The knock came just as Elias's fingers closed around the stiletto's handle, three sharp raps against the workshop's heavy door that cut through the evening quiet like hammer strikes on cold steel. He froze, the blade halfway raised, his concentration shattered by the unexpected intrusion.
"Elias? I know you're in there."
Sarah's voice carried the particular mix of familiarity and distance that marked all their interactions since the separation. He'd heard that tone through six months of lawyers and mediation sessions, conversations about dividing possessions and untangling the shared threads of eight years together.
He set the stiletto down carefully, wrapping it in a clean shop rag before crossing to the door. The workshop suddenly felt too small, too personal—all his tools and half-finished projects exposed like the contents of a diary. Sarah had always respected his need for this space during their marriage, rarely venturing down from their apartment upstairs unless invited. The fact that she was here now, knocking on his sanctuary's door, meant something official. Something final.
The lock turned with its familiar click, and there she was—Sarah Chen-Thorn, soon to be just Sarah Chen again. She looked tired, her dark hair pulled back in the no-nonsense ponytail she favored for difficult conversations. The manila envelope in her hand confirmed his suspicions.
"I went up to the apartment first," she said without preamble. "When you didn't answer, I figured you'd be down here. You always come down here when you're avoiding things."
Elias stepped back to let her enter, acutely aware of the bone dust he'd swept into corners that morning, the lingering smell of linseed oil and metal polish that saturated everything in his domain. Sarah's eyes swept the familiar chaos of his workbench, taking in the tools arranged with surgical precision, the half-finished commission pieces hanging on their hooks.
"I'm not avoiding anything," he said, which was technically true. He hadn't been avoiding the divorce papers—he'd been discovering that he could forge supernatural weapons through the power of linguistic understanding. The distinction felt important, even if he couldn't explain it.
"Right." Sarah's smile carried no warmth, but no real anger either. Just the weary recognition of a pattern they'd played out too many times. "Look, I'm not here to relitigate anything. I just need you to sign the final documents."
She held up the manila envelope, thick with legal paperwork that would officially dissolve their marriage. "The lawyers say if we don't file by the end of the month, our tax returns will have to be joint again. I think we've both had enough complications for one year."
Elias nodded, accepting the envelope with hands that still bore traces of metal polish under the nails. The papers felt heavier than they should have, weighted with finality. "I can sign them now, if you want."
"That would be good."
An uncomfortable silence settled between them as Elias cleared space on his workbench, moving aside the wrapped stiletto and a jar of flux to make room for the documents. Sarah remained near the door, her posture suggesting she was ready to leave the moment her business was concluded.
But as he spread the papers across the scarred wooden surface, she took a step closer, her gaze catching on the inscription tools still laid out from his evening's work.
"New commission?" she asked, and there was something almost like their old intimacy in the question. During their marriage, she'd often wandered down to the workshop in the evenings, bringing him coffee and listening as he explained the techniques behind whatever piece occupied his attention.
"Stiletto. Custom engraving work." He signed his name on the first document, the pen feeling strange after hours of holding precision gravers. "Client wanted Latin inscription."
Sarah picked up one of his finest engraving tools, examining the worn handle with the casual familiarity of someone who'd shared eight years with a craftsman. "You always did take the decorative work seriously. Remember that Celtic knot commission that kept you up for three straight nights?"
"The anniversary dagger for the couple in Park Slope." The memory surfaced easily—Sarah bringing him sandwiches at midnight, massaging the cramps from his shoulders when he finally finished the intricate knotwork. "You said I was obsessing over details no one would notice."
"But you said that was the point. That doing it right mattered even if only you would know the difference." She set the tool down carefully, respecting its precision. "I never really understood that. The... devotion you put into work that most people would just see as decoration."
Elias paused in his signing, looking up at her properly for the first time since she'd entered. There was something different in her expression, a thoughtfulness that hadn't been present during any of their recent legal interactions.
"It's not just decoration," he said, the words carrying more weight than he'd intended. "When someone asks you to put words on something they'll carry every day, something that matters to them... you're not just making marks in metal. You're creating something that carries their hopes, their beliefs, their... intentions."
Sarah nodded slowly, and for a moment the careful distance between them lessened. "Is that what went wrong with us? We stopped carrying the same intentions?"
The question hung in the workshop air between them, more personal than anything they'd discussed since the lawyers got involved. Elias considered it seriously, the way he'd learned to consider all questions that mattered.
"Maybe," he said eventually. "Maybe we started meaning different things by the same words. Love, marriage, future—same vocabulary, different definitions."
"Like translation errors." Sarah's smile was sad but genuine. "You always were better with symbols than feelings."
Elias returned to the papers, signing each document with the careful precision he brought to all detailed work. When he finished, he stacked them neatly and slid them back into the envelope.
"There," he said. "All official."
Sarah accepted the envelope, but didn't immediately move toward the door. Instead, she looked around the workshop again, taking in the accumulation of his life's work with something approaching nostalgia.
"Will you be all right? Living here alone, I mean. This place always felt more like home to you than our actual apartment."
"I'll be fine." And surprisingly, Elias realized he meant it. The workshop had always been his sanctuary, but lately it felt like something more. A place where he was discovering capabilities he'd never suspected, where ancient skills were evolving into something unprecedented. "I have plenty of work to keep me busy."
"Good." Sarah moved toward the door, then paused. "Elias? Whatever you're working on now, different are you making lately—I hope it makes you happy. You deserve that."
She was gone before he could ask what she meant by 'different,' the door closing behind her with the same definitive click it had made when she'd entered. But her words lingered in the workshop's quiet, mixing with the smell of metal and oil and the subtle awareness of the wrapped stiletto waiting on his workbench.
'Different...'
Elias unwrapped the stiletto and lifted it again, feeling for the subtle quality he'd sensed before Sarah's interruption. The blade felt warm in his hands, as if it were comforting his confused spirit.
Tomorrow he would deliver this piece to its new owner, would watch as a young woman accepted a blade that would anchor her moral compass through whatever challenges lay ahead. But tonight, alone in his workshop with the official dissolution of his marriage filed away in manila envelopes, Elias found himself thinking about Sarah's parting words.
Different. Yes, he was different. He was becoming the Forger of Rules, a craftsman who could bind meaning to metal through understanding and intention. But perhaps the most profound change wasn't supernatural at all—perhaps it was simply learning to recognize the true weight of the intentions he brought to his work, the responsibility that came with forging other people's hopes and beliefs into permanent form.
The workshop settled into evening quiet around him, filled with tools and half-finished projects and the patient potential of raw metal waiting to be transformed. Elias set the stiletto aside and began planning his next work, this time he would do something for yourself.
He was different, yes. But for the first time in months, he was beginning to understand what that difference might mean.