Chương 67: Chapter 68: The Limestone Kippur

Ethan stepped out from the darkness of the lower fissure entryway, his boots making no sound against the sandstone floor of the upper chamber. He unbuckled his mud-smeared burlap apron, tossing the heavy fabric onto the stone shelf before walking over to the charcoal fire. Across the smoldering white coals, Hilkiah was sitting upright, his weathered hands idly organizing his lineage skins.

His health metrics on Ethan's interface row had finally stabilised into a safe, steady green line, the deep, hollow exhaustion in his cheeks replaced by a faint, natural colour. Ethan pulled the linen wrap down from his jaw, letting out a long, exhausted breath. For the first time in three weeks, the cold, predatory mask of the scrapper fell away, replaced by a tired, genuine smile.

"Hey," Ethan said softly, his voice echoing warmly off the high limestone vault.

"You're looking a lot better today. The breathing rattle is completely gone." Hilkiah looked up, a rare, faint smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"The mountain air has been kind, outlander. And the water you bring from the deep cracks carries the cold of the peaks. My joints are finally holding weight again." Ethan knelt by the fire, pouring a fresh cup of mountain runoff from the skin and handing it to the old man.

"Good. Because the month is turning, and the valley down in Beth Shean is about to hit a major breaking point. Let's get you home to your people in the hill country before all hell breaks loose. But first... I need to arm myself for the road south to Megiddo." He pulled the canvas sack of salvaged obsidian fragments over, letting the jagged, crimson shards clatter onto the sandstone.

"Teach me how to purify this, Hilkiah. Show me the Kippur." The old priest reached down, his calloused fingertips carefully turning over one of the jagged glass pieces. He looked up into Ethan's eyes, his expression shifting from a companion to an ancient scholar of the law.

"The Kippur is not a magic spell, outlander," Hilkiah said gently, his voice deep and resonant.

"It is an act of physical containment. To cleanse a material that has swallowed the trauma of violence, you must coat it, seal it, and white-out its past. But first, the material—and the hands that hold it—must encounter the Tahar." Hilkiah paused, his sharp gaze searching the dim contours of the cavern.

"Tell me, do you know anywhere near this camp with living waters?" Ethan blinked, a look of brief confusion crossing his face.

"Living waters? What do you mean?"

"Moving water," Hilkiah explained, his voice low.

"Running, flowing springs that do not sit stagnant like the dead."

"I know a place," Ethan said, a sudden realisation clicking in his mind. Before they descended, Ethan took his bronze trowel and scraped off the cave's vertical limestone, extracting a fine, powdery mound of pure white סִיד (Sid). He scraped the burning chalk into his collection trough, securing the mineral barrier before leading the old priest down through the narrow vertical fissure at the back of the chamber. When they stepped down into the lower rock pocket, the subterranean workshop was quiet.

At the back of the chamber, a natural crystal-clear spring of moving mountain water rippled through the limestone bedrock, draining out through a lower fissure.

"Take the glass, Ethan. Wade into the living waters that flow. Wash away the bloodguilt of the plains." Ethan stripped away his dirt-stained tunic until he stood bare-chested in the freezing air, stepping out directly into the black pool. The water was a physical shock, a numbing, chest-deep chill that instantly drove the lingering neural fatigue out of his central nervous system. He waded deep into the center of the subterranean spring, submerging himself completely beneath the crystal-clear water.

Standing inside the moving pool, he methodically rinsed each crimson glass shard, watching the dark, dried remnants of dirt dissolve and float away into the black current, leaving the raw silicates clean, wet, and pristine. He stepped back onto the dry stone shelf, his skin tingling as he pulled his linen kilt back on.

"Now for the covering," Hilkiah commanded, leaning forward to watch the pit. Under Hilkiah's rhythmic verbal direction, Ethan stoked the kiln his golems had built. He manually packed a thick, dense blanket of the white Sid powder he had scraped upstairs directly over the wet obsidian aggregates, completely smearing and coating the material before sealing the furnace mouth with wet silt. As the furnace scaled to maximum output, the limestone dust underwent a violent thermal fusion.

The burning white chalk acted as an absolute physical white-out over the silicate, permanently sealing the internal friction data beneath an unbreakable mineral shield. Inside Ethan's cortex, the Linguistic Genesis Engine flared in a magnificent gold chime: [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — KIPPUR PURIFICATION COMPLETED] This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Material Target: Obsidian Glass Purification: סִיד (Sid / Limestone Boundary Layer) The purified glass emerged from the cooling cycle completely transformed. The murky, clotted mahogany impurities of the bloodguilt had been completely bleached out by the burning limestone, allowing the native iron of the river sand to settle into its natural structural form. The material had rendered into an ultra-dense, hyper-clear Translucent Amber-Teal jewel glass.

It caught the dim furnace light like a polished sheet of ancient river jade, completely free of internal fractures or structural friction. Ethan didn't try to build the weapon here. He had no horn shafts inside the cave. He simply wrapped the raw, glowing amber-teal crystal fragments in a coarse hemp rag, slung them deep into his canvas tool-bag. Now they were ready for the final exodus through the mountain tracks.