Runebound Reverse Tower of The Dead-Chapter 128: Steel Fiber

This was the epitome of engineering and smiting. The creation of a new material that served multiple purposes at once. High heat tolerance, high rigidity, and flexibility. Solid, durable, and extremely efficient in the conduction of energy.

Kael stared at the bar for a long moment, letting that reality sink in without letting it distract him. The metal didn’t just sit there like steel. It felt alive in the way certain tools did when they were made correctly.

Not warm, not magical in the dramatic sense, but dense with potential, like it wanted to be shaped and was simply waiting for a will strong enough to force it into form. The faint crimson shimmer beneath the surface was subtle, only catching the light when he moved it, and the mesh texture under his fingertips made it feel less like a slab and more like something grown.

Kael didn’t hesitate to start the final process. A creation process that would change who he was forever.

He didn’t let that line become poetry in his head. He treated it like a warning label. If he finished this, there was no going back to being a guy with a crowbar and a prayer. Tools changed people. The Tower changed people even faster. He exhaled, rolled his shoulders, and gripped Brokk’s hammer with the kind of calm you only got when your fear had already been accepted and filed away.

He began by hammering the bar into two equal parts. And begun by creating the first gauntlet, a left handed one.

The first strike rang out low, not loud like cheap steel, but deep, like the building itself had a throat and he’d just hit it. The bar resisted for a fraction of a second, then yielded cleanly, almost obediently. Kael adjusted his grip, measured the midpoint by eye, then by feel, then committed.

When the bar finally separated, it wasn’t a jagged break. It was a crisp division, like the alloy wanted symmetry. Kael set the two halves beside each other and felt a thin satisfaction, the kind that didn’t need a smile.

Since he already created one before, making a second one was easier. He already had the plan in mind, and Brokk’s hammer seemed to know where he wanted to strike and how he wanted to mold the steel.

The memory of the first gauntlet guided his hands without him needing to overthink it. He didn’t have to reinvent the steps, only refine them. Brokk’s hammer responded to intention more than muscle. Even his lighter taps carried authority, and the alloy listened. Kael found himself working in a rhythm that was almost uncomfortable in how natural it felt, like this had always been what his hands were meant to do, and life had just taken a detour through misery first.

He shaped, pressed, folded, and crushed. Structure shaped from what was first a bar of metal into fingers, then an elongated wristguard that reached the elbow. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The finger segments came first, not as delicate art, but as functional geometry. He formed the knuckles thick enough to take impact, then thinned the joints just enough that the hand could flex without binding.

The metal didn’t squeal or crack the way the earlier brittle thermalloy had threatened. It held. It bent. It settled into place with every correction. When he began extending the wrist guard, he kept it long, not because it looked impressive. But because he needed space for planting runes later. Then guard and protect his arm after. If the tool was meant to survive his kind of output, it had to protect more than his hand.

It looked cleaner than the first gauntlet he had, smoother and slightly slimmer. And most of all, lighter without feeling less durable.

That was the part that surprised him. The old gauntlet had been a miracle held together by stubbornness and patched assumptions. This one felt designed. Even before lining, even before runes, it sat in his grip as it belonged. He flexed the fingers once, listening for any scrape or catch. The motion was smooth, controlled, and it didn’t feel like he was wearing a brick.

The gauntlet was gray with a mix of black in it; it had an interesting texture, even with all the hammering. The hammer itself didn’t destroy or reshape the mesh; it actually spread it equally along the arm.

Kael ran his thumb along the surface again and felt those small bumps, aligned like a woven pattern beneath metal skin. The silk lattice had been disciplined, pulled into place the way a craftsman pulled thread tight. He didn’t fully understand how the Tower recognized this kind of material evolution so cleanly, but he wasn’t going to complain.

Understanding came later. Having it work came now.

It was the kind of texture that would help grip without tearing cloth, the kind that suggested the material had its own logic. Kael liked that. Tools with logic were safer than tools with mood swings.

He didn’t want to line the gauntlet with leather yet before he finished the other one first.

He moved to the second half of the bar with the same rhythm, but faster, more confident. The repeated motions came easier now. Fingers, knuckles, palm housing, forearm guard. The alloy responded consistently, and that consistency was its own relief. No surprise cracks. No sudden brittleness. No warning tooltip telling him he’d just made something that would shatter if someone breathed on it.

Night had begun to fall on the area, and that would mean that tomorrow they would have to start their basilisk hunt. So he needed to be done before something or someone comes and bothers him.

The light outside the window slit had changed from dull red to a deeper, bruised shade. Shadows in the terrace below stretched longer, and voices in the building had started to shift too.

More movement in the hallways. More murmurs. People got nervous when night approached, even in a "safe" base. Nervous people were curious. Curious people walked toward the noise.

And he has yet to finish, so he could deal with those who would come to find out what the noise was about.