You lay out the tools in a tight ring and let the lantern burn low, its light trembling over steel, linen, tinctures, and the advanced weapon you have made your own in all but flesh. The temple seems to hold its breath as you begin, every faceless statue turned inward like a blind congregation. Cold stone presses against your back while the first cut opens a path for the impossible, and the air fills with the sharp scent of alcohol and blood. Somewhere beneath the floor, the bell rings once, low and solemn, as if marking the start of a rite the living were never meant to know.

Hours blur into heat, pain, and meticulous force as you set metal into muscle and brace mechanism against bone. Your body trembles, but the design holds; each threaded binding and reinforced channel answers the strain with grim obedience. When at last the work is done, the firearm no longer rests in your hands alone but lives within your frame, an armed pulse hidden beneath skin. The temple’s darkness recoils, and the corridor ahead waits with a new kind of silence, wary of what you have become.