“What exactly am I looking at?” Grombir asked Ketal at last, his face still caught halfway between awe and disbelief.0

Ketal explained what Hephaite had done and how their power had acted. Even so, the dwarf’s expression remained clouded. 0

“How…,” he murmured, as if the single word could carry all the weight of his confusion. A weapon had taken on the form of a human. It was not a puppet or a clever simulacrum. She was truly, undeniably alive.0

Grombir was a smith, and not a middling one. He stood among the highest of the Heroes, a craftsman so accomplished that calling him one of the finest in the world would not have been flattery. Yet even he could not trace the method. 0

“May I touch your arm?” he asked the Holy Sword, his voice gentle in spite of the raging questions behind his eyes.0

“Yes,” the Holy Sword said, and she offered her arm without hesitation.0

Grombir cupped her forearm and focused, letting Myst rise and settle through his hands until his senses caught the weave beneath the skin. The arm felt soft and warm. It felt like the flesh of a girl in her early teens. That impression clashed with what his Myst told him. 0

The materials that had once formed the blade had not vanished. They had transformed. Under a god’s authority, those minerals had taken on an organic arrangement. On the surface, the Holy Sword wore skin. Inside that semblance, refined metals of frightening density formed tissues and ligaments...0