Eamon didn't waste time.
He tied his hair back, rolled up his sleeves, and let his fingers hover above the tools. Each one pulsed in a rhythm he didn't understand, like they were alive, waiting for him to touch them. One looked like a hammer, but it had no weight. Another looked like a chisel, but it moved on its own, twisting slightly in the air.
He picked up the hammer. It settled in his hand, cold and quiet. The kind of quiet that meant it had seen more than it wanted to.
He looked at the broken shard again—spinning slowly above the forge, still glowing with the memory of what it had done. Of what it had failed to do.
Then he started.
The first hit wasn't loud. It didn't ring. It felt like cracking the surface of a dream. The shard rippled, not physically, but in memory—flashes of the fight, the scream that wasn't sound, the eyes that didn't blink, the girl bleeding in the alley, Cain's voice yelling something, Mabel's hands shaking—
He pushed past all of it.
Struck again.
