Wincent straightened, his breath slow and controlled. The orange veins in his mechanical arm dimmed, then flared again—brighter this time, hotter, until the metal itself began to glow like a coal pulled from a forge.
He raised his free hand. Mana gathered around his palm in thick, visible streams, drawn from the air itself, from the ground, from the pulsing barrier at the edge of the domain. The energy coiled into his mechanical fingers, sinking into the joints, feeding the arm until it trembled with barely contained power.
Then the arm changed.
The metal rippled. Plates shifted and realigned, the smooth surface splitting open as segments unfolded and locked into place. The fingers elongated, tapering into curved, crimson-tipped points. The palm widened, the joints thickened, and the entire arm swelled with mass, layered in overlapping plates of dark metal veined with molten red light. Steam poured from the seams in thick, hissing jets. The air around it warped from the heat.
