The forge breathed like a beast.
It hissed and roared with every gust of bellows, spewing tongues of orange light that danced across the soot-dark walls. Smoke clung to the rafters like ghosts unwilling to leave, thick with the scent of scorched leather, iron, and sweat. The air shimmered with heat, blurring outlines, smearing light. Every hammer fall cracked through the haze with bone-deep resonance—CLANG—each one a blow to Hatim's fraying resolve.
His hammer wavered above the glowing billet. Another misshaped strike. Another failure.
His palms were raw—new blisters cracking across old ones, the skin slick with blood and grime. A drop of sweat rolled down his temple, stung his eye. He blinked, disoriented, the glow of the forge imprinting red ghosts into his vision. His arms trembled. Every muscle in his body screamed. Akar stirred beneath his skin like a beast in chains, its rhythm jagged, unsteady. It refused him. Mocked him.
He could summon a Veshan shield to deflect Kander's fiercest strikes. He could make the air hum with nascent Sennari. But here—before this glowing, pulsing core of metal—he was mute. Powerless.
"You're thinking too much about the hammer, Hatim!" Kael's voice slashed through the din, rough and frustrated. Sparks showered from his anvil in perfect arcs. His hammer struck with grace, each blow carving meaning, not just shape. "Feel the metal! Feel the fire! Don't force it—guide it! This isn't a fight, it's a conversation!"
Hatim's jaw clenched. Conversation? All he heard was screaming—his own, the iron's, the roaring fire that never seemed to die. He tried again to channel his Akar, to pour the golden current through his arms, into his grip—but it surged too fast, searing hot, or vanished completely, leaving him hollow.
Around him, the apprentices no longer watched. They were no longer curious. He was expected—to fail.
The shame tasted like iron.
---
One morning, the forge stilled.
No clangs. No shouting. Only the hollow echo of silence spreading like a ripple across molten heat. Hatim looked up, breath ragged, sweat-soaked hair clinging to his forehead. Around him, every apprentice straightened, hands hurriedly wiped on aprons, posture rigid with something just shy of fear.
From the archway of white stone came the entourage.
She entered like oil across water—unbothered, untouched. Her presence parted the smoke. The light clung to her, refracted by the shimmer of her tunic, woven with sigils so subtle they pulsed only when one dared to stare too long. Her face was elegance forged into steel—eyes dark as onyx, hair drawn back with a silver clip shaped like a branching Akar vein.
Hatim froze.
A noble. Not a shadow glimpsed from an upper carriage window—not a name in a whispered curse. Flesh and blood. And power.
She didn't speak right away. She observed. Judged.
"Master Kael," her voice was glass, smooth and cold, and sharper than any edge forged here. "Lady Aethel of House Valerius sends her regards. She wishes an update on the conduit cores for the southern sector. Specifically, the resonance stability of the Akar flow."
Even the coals seemed to quiet under her voice.
Kael bowed low. His hands, stained with soot, now looked clumsy beside hers, elegant and clean. "Lady Aethel, our progress is within parameters. Master Bolun expects completion by month's end. The containment glyphs—"
Her eyes found Hatim before Kael could finish.
They pinned him like a needle through cloth. Unmoving. Unfeeling. Seeing everything.
The sweat on his brow turned cold. The iron before him looked suddenly crude. Mocking. He wanted to disappear, to become a shadow cast by the forge's flame, unseen and forgotten.
Her voice snapped again, the air shifting with its weight. "Ensure it. The Crown's investment in the Verge is not for vanity. Grain from Aeridor. Textiles from Isenheim. Our coffers are built on precision—and your mistakes cost more than they're worth."
She spoke of continents and commerce, but her gaze still lingered on the one who couldn't shape a single nail.
Then, to her scribe. Names. Orders. Deadlines. All spoken like spells. Kael nodded and scribbled. Hatim couldn't breathe.
Then she was gone. The heat didn't leave with her, but something else did. The air felt thinner. More fragile.
Kael approached, smudged with soot and superiority. "That," he said with a wry grin, "is what it means to be under a noble's thumb." He tapped Hatim's hammer against the anvil. "And you can't even shape one straight nail for them."
Hatim stared at the iron.
Not metal. A wall. One he couldn't climb.
---
Days passed. Or maybe just the same day, stretched thin. Hammer. Fail. Sweat. Try again. Fail harder.
Then came the breaking point.
Hatim stood before the anvil, skin burning, lungs raw. His body begged for rest. His heart begged for something else. Anything else.
He gripped the hammer so tightly it trembled in his hand. Tears welled up—not gentle ones, not soft grief. These were tears scraped from the inside, forged of fury and fatigue and the quiet despair of being almost something.
He thought of Granny Maldri—her quiet humming, the rhythm of her sewing needle, the way she patched holes with care rather than complaint. He remembered Granny Maldri, her hands worn like river stones, shaping thread with patience and pride. He remembered Lyra, hair dusted with ash, smiling with crumbs on her lips, trusting him without reason.
None of them forced. They shaped.
Love. Care. Creation.
The thought bloomed in his chest like light cracking through stone.
Not strength. Not dominance. Resonance.
Forging wasn't about commanding the iron. It was about listening. Loving the process. Cradling fire without being consumed by it.
He adjusted his grip. The hammer no longer felt like a weapon—it felt like an extension of breath, of memory, of intention.
He looked at the iron, red-hot and trembling on the anvil. Not his enemy. Not a task. A possibility.
He raised the hammer.
And poured everything in.
The lullabies. The warmth of old hands on his fevered brow. The longing to build, not break. The ache of having no home and the desperate, quiet hope of forging one—one strike at a time.
CLANG!
It rang like a bell struck at the center of the world.
A ripple of golden sparks danced outward. The handle thrummed in his grip. The iron... shifted. Not just dented, but shaped. Smoothed. Answered.
The Akar in his body pulsed—not wildly, not painfully—but in rhythm. Like breath. Like heartbeat. It moved with him, through him, humming as though in agreement.
Hatim didn't smile.
He just breathed. Deep. True.
The iron had sung back.
And he had heard it.