I leaned back against a pillar, steadying my breath, bracing for what I was about to do to myself. The anticipation settled into my bones, cold and certain.

  I summoned my knife. The weight of it felt familiar, grounding, but it wasn’t enough. Not anymore.

  Painforged Armory.

  The skill pulsed to life, waiting, demanding.

  I needed a new weapon—something to push me forward, to make up for what had been taken. When Alyssa sealed part of my torment—part of me—away, I had felt its absence like a missing limb. Before, when things got dicey, I could count on instinct, on rage, on something primal to carry me through.

  Now? Now I had to learn to control myself. But control didn’t mean weakness. I still needed an edge.

  And I knew exactly how to get one.

  My grip tightened around the hilt. No hesitation. I plunged the dagger through my forearm.

  The blade punched through flesh, tore past muscle, and pierced out the backside, a clean exit. Pain flared, sharp and electric, radiating through every nerve. Blood welled, hot and steady, spilling over my skin.

  And then, the forge appeared.

  Heat bloomed around me, thick and suffocating, the scent of scorched metal and something deeper—burnt marrow, boiled blood, suffering—twisting in the air. The world darkened at the edges, and in that dim haze, he emerged.

  The Master Craftsman.

  He stood wreathed in shifting embers, his form smoldering with the same silent authority as before. But this time, he did not reach for the offering. He waited. Watching. Expecting more.

  A test.

  The realization sent a slow, cold weight curling through me. I had failed him once and he would not accept half-measures again.

  I bared my teeth and tightened my grip on the dagger still buried through my forearm. My breath came slow, controlled, but my pulse pounded like war drums in my ears. If pain was the price, then I would pay in full.

  I twisted the blade, feeling the bite of steel grind against bone. Agony tore through my nerves, sharp and electric, but I forced my body to obey. My other hand pressed against the hilt, adding pressure, dragging the edge sideways.

  The flesh of my forearm parted, muscle fibers snapping like over-tightened cords, the wet slick of splitting meat drowning out all other sound. Blood pulsed hot and thick, pooling over my lap, seeping into the stone beneath me in dark, crawling rivers.

  I kept sawing.

  The blade caught against the radius, a jarring scrape of metal against bone. I grit my teeth, sawing harder.

  The pain was past sharp now, past even burning—it had become something else entirely. My nerves screamed, my vision flickered, and for a moment, I swore I could feel the blade not just in my arm, but everywhere. A phantom agony seeping through my bones, through my mind, demanding I stop. I didn’t.

  With a final, brutal drag of the knife, the bone gave.

  A wet snap. A tear of sinew. The last of my flesh peeled apart, leaving my hand half-severed, hanging in ruins.

  And only then, when the sacrifice had been made, did the Master Craftsman move.

  The forge roared to life. The embers in his hollow eyes blazed. He reached forward, fingers curling around the wound, and took.

  The forge roared to life, its flames screaming as though awakened by my suffering. The world around me blurred at the edges, warping under the heat, twisting like melted glass. I could barely breathe, barely think—my body was nothing but pain now, pulsing in waves, drowning out everything but the searing, open wound at the end of my arm.

  And yet, I watched.

  The Master Craftsman reached out, his molten fingers stretching toward me, but he did not touch the wound itself. No—he reached past it, deeper, as though he was not only taking my flesh, but something beneath it.

  Something unseen.

  My blood lifted from my veins, spiraling up like liquid fire, pulled toward his waiting hands. It twisted unnaturally, defying gravity, thickening as it coiled in the forge’s heat.

  The bone shards followed, drifting free like shattered ivory, hovering for a moment before they cracked, melted, and fused into the blood-metal. The heat intensified, folding the essence of my sacrifice over itself again and again, compressing agony into something solid. Symbols burned into existence, flickering across the forming blade like forgotten runes, there one moment, gone the next.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The forge took it all. My flesh, my marrow, my suffering. The pain did not lessen. It grew.

  I gritted my teeth, barely swallowing the scream tearing up my throat. My vision blurred. My breath came ragged, uneven. I had nothing left to give—no control, no strength. But I couldn’t look away.

  The blood-iron and bone-ash swirled in the fire, coiling tighter, folding over itself again and again, reforging into something new. Magic danced at the edges, taking shape in ways I couldn’t comprehend. Symbols burned into existence, flickering across the surface of the forming weapon before vanishing as quickly as they appeared.

  I didn’t understand.

  It was creation beyond me—beyond mortal hands, beyond anything I had ever known.

  The Master Craftsman worked without hesitation. His hands moved with deliberate, methodical ease, pulling strands of my suffering from the air itself, shaping agony into steel.

  The heat pulsed, flaring bright, and then—with a final, deafening roar—the forge consumed the last of my offering.

  The pain hit me all at once.

  Something cracked inside me, my body seizing violently as the last of my strength failed. Darkness clawed at the edges of my vision. I swayed, my breath hitching, but the Craftsman did not slow.

  He raised his work, inspecting it. The scimitar was twisted violence made manifest.

  Its blade was serrated and jagged, each wicked tooth designed to tear, not cut. The edges were uneven, deliberately cruel—meant to drag through flesh, leaving behind torn, ragged wounds that refused to close.

  The core of the weapon pulsed a deep, seething red, as if forged from raw muscle and molten iron. Faint veins of black cracked through the metal, like fractured obsidian, pulsing with an unsettling glow. The entire blade dripped with something that wasn’t quite blood, wasn’t quite metal—a lingering sheen, as though it wept suffering itself.

  The curvature of the scimitar had been exaggerated, designed for devastating hacks and brutal cleaving. Near the tip, the steel split into two, creating a hooked, rending fang that could bite deep and drag through flesh with ease. The inside curve of the blade was lined with barbed ridges, small enough to sink unnoticed but vicious enough to shred muscle and sinew if pulled free.

  The handle was wrapped in darkened sinew, stitched together by some unseen force, warm to the touch as if it still lived. The pommel ended in a sharp, curved spike, perfect for gouging or delivering a finishing thrust to an already broken opponent.

  This wasn’t a weapon meant to kill cleanly.

  It was a weapon meant to break, tear, and leave behind wounds that never truly healed.

  The Master Craftsman turned to me—judging. Weighing. Deciding.

  And finally, he laid the scimitar before me and disappeared back into the smoke.

  Painforged Armory activated.

  Weapon Rank: B-

  All stats: +10

  Unique Skill: "This blade does not simply wound—it brands its pain into the soul. Any strike leaves an unseen mark, tethering the victim to the suffering they endured. Upon activation, every mark will ignite at once, forcing them to relive the agony in perfect clarity, as if the wounds were torn open anew."

  B-.

  That was all that pain was worth.

  I had sawed through my own forearm and hand, felt every nerve scream, every muscle shred apart—and it was only a B-.

  I exhaled slowly, my body still trembling from the ordeal. Crimson Reconstitution had been locked away, denied to me during the forging, leaving me with nothing but raw agony until the moment it was done. Only afterward did the system allow me to knit myself back together.

  Incredible.

  But no matter my frustration, the weapon before me was undeniable.

  It pulsed with hunger, its deep crimson sheen almost wet, like fresh blood refusing to dry. The edge shimmered with something beyond steel, whispering of wounds that would never truly heal.

  I reached out, fingers brushing the hilt—and felt it. A blade crafted from my own suffering. A weapon that knew pain. And it was ready to share it.

  So lost in the beauty of my new weapon, I had completely forgotten about Alyssa. A sudden unease crept up my spine as I turned, expecting to find her pulling away—repulsed by what she had just witnessed.

  Instead, she was inches away, her eyes wide with wonder, completely enthralled by my scimitar.

  “That was amazing!" she breathed. Then, just as quickly, her expression flattened. "You really are an idiot, though. I can’t believe you made a skill that requires you to butcher yourself just to use it.” She squinted at me, scrutinizing. “Be honest—are you a masochist?”

  A sharp laugh tore from my throat. “No, the—”

  She shrieked, cutting me off. “It gives stats!” Her gaze snapped to mine, pure, unfiltered greed gleaming in her eyes. I could practically see the gold coins replacing her pupils.

  I sighed, extending the weapon so she could get a better look. “Shut it. I’m not making another one for a long time.”

  Even though I had healed myself, my arm ached, a phantom pain where I had torn into it. My body still remembered the betrayal.

  Alyssa barely heard me. She ran a hand along the serrated, wickedly curved edge, her excitement barely contained. “Do you realize how rare it is to forge weapons that grant stats? I mean, sure, +10 to all stats is kind of negligible, but still! Only high-level craftsmen can pull that off. Normal people can’t just get a weapon like this!”

  She turned back to me, eyes blazing. “You either have to luck into a system quest reward or spend a fortune. And you—” She gestured wildly at it. “—just bled one into existence.”

  I exhaled through my nose feeling a little stung by her nonchalant comment. +10 to all stats was negligible. To her. She was so far ahead of me that they meant practically nothing to her, whereas they were a huge boon to me.

  A blinking light, another system message.

  Do you wish to bond the weapon?

  Obviously. Yes.

  I felt a flash of power emit from it and myself. The power collided and formed, splitting back off into both of us. I felt my strength surge as my attributes were raised.

  Please name your weapon.

  A faint whisper in the back of my mind, like it came from the scimitar itself. Woundreaver. I loved it.