[Liem has nothing to offer to Hayame’s musings about how a shard might be emptied of the soul within, made into an empty vessel to receive something else. Is that any more or less possible than a soul being crystallized from nothing by some unscrupulous sorcerer? He’s nowhere near knowledgeable enough of such things to even begin to say. Though, at least if that were true…]

In that case, there would be other missing shard-bearers who have had theirs taken. Even if the process wasn’t fatal, the victims couldn’t be allowed their freedom without drawing unwanted attention.

[That, at least, is something they could try to discern for themselves. Do other people from the two cities ever go missing? It might be worth looking into, since Liem doesn’t feel easy about the prospect of leaving that possibility unexplored.]

But as to why Manon’s shard would end up the way it was… I couldn’t begin to guess. Why combine multiple shards in that way to begin with, counterfeit or not? Especially when the end product was simply left to wander the forest.

[It doesn’t make any kind of sense to him. Such a bizarre and unheard of experiment seems like it would have been difficult to pull off, and possibly quite costly as well. What could possibly make it worth it?]