You return to the altar of your own making and lay your thoughts beside your blood-slick tools. The temple’s cold air slides over the embedded mechanism in your flesh, and you study both machine and body as if they are one language with two alphabets. Every seam suggests a stronger seam, every constraint a way to be broken cleanly, and every scar a map of future improvement. The faceless statues stand in a tightening ring of judgment while the bell below the floor gives a distant, thoughtful note.

For a long time, you work without mercy or rest, revising the design until it ceases to resemble anything born in ordinary flesh. You reinforce what can be reinforced, reroute what can be rerouted, and imagine principles beyond hinge, sinew, barrel, and bone. The temple seems to strain around your ambition, its shadows thinning at the edges as if your intellect is burning holes through them. When you finally pause, the thing inside you feels less like a weapon than a new rule the world has not yet admitted exists.