The forge breathed.
Not like a man, but like something older. Deeper. A slumbering god stirring beneath stone and steel. Its bellows exhaled in steady, thunderous rhythm, forcing waves of molten heat through rune-etched ducts that spiraled along the walls like coiled serpents. Copper vents spat embers into the dark, while condensation hissed down iron struts, steaming as it touched the glowing veins beneath the floor.
The air shimmered—warped by heat, thick with the tang of molten metal and the acrid sting of smelted stone. Breathing here meant tasting soot, brass, and the electric bite of charged Akar. The walls bore the scars of a thousand projects—soldered wounds, scorch marks, and fractures kissed with quicksilver welds.
Beneath the Verge, the Ironweavers' workshop was no mere smithy. It was a cathedral of intent. An artery. A crucible threaded into the city's living skeleton.
Conduits and spine-rails webbed beneath the floor—pulsing with Akar siphoned from the deeper Veinlines that ran under Embermark like the roots of an ancient machine.
Even the tools were more than tools. Hammers inlaid with resonance filigree. Tongs wrapped in glyph-chains to insulate against volatile flows. Measuring calipers folded with fractal hinges, their angles exact to the fifth harmonic.
The forge remembered.
And Hatim—he no longer fought it.
His hammer rose, trailing sparks like captured stars, then fell—metal meeting metal with a tone tuned beyond mere sound. Each strike was a syllable in a language older than words, a negotiation with the unseen current that coiled beneath reality.
Sparks scattered in glyph-shaped flares—lines, curves, loops—fading before the apprentices could track them.
This was not brute labor. It was a ritual of resonance.
Akar did not come because you demanded it. You could not muscle it into obedience. It came when the glyphs sang true. When the material agreed. When your own pulse harmonized with the deep lattice of the world.
Kael had told him that once—not kindly, not as praise, but as a grim warning passed between men who lived by fire and failure.
Hatim felt it now.
That subtle vibration beneath his ribs—the Node, the place where his being overlapped the world's structure. Akar slept there, coiled like liquid gold inside a vessel of flesh and breath.
Drawing from it wasn't a theft. It was a bleeding. A permission.
He inhaled—slow, steady. The warmth flared within him, threading down his arms, gilding his fingertips. Not light. Not flame. Something stranger. Fuller. The current of meaning itself.
Beneath his hands, the glyphwork etched into the conduit coil stirred—lines pulsing with soft amber light as the Akar began to flow.
The forge responded.
Kael, looming in the background, crossed his arms. His face gave nothing, but the way his chin dipped—barely a fraction—was a seismic shift in this place.
The apprentices who had once called Hatim street-scum now watched from the edges of the smoke, pretending to check their work but glancing, always glancing.
The fire was claiming him.
Not fully. Not yet.
But enough.
Then—
The forge's rhythm stuttered.
It wasn't loud. Not a crash. Not a scream. Just—absence.
A hollow note where there should have been breath.
Hammerfalls slowed. The pulse of the bellows faltered. Even the air shifted—suddenly sharp, brittle, as though the heat itself recoiled.
The apprentices froze. Heads turned toward the entrance before the sound arrived.
Bootsteps. Crisp. Measured.
A tremor passed through the Veinlines beneath the floor—a ripple of pressure, as if the city itself had inhaled and held.
Then she entered.
Lady Aethel.
She glided across the blackstone threshold as though gravity itself deferred to her presence. Her robes weren't fabric, not truly. Woven from memory-silk and shadowthread, they shimmered with sigils that refused to hold still. The glyphs shifted as eyes tried to read them—rotating, rearranging, spelling meanings not meant for mortals.
Where she walked, heat pulled back. The forge's glow dimmed—not extinguished, but wary.
Behind her came the Whispercloaks—Crown enforcers clad in glimmersteel and echo-plate. Their mirrored masks reflected nothing but the flaws of those who dared to meet their gaze. They moved like silence given shape.
"Master Kael."
Her voice was paper sliding across a blade. "My instructions..." A slight tilt of the head. "...seem to have suffered dilution. Contamination. Independence."
Kael bowed—not low, not meek, but like steel flexing beneath load. "The southern conduits are ahead of schedule. Harmonics align within sanctioned deviation."
"Sanctioned..." The word dripped from her lips as though tasting spoiled fruit. Her gaze drifted over the conduit coils, still steaming where glyph-seams had not yet cooled. Veins of rune-copper pulsed faintly, like the shed skins of something larger.
"Yet," she continued, "Aeridorian uplinks report tapering on the terminus lines. Disruptions. Failures in harmonic ascent."
A ripple passed through the apprentices—stiff spines, shared glances. They all knew what it meant.
This wasn't just error.
It was sabotage. Or might be made to seem so.
Hatim's throat tightened. His hand twitched toward the hammer at his side—not in defiance, but instinct.
The conduits here weren't mere wire or pipe. They were arteries—carrying the structured current of Akar to shield towers, sky-anchors, ward pylons. If resonance failed... glyph nets collapsed. Wards shattered. Cities burned.
"Perhaps," Lady Aethel mused, her voice soft as falling ash, "your newer apprentices... forge with too much improvisation."
Her gaze snapped to Hatim.
It pierced. Not a look. A reading. Her eyes didn't ask what are you—they demanded to know what lives beneath your skin.
Hatim stood very still.
"Demonstrate." A single word. Inevitable. Final. "A full conduit. Forged. Aligned. Charged. Now."
Kael didn't argue. His nod was brief. Measured. A forge-master's trust carried more weight than law.
Hatim's pulse roared against his ribs. His fingers trembled—whether from dread or from the residual Akar still burning in his veins, he couldn't tell.
The floor beneath his boots thrummed. The Veinlines—the ancient arteries beneath Embermark—awoke. He felt their pulse sync with his breath.
The forge held its breath.
So did he.