The evidence officer gave Vhar one chair and removed every strap from it.
"That is considerate," he said.
"It is practical because I do not want furniture attached to the movement if the sample makes you move."
"Less considerate, but still reasonable."
Morning light entered the evidence bay through both open doors. Vhar sat inside a chalk circle with the crossed scabbards removed from his back and placed within reach behind the boundary. Radrazh and Ulqor remained sheathed. No weapon belonged in his hands until the source proved what contact meant.
Food and sleep had restored enough of his reserve for the controlled contact. His completed circuits carried current without the pause that had once separated decision from return.
The source had ignored everyone who carried it into the bay. Its only confirmed reaction belonged to Vhar's selected release. He chose one contact because avoidance would leave the next approach to whatever had hidden it inside the meter.
Nyra stood beyond the circle with the cage key's replacement number written across the back of her hand. House Severin's silver plate was gone.
"Did you walk here?" Vhar asked.
"Yes, and the distance was devastating."
"I will prepare condolences."
"Prepare your hand."
The answer came easily, though he noticed she had arrived before everyone else.
The worker raised the cage. Inside, the preserved filament rested in one glass compartment and the compressed marrow bead in another. A sliver had been shaved from the bead under witness, leaving one pale edge exposed.
The meter reader placed the altered response plate several paces away. It held no sample now. Both needles remained still.
"One contact," the evidence officer said. "Your right forefinger touches the filament's exposed end; nothing else enters the circle, and if you withdraw, nobody orders you to return."
Vhar looked at Nyra. "Who decided the finger?"
"You did, after rejecting my suggestion that we begin with your boot."
"The boot was sensible."
"The boot cannot tell us whether your hand still belongs to you."
"It has endured worse criticism."
Nyra's mouth moved before she controlled it. The tension in the room eased without disappearing.
The worker used two brass rods to lift one end of the filament over the lip of its dish. It resisted gravity rather than hanging limp. Each dark fiber held its position until the exposed end hung level with Vhar's hand.
Recognition stirred inside the SSS Primeval Bloodforge. It did not supply an origin, species, or remembered history. It recognized only a valid contacted source and the architecture presently carried by that source.
Vhar willed the limited record into awareness before touching it.
[SSS PRIMEVAL BLOODFORGE: Source Record]
[ SOURCE: Preserved Nerve Filament And Compressed Marrow ]
[ SOURCE EXISTENTIAL GRADE: Unresolved ]
[ SOURCE LIFE STATE: Extinct ]
[ TRUE RACE IDENTITY: Unknown ]
[ CURRENT BEHAVIOR: One Encoded False Nerve Cadence Through Direct Contact ]
[ CONTACT STATE: Awaiting ]
[End Source Record]
The panel named what waited, not what ancient body had carried it. `Unresolved` did not mean weak, and `Unknown` did not become permission to invent an answer.
Vhar rested his right forearm on his knee.
"Ready?" the evidence officer asked.
"No," he said, and touched the filament.
Cold entered his fingertip.
The dark strand tightened around the brass rods.
SNAP!
His right index finger bent without his command. The imposed movement raced through the wrist, fired the muscles beneath his forearm, and reached for his elbow before his own intention arrived.
Speed didn't explain it. The strand had written an order directly into his nerve timing.
Vhar's shoulder tried to turn toward the open door. His diaphragm locked halfway through a breath, while the false cadence divided his body into separate commands: hand first, shoulder second, lungs last.
His forearm slammed into the padded board.
THUD!
Leather split around the sand. The force had come from Vhar's own muscle, stolen a fraction before he chose how much of that muscle could move.
The cadence jumped from his shoulder into the nerves beside his spine. His right foot tried to plant while his left knee loosened, arranging his body for a stride he had never intended to take. It was attempting to turn his mass into an obedient continuation of the filament.
Nyra moved toward the chalk line.
"Stay outside," Vhar said.
His voice came from the breath the filament had failed to keep.
Near-black inscriptions surfaced across his fingers and forearm. Crimson moved through them as Primeval Deathless Record concentrated the Tattoo's continuous coordination.
The false cadence drove toward his heart.
His Tattoos joined his organs, circuits, Physique, nerves, muscles, breath, and Soulhold under his own rhythm. The invading timing could not seize a single nerve or move one part of his body against the rest. The imposed pulse died at the nerves it reached.
Crimson junctions brightened through his limbs and torso. The Tattoo had always kept his owned systems working together; the active concentration left the foreign sequence no isolated nerve to seize.
His diaphragm released. Blood crossed his heart under his rhythm. Both feet settled flat without taking the commanded step.
Vhar straightened his finger.
CRACK!
The sound came from the glass dish. A fracture ran beneath the filament as its tension pressed both brass rods downward.
The worker held the rods despite the cut opening across his old burn. Nyra caught the dish base before it tipped, keeping both hands below the filament.
"I have the glass," she said.
The evidence officer pulled the outer tray clear while everyone kept their hands from Vhar and allowed his contact to remain unbroken.
He opened Primeval Ancestral Devouring through the fingertip the source had tried to command.
The filament's governing pattern entered him as architecture rather than obedience. It carried impossible transmission through immense flesh, enough nerve redundancy to command mass without delay, and a preserved design in which weight demanded greater speed instead of surrendering it.
Devouring stripped that principle from the false order and re-authored it as a complete Forge input.
[SSS PRIMEVAL BLOODFORGE: Devouring Record]
[ DEVOURING: Abyssal Titan Nerve Transmission ]
[ CATEGORY: Devouring Record / Complete Forge Input ]
[ ORIGIN: Preserved Nerve Filament And Compressed Marrow / True Race Identity Unknown ]
[ SOURCE EXISTENTIAL GRADE: Unresolved ]
[ CAPABILITY EXPRESSION GRADE: Primeval ]
[ ANCHOR: Primeval Ancestral Devouring ]
[ FORGE FUNCTION: Supplies Colossal-Mass Nerve Transmission And Redundant Nerve Command To A Compatible Complete Physique Forge ]
[ ABILITIES: None ]
[ BOUNDARY: No Independent Direct Expression / Compatible Forge Architecture Required ]
[ FORGING: Abyssal Titan Nerve Body Route Recognized / Not Acquired ]
[ EVOLUTION: Through A Completed Compatible Forge Result ]
[End Devouring Record]
The name arrived as a translation of the physical source: abyssal density, titan mass, and nerve transmission. It revealed no native people behind it.
Vhar withdrew his finger.
The filament sagged across the brass rods for the first time. Its dark fibers no longer held themselves level. The needle on the distant response plate remained still.
The evidence officer turned the broken dish rather than trusting appearance. The worker touched one brass rod against the filament's middle. It folded under the rod and stayed where gravity placed it.
Vhar selected a single Uvar without releasing it. Neither end tightened. He let the current enter his right hand, returned it through the wrist, and opened his fingers. The strand did not anticipate him again.
"Inert," the meter reader said.
Nyra watched Vhar rather than the dish. "The source is inert, but his new record is not the same thing."
"Correct," Vhar said. "It is material for the Forge, so it neither moves me nor gives me a separate execution."
Nyra released the breath she had kept quiet. "Your hand?"
Vhar opened and closed it. Every finger answered his intention alone. The crimson receded, leaving the inscriptions near-black before they disappeared beneath his skin.
"Mine," he said.
The worker glanced at the blood crossing his palm from the broken dish. "So is this, unfortunately."
The cut was shallow. Nyra wrapped it while the man continued holding both rods, more annoyed by the delay than frightened by the blood.
"You could have let go," she said.
"And send unknown nerve tissue across the floor? I would never hear the end of it."
"Correct."
The evidence officer moved the inert filament into an unbroken compartment. Under witness, she separated one complete length and the prepared marrow shaving into a smaller Forge dish. The Academy seal crossed both allocations. The remaining tissue, bead, housing, and altered plate returned to the larger cage.
"The Academy retains the instrument and remaining source," she said, "while the smaller dish remains restricted until Vhar uses it here or returns it."
Vhar signed for access, not ownership of the rest.
"The contact spent ten Uvar," he said, "and enough remains for the next decision."
The meter reader checked the altered plate one final time.
TICK!
Its second needle moved backward.
Everyone turned.
The source dish remained inert. The motion came from beneath the meter's lower rim, where three narrow black strands had been braided through the return coils and hidden under the case lining.
The worker loosened the lining with a wooden wedge. The braid passed through three separate brass loops, crossed beneath the reserve needle, and returned to a narrow socket beside the cadence arm. Unlike the isolated filament, it had no loose end available for ordinary contact.
"It is built to receive what passes through the meter," the reader said. "Not what sits in the sample tray."
Nyra followed the loops with her eyes. "Vhar's first release entered the meter's field and came back through those coils."
"The braid would have felt both directions."
Vhar looked at the continuous black line. His next Realm required complete exertion, retention, redistribution, return, and recovery. The hidden braid occupied the exact instrument path meant to witness that cycle.
The worker lowered his wrapped hand. "That is not connected to the filament."
"No," Vhar said.
The captured nerve had tried to command his body once and failed completely. A separate black braid remained inside the instrument, waiting for current to leave him and return.
The evidence officer locked the meter in its own cage.
No strand moved again.