I walked the uniform streets with Stoneflow in hand. The silence was deafening, and with each step I sent sharp echoes bouncing against the walls. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and savored the silence. I hadn't felt this in so long. If I focused hard enough, I could almost hear the blood flow through my veins, in an eerily calming way.

  Never had I expected to miss the silence of the Layered Empire, but sometimes life just threw you a curveball like that.

  At that point, I couldn't recall how many houses I had searched. I kept to the outskirts of the bailey by sticking to the two layers of streets closest to the half-circular wall. Almost all houses were dedicated to some sort of craft. There was a place for sewing, shoemaking, watchmaking, you name it, plus the smithy I'd made my temporary home, of course. It really did seem this place was a crafter's dream after all, and an ideal place to travel back home from. That way I could bring whatever tools and equipment I wanted back to my cabin, for free.

  I cracked a white door of stone open with a smug grin. This was the last house on my list for the day. After, I was going to take my time settling into my temporary abode.

  Pointing my blade inside the door and using the side of it to push it open fully, I stepped inside. The door slammed into the wall with a clap and kicked up dust into the room. I coughed and waved it from my face as I studied the insides of the building.

  It was most likely the most normal of all buildings. There was no apparent craft the owner had devoted themselves to, or so I thought, before I walked into the living room.

  "Sera..." I muttered, struggling to keep my jaw from dropping.

  Before every wall stood a bookcase filled to the brim with books and scrolls. So much knowledge had been packed into such a little space. It was nothing compared to the library back in the seventh layer, but at the same time it was so much more.

  Carefully, I pulled out a book with a green cover. I recognized the runes engraved in its back, but I couldn't quite put my finger on where I'd seen them before. Cursing the veil for not translating these runes like it did back in the Chambers of Crushing, I pushed the book back into its place.

  You should bring some. They will be good practice.

  Her whisper felt like velvet in my ear as she said just what I wanted to hear. I'd been craving knowledge about this place for quite some time now, knowledge that was untouched and unfiltered by the Blessed of Earth... or Sera.

  Like a greedy kid, I pulled the green book back out and went to town, scouring the shelves for something else with runes that I recognized. After a few minutes of erratic deliberation, I walked back to the smithy with my arms full. Sure, I could read in the small library; it wasn't very far, but there was an inherent charm to reading in your bed.

  Dumping the small hoard of books inside the bedroom, I clapped my hands free from dust with a satisfied smile. Now all that needed doing was settling in.

  I tied the front door shut with a rope of blue threads, then covered all the windows to the street with whatever pieces of cloth I found lying around. On its own that would probably be enough, I decided, and took off my coat and armor. They were almost like second skins to me now, but still far from nice lounge-wear.

  Walking through the workspace of the smithy to the living room-slash-kitchen, I eyed the back door. It led to a small square courtyard shared by the three neighboring houses. Judging by the tables and chairs standing in its middle, I assumed they had been getting along quite alright.

  Still, I didn't know the neighbors, and although their houses may be empty, there was no telling what would happen later. That was just a fact of life in the Layered Empire. With that in mind, I tied tripwires wherever someone could sneak into my house. For good measure, I also made some crude alarms and put them in the courtyard. It was remarkable how much you could create with just a piece of thread and some spare parts of metal.

  Anyway, with preparations done, I stepped back inside my humble abode. I still wasn't quite ready to hit the sack, so I stepped into the smithy to get acclimated. Gerrard had gifted me with enough bullets to last a while. Essentially, he'd given me fish, but I wanted to learnhow to fish.

  Pulling one of his empty cartridges from my pocket, I sat down on a stool by a wooden worktable. Spinning the thing in my hand, it didn't look very remarkable, but I couldn't help but wonder how he'd managed to fuse glass and metal like he had.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  I scowled at the bullet. There was only really one way to find out how it was constructed: breaking it. Thankfully I had plenty more where it came from, but it hurt to destroy something Gerrard had made for me.

  Stop.

  Clenching my teeth, I grabbed the bullet with both hands and pulled in opposite directions. Quite the barbaric approach, so I wasn't surprised that it didn't work. Opting to actually use the tools I'd come across, I screwed the bullet into a vice and retrieved a file-saw from one of the many racks of tools.

  I lined it up with the bullet, then got to sawing. With my strength, it felt like I'd crush either the bullet or the saw a few times, but I always managed to ease the pressure before something catastrophic like that happened.

  A few minutes later, the tip of the bullet fell off. I grinned happily at my success, then froze at the sight of the grooves lining the inside of the bullet. I slapped myself on the head.

  It was screwed on, you fucking moron!

  "Fuck," I groaned as I bent over to pick the tip up from the floor.

  It was quite obvious now that that was half how Gerrard had done it. The answer was just precision. He'd made the cartridge into three separate pieces: pointy tip, vial body, and a thick base that supported both the outside of the vial, and the inside, with small metallic sticks. The ones inside the vial also held a circle with groves, so that you could just screw it off and fill the vial yourself.

  The old man had thought of it all. I laid the sawed off bullet on the table and picked up another one from my pocket. This one I unscrewed as intended, and carefully separated each piece.

  Though it looked like a difficult task, I didn't think it was impossible to replicate with the tools and magical threads I had at my disposal. It would just take time. But time I had.

  Scurrying off into my bedroom, I rummaged through my pack of stuff for my hastily scribbled down refinery guide, then returned to my worktable.

  Sera stayed awfully quiet, leaving me to fend for myself as I interpreted the text. Most of it was still completely unreadable, although I had come a long ways since first stepping foot back in the Empire.

  So far, what I'd gathered was that the process of refining separated magic from blood. I had already seen a few ways that this had been done apart from the bullets. In fact, when I'd first arrived, the Jailor had worn an engine that I got a look at. Not much of it remained vivid, but I remember that it had been an input device, and that it required output.

  In a sense, the whole refinery process was the input, while the bullets were the output. The only difference being that the bullets somehow retained the magical charge, like a battery of some kind.

  And to do that, you needed a part of the original input, which was where the bloodletting came in.

  So, in a sense, all I had to do was store my magic outside of my body, bleed into the vials, then charge my blood with the stored magic somehow.

  "Simple..." I mumbled and scratched my head. Simply just having magically charged blood would make it so much easier. What a shame things weren't that easy.

  In any case, I finally had something to go on. However, simply theorizing wasn't going to cut it for me today. I intended to learn how to use the tools, and stuff like that you learned by doing. And I really wanted to make a grenade. Or a couple.

  Blowing myself up with the red threads had already gotten old, but I'd just caught a glimpse of their real power. Not using them more would almost be a crime. That's why I'd come up with the grenade idea. The bullets may have been too fragile to load with threads of the old weave into, but that didn't mean there were no ways of actually pulling it off. I just had to think a little outside of the box.

  Rummaging through the various containers inside the smithy, I found a plethora of discarded creations. I gathered those I saw no possible uses for in a woven basket and placed it next to the tub of coal. I'd smelt them when I needed material. However, I did find a few pieces that could be used for what I had in mind, the first piece being an old locket with hollowed out insides.

  "Perfect," I exclaimed and brought it to the table.

  I used a hammer and nail to make a thin hole in the back of it, then got to work with my crazy experiment.

  If I wanted to use the red threads safely, then I had to create a stable environment for it. And what could be more stable than the blue threads of the veil? They had quite literally been created to contain the savage energy of the old weave.

  I grabbed a handful of the threads and threaded one through the small hole I'd made in the back of the locket, then tied the rest of them together into a long string and looped it inside the body of the locket. When all the sight of metal had been blotted out by the threads, I swallowed, already fearing the searing pain of withstanding a point-blank explosion.

  Carefully, almost reverently, I plucked a thread of the old weave with shaking hands and tied it into a small knot. Cradling it in both hands, I gently lowered it into the cocoon-like bed I'd built for it inside the locket, then closed the lid.

  My heart pounded against my ribs as I moved to the kitchen window overlooking the courtyard. I tied the piece of thread sticking out of the locket to my index finger, then heaved the thing up and down to get used to its weight, absolutely terrified that it would blow up in my hand.

  Then, I cocked my arm back and threw the locket out the window with a whipping motion. The thread attached to my finger unspooled the blue threads inside the locket until the red thread was given enough room to move around. It exploded mere moments after it left my hand, searing my face with heat, but I could do nothing to suppress the smile.

  It worked.

  It didn't work well, but it worked.