The forge breathed.
No. It hungered.
Bellows wheezed—lungs of some mechanical beast pumping molten air through rune-etched ducts that glowed like the veins of a dying god. The breath of fire licked the rafters, stained with a century of soot. Smoke drifted like reluctant ghosts, snagging on iron hooks, whispering through cracks in stone.
The air shimmered—too thick, too alive, bending light into warped halos. Sparks arced from anvils like fireflies being hunted. Every hammer-fall split the world open—
CLANG. Bone-deep. Earth-fed. A sound older than memory.
Hatim's hammer wavered. His grip trembled.
A miss. Another. Metal buckled wrong. Not shaped. Just... injured.
His palms were wreckage—skin peeled raw, blister over blister, blood mixing with sweat. His breath hitched. Heat clawed his lungs like molten wool. His vision blurred, the forge's glow branding phantom sigils behind his eyes.
Akar stirred beneath his skin. Not as ally. Not as tool. As a beast. Spasming. Twisting. Out of rhythm. Out of reach. Mocking.
He could shape a Veshan shield, collapse a Sennari binding—bend the air itself. But here, before fire and iron, before something real, he was deaf. Mute. Small.
"You're thinking about the hammer too much!"
Kael's voice cracked through the heat—sharp, annoyed, scarred by years of disappointment. His own hammer danced—precise, brutal elegance. Sparks spun in clean arcs, as if the forge liked him.
"This isn't a fight, Hatim!"
"It's a conversation."
Hatim gritted his teeth. His arms shook. His soul rebelled.
A conversation? All he heard was screaming. His own. The iron's. The fire's.
He tried. Again. Akar surged, too sharp—burned his channels. Then collapsed, too thin—left him hollow. Gone.
Around him, no one watched anymore. The curiosity had curdled into expectation.
He would fail.
Again.
And again.
The shame tasted like metal. Like blood on the back of his tongue.
Then—
Silence.
The forge stilled.
No hammers. No voices. No breath. The heat itself seemed to hold. The kind of silence that felt... wrong.
Hatim blinked sweat from his eyes. Around him, apprentices stiffened. Tools set down. Backs straightened. Not respect. Not discipline. Something else. Something colder.
From the archway—a ripple. A displacement. A shift.
She entered.
The air moved for her. Smoke unwound from her path. Light caught against silk threaded with moving sigils—subtle as breath, sharp as blades. Her robes whispered of authority, of things written in contracts, blood, and debt.
Her face—angular, precise. Her eyes—voids polished to glass, depthless. Her hair—bound with silver shaped like Akar veins.
She did not walk. She arrived.
Hatim's hands locked. Breath caught.
A noble. Not a silhouette glimpsed through lattice windows. Not a rumor woven through alley dust. Flesh. Power. Consequence.
Her gaze swept the forge—not seeing things, but measuring usefulness. Every worker a variable. Every tool a fraction. Every mistake already tallied.
Her voice sliced the air.
"Master Kael."
Glass. Smooth. Surgical. Weighted.
"Lady Aethel of House Valerius requests an update. On the conduit cores. Southern sector. Specifically—resonance integrity of the Akar channels."
Even the fire lowered its voice.
Kael bowed—deep. His soot-stained hands awkward against her cold elegance. "Progress remains within sanctioned variance. The southern conduits will—"
She cut him with a glance.
Her eyes pinned Hatim.
A blade slid between ribs. No blood. Just the certainty of being seen. Measured. Found wanting.
Sweat turned cold. The iron on his anvil looked alien now. Crude. Mocking. His hands felt wrong. His body felt... incomplete.
Her voice again—flatter now. Heavier.
"Ensure it. The Crown's patience runs thinner than your margins. Aeridor sends grain. Isenheim sends silk. And we send precision. Or we send nothing at all."
The words weren't threats. They were laws.
And yet her gaze lingered. Not at Kael. Not at the stacks of conduit.
At him.
At the boy who couldn't even coax a nail into form.
A flick of her wrist. A nod to her scribe. Names. Orders. Deadlines. Spoken like glyphs carved into air. Kael scribbled, bent, bowed.
And then—gone.
The air didn't cool. The heat stayed. But something else left with her.
Possibility. Mercy. Whatever name softness had once worn in this place.
Kael exhaled—half-laugh, half-growl. "That," he muttered, "is what it means to be owned by the Crown."
He tapped Hatim's hammer. Once. "And you? You can't even forge a nail straight enough for them to ignore you."
Hatim stared down at the billet. Red-hot. Waiting.
It wasn't metal. It was a wall.
And he was beneath it.
Time blurred.
Hammer. Miss. Fail. Sweat. Crack. Cry.
Hammer. Miss. Why am I here.
The forge didn't care. The fire didn't care.
Then—something broke.
Not the metal. Not the tool. Him.
Hatim stood there, hands bleeding, lungs raw, skin flayed by heat and effort. His body begged. His soul... whispered something quieter. Something desperate.
Not a scream. Not anymore. A memory.
Granny Maldri's hands—stitched with more scars than fingers. The way her needle hummed through cloth, not fighting the thread, but guiding it.
Lyra's giggle—muffled with crumbs and ash, the way she made even ruin feel like home.
None of them forced the world.
They shaped it.
Love. Patience. Attention.
Forging wasn't about dominance. It was resonance. Harmony. A conversation.
Hatim loosened his grip. Just a little. The hammer's weight shifted—not heavy, not hostile. Just... ready.
He inhaled. Felt the Akar not as pressure, but as pulse. Memory made motion. It slid beneath his ribs—not searing. Not violent. A rhythm. A breath.
He looked at the billet. Glowing. Waiting. A problem. A possibility.
Raised the hammer.
And asked.
CLANG.
The strike rang different. Not a crack. Not a fracture.
A note.
Sparks danced. Not flailing. Not desperate. They moved like... agreement.
The iron flexed beneath the strike. Shifted. Smoothed. As if... answering.
The Akar didn't surge. It sang.
Hatim stood there—breathing hard. Not smiling. Not triumphant. Just... breathing.
The iron had spoken.
And this time—he had heard it.