned, mechanical and absolute.
**"ESSENCE ABSORBED: SEWER NEWT, GRADE ONE. INTEGRATION COMPLETE. ATTRIBUTE ENHANCEMENT: STRENGTH +2, DURABILITY +1, VITALITY +1."**
The numbers in his mind shifted, climbing.
The weaver's face had gone pale. "Your stone... it's consuming essence at accelerated rates. That shouldn't be possible for a blackstone. That shouldn't be possible for any stone without years of cultivation."
Other weavers were approaching now, drawn by the commotion. The old purple-stone woman, her expression sharp with sudden interest.
"What's the issue?"
"His birthstone is exhibiting anomalous absorption," the younger weaver said. "I've never seen anything like it."
The old woman studied Orin with eyes that had probably seen decades of ceremonies, thousands of activations. "Show me your hand, boy."
Orin complied because refusing would be worse. She took his wrist in a grip like iron, examining the birthstone with professional intensity.
"Damaged in combat, you said?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"When?"
"Yesterday. Garrett Vance." (Let them think what they wanted about noble boys and their recreational violence, not like the little cunt would be repremanded.)
She hummed, thoughtful. After a long moment, she released his wrist. "Sometimes trauma causes irregularities in birthstone structure. Usually it reduces capacity, but occasionally..." She shrugged. "Occasionally strange things happen. The stone is still black. Whatever anomaly exists, it's contained to absorption efficiency, not actual capacity."
She was lying. Orin could see it in the way her eyes lingered on the silver specks, in the careful neutrality of her tone. She knew something was wrong.
But she was also letting him go.
"Minimal capacity confirmed," she announced, loud enough for record. "Minor strength enhancement, grade one. Cleared for labor licensing."
The other weavers looked confused, but they didn't argue. Hierarchy was hierarchy, even among ceremony officials.
"You're dismissed," she told Orin. Then, quieter, meant only for him: "If I were you, boy, I'd be very careful who sees you use essence. Anomalies attract attention. Attention attracts trouble."
"Yes, ma'am."
He left the ceremony hall walking steady, measured, like a blackstone who'd just had his worthlessness officially confirmed. Inside, his mind raced through calculations and impossibilities.
Unlimited storage. Accelerated absorption. Numbers in his mind tracking attributes like he was a character in one of the adventure serials he'd read in stolen books.
The voice in his head, cold and certain, speaking truths that shouldn't exist.
Orin made it three blocks before ducking into an alley and vomiting, his cracked ribs screaming, his birthstone pulsing with stolen power.
He looked at his hand, at the silver specks swimming beneath black surface, and understood with perfect clarity that the shrine's mirrors hadn't damaged his birthstone.
They'd replaced it with something else entirely.
Something that was currently storing essence like a bottomless pit, something that had just absorbed twice what a blackstone should handle and was hungry for more.
Something that would get him killed if anyone discovered what he'd become.
Orin Fox leaned against the alley wall, breathing through his mouth, and started planning.
Because he had five days until the military academy entrance exams, and somehow, impossibly, he'd just been given a weapon.
He just had to figure out how to use it without getting dissected by curious weavers or murdered by jealous nobles.
The numbers in his mind flickered, patient and waiting.
**ESSENCE STORED: 2/∞**
Orin smiled, tasted blood, and smiled wider.