The bottle stayed silent for days.
Kael didn't touch it.
Didn't unwrap it.
He carried it inside the amulet pouch, sealed between layers of leather and prayer thread. Elric had once scoffed at such charms.
But Kael had begun to believe in silence.
He trained.
Harder than before.
Longer.
With no goal other than control.
The Nameless Verse moved through him like a river beneath ice—distant, sluggish, but present. His breath no longer caught. His thoughts no longer scattered.
And one morning, it happened.
He felt it.
Not fire.
Not light.
Not power.
A shift.
A thread untangled behind his ribs.
A tension broke.
Not loudly.
But cleanly.
He sat, breath steady, as a warmth crept from his chest to his fingertips. His body didn't glow. His skin didn't shimmer.
But something inside had changed.
He had stepped through.
The second layer.
There was no celebration.
No burst of force.
Just... stillness.
But it was a different stillness.
A willing one.
High in the cliffs above the Hollow, a figure stirred.
An old man.
His face lined, robes faded.
He'd been asleep. Or meditating. Or dead—it was hard to tell.
But something had shifted below.
A pulse of will, not power.
The man opened one eye.
"Huh," he murmured.
"Another one crossed."
Then went back to sleep.
Kael didn't know.
He simply rose, gathered his tools, and began grinding a new batch of salves.
Tonight, he'd refine Riven's stabilizer again.
Maybe stronger.
Maybe not.
He no longer rushed.
He had time.
The bottle pulsed once from inside the pouch.
Faint.
Faintly... amused?
Kael didn't react.
He just whispered to himself:
"I'm not yours."
Then, softer:
"Not yet."