Gram

Gram is a legendary enchanted greatsword whose decisive significance lies in its ability to convert an opponent’s violence into protection and counterforce. Its dragon imagery and reputed history give it the aura of an artifact, but its importance is practical as well as symbolic: Gram actively alters the terms of battle, making strength dangerous to whoever supplies it and turning a weapon into an additional combatant in the scene.

Form and Legendary Function

Gram appears as a massive sword with a black-edged blade and an inscription running along its length. The inscription depicts a stylized dragon baring its fangs, binding the weapon’s visual identity to the claim that it was once used to exterminate dragons. The legend is not merely decorative. The blade swirls with energy when Dorian Jazz raises it, and its enchantment is immediately legible as a threat to Awakened opponents.

Jazz explains that Gram empowers and protects its wielder by absorbing kinetic force. The energy produced by an attack can be stored within the weapon or unleashed against the aggressor, so a direct confrontation is specifically ill-advised. This makes Gram more than a sharp instrument: its material properties participate in the exchange of violence, redistributing force rather than simply receiving it. An attacker’s strength can therefore become the weapon’s reserve and, ultimately, the attacker’s undoing.

The Duel with Jack

Gram is introduced during the confrontation between Jack and Jazz, after Jazz rejects further argument about the atrocities committed by both men and proposes a fight to the death. The terms are deliberately restrictive: neither combatant may use powers or mana, and victory must depend on skill. Jazz agrees to spare his defeated opponent’s men as prisoners of war if Jack wins, offering only his personal word as the guarantee that the boats will not be destroyed.

The duel begins when Jack selects a much smaller enchanted gladius from a table of weapons. The weapon is identified as the Broken Gladius of Achilles, but an error follows its identification, leaving Jack to face Gram with a blade whose own status is compromised. Jack launches himself from the ground, and his short sword strikes the greatsword. Gram absorbs the brunt of his strength instead of yielding to it.

Jazz then swings Gram and releases a wave of kinetic energy that drives Jack backward. He names the sword and describes its history and function while holding it out, turning exposition into tactical warning. The duel’s value shifts at that moment: what Jack initially approaches as a test of skill becomes an encounter with an artifact whose enchantment invalidates ordinary assumptions about attack and defense. Gram gives Jazz a formidable advantage without making the fight effortless, because its power depends on how force enters the exchange and how skill directs it.

From Opponent’s Weapon to Jack’s Arsenal

After the duel, Gram is no longer confined to Jazz’s possession. When Jack detects that an Apostle is nearby, he rises and takes up the massive greatsword propped against the wall. His system interface lights up and connects him to the enchanted weapon, and Jack announces that it is time to test it. This moment establishes a new relationship between Jack and Gram: the sword is not merely taken as loot or carried as an inert trophy, but integrated into the protagonist’s technological and magical combat system.

The transfer is significant because Gram’s identity survives the change of wielder. The same weapon that previously made Jack’s strength hazardous is now tested through Jack’s own interface and combat capacity. Its history as a dragon-slaying blade, its defensive absorption, and its kinetic retaliation therefore become resources available to a former opponent. The object carries continuity across a reversal of allegiance, allowing the earlier duel to remain present in later battles through the sword itself.

Gram in the Apostle and Angel Conflicts

Gram’s new role is confirmed in the later encounter with Athena. Jack lifts the Apostle’s writhing head while she continues to emit flames, and the surrounding violence presents the weapon’s wielder as capable of physically dominating an enemy of monstrous resilience. The same sequence includes the Apostle’s warning that strength attracts strength and that the Apostles will come for Jack, linking Gram’s power to an escalating cycle of challenge. The sword does not end conflict; it helps mark Jack as a target worthy of increasingly powerful enemies.

Gram also returns in Jack’s confrontation with Michael. When feathers pierce a barrier and impale Michael through his white suit, Jack swings Gram. He then invokes the command "Ignite, Dandelga," after which a massive black blade bursts into existence in a flash of fire. Michael answers with a two-handed slab of flaming metal, and the two weapons clash with a resounding clang. Gram thus stands at the center of a confrontation that exceeds the earlier human-scale duel: its remembered kinetic logic and legendary stature are carried into a clash involving an angel, supernatural projectiles, and manifested blades.

Material Agency and Narrative Significance

Gram’s narrative function depends on its active material agency. The sword absorbs, stores, and redirects kinetic force; it protects the wielder; it changes the tactical meaning of strength; and, after connecting with Jack’s system interface, it helps determine how Jack can act in later confrontations. Human intention remains important, but the outcome is produced by an assemblage of wielder, weapon, enchantment, interface, and opponent. Gram is therefore not a passive emblem of power. Its properties shape the choices available to every fighter who meets it.

The weapon also preserves and redistributes authority. Jazz uses Gram to formalize a personal grievance as a duel, presenting the blade as the instrument of an eye-for-an-eye ethic. Jack later inherits the same artifact and turns it against enemies far beyond the original dispute. The movement from Jazz to Jack converts a weapon of revenge into an instrument of continuing resistance, while its dragon-slaying legend gives modern supernatural battles a deliberately archaic frame. Gram’s history remains partly legendary, yet its effects are immediate and measurable: it absorbs impact, rejects straightforward assault, empowers its bearer, and makes each successive confrontation more consequential.