Before searching the temple, and now that Jake no longer had to watch his back, he could at last take a look at the dead bodies around him. After examining the charred body of the Zhorion priest and the bodies of several other guards, he was able to ascertain with great regret that their bracelets were irretrievable.
Unlike the participants' Oracle Devices, the latter had not disappeared, but his own bracelet seemed not to care, as if these scraps of inert metal had nothing substantial enough to deserve to be assimilated.
Intuitively, Jake thought this was odd, but not necessarily absurd. In his own opinion, the metallic liquid in his bracelet was not just metal, but more likely a multitude of nano-robots or at least something capable of supporting a complex program. If it was really just metal, the Aetheric Code of the material must have had unique properties.