The binding process completed on schedule.
Jiseok pulled the core material from the mana-temperature bath on the morning of day twenty-three, three days past the documented minimum, the extra margin a precaution he had built in himself rather than anything the patron's annotations had required. The luminescent quality that had been steady through the bath stage had deepened by the final days into something with more presence, the surface no longer simply glowing but carrying a visible internal structure, faint lines moving beneath the material's exterior like something settling into its final shape.
