The forge began making things Riku hadn't asked for.
It started with small anomalies. A tool left overnight would return with a sharper edge than before, its handle slightly rebalanced as if someone had studied its flaws. A half-formed blade Kael discarded reemerged in the storage racks, polished and completed, its shape subtly curved to match the wrist angle of its original owner.
At first, Kael assumed it was the night shift engineers—until he personally sealed the forge doors and kept the key. The next morning, three spearheads were laid neatly on the anvil, each etched with a spiral root design that no one in Blackridge had ever used.
Riku said nothing, but he started sleeping closer to the forge hall.
He watched it at night. Observed the ventilation ducts for signs of unauthorized movement. Set snares near the furnace hatches. Nothing ever triggered. No one entered.
But the items kept coming.
Worse—they were useful.
The strange curved glaives performed better in ashfield combat. The redesigned armor fittings absorbed heat more evenly. The reinforcements for the trap hinges clicked faster, cleaner. They weren't just gifts. They were improvements.
Still, it made his stomach twist.
On the third morning, Sira brought a set of throwing knives to his quarters.
"These weren't forged here," she said.
"They were."
"Not by us."
He examined the weight. The balance was precise—beyond human. Not guesswork. Not even learned imitation.
"Are they dangerous?" he asked.
"They're correct," she said. "Too correct."
She wasn't wrong. The shape of them felt like someone had designed them by watching how her fingers flicked, how her shoulder turned, how she breathed between throws.
It was watching her train. Watching them all.
Later that evening, Riku stood alone in the lower forge annex and stared at the blueprint table. The parchment had been cleared hours earlier—but now there were six diagrams resting on the edge.
Not just sketches. Schematic predictions.
Layouts of trap upgrades they'd only theorized last week.
A folding pincer-lock system for pitfall resets.
An explosive decoy core with ash-delay ignition.
And most unsettling of all—a detailed cross-section of Blackridge's inner walls, with corrections marked in red that none of his engineers had made.
He picked one up. The markings were familiar.
His own script. His shorthand.
But he hadn't written them.
The breeze shifted behind him.
Riku didn't turn.
He didn't need to.
"You're not hiding anymore," he said aloud.
The room stayed quiet.
The forge vent behind him breathed low.
"But you're not ready either," he continued. "You want to learn—not confront."
He turned finally and faced the dark.
No form. No shadow. Just the faint echo of presence.
"I don't know what you are," he said. "I don't know why you're studying me. But if you want to make me, you need to know something first."
He walked to the far workbench and lifted the old broken spear—the one from his first fight against the basalt colossus.
It was cracked along the hilt. Imperfect. Wrong.
"This," he said, holding it up, "is failure."
He set it beside the new spear—streamlined, flawless, cold.
"And this," he said, gesturing to the stranger-made design, "is mimicry."
"But I…" His voice dropped. "I choose between them."
He stood there a long while, the two spears beside each other like parallel paths. One broken, one perfect.
In the dark, the forge pulsed faintly. Almost like breath.
He didn't sleep that night.
When dawn came, he found a new blueprint folded into the seam of his door.
It bore no glyphs. No marks.
Only a shape.
Not a weapon.
Not a wall.
A figure.
It wasn't him.
Not exactly.
The features were blurred. Too smooth. The shoulders were broader than his. The posture taller. Not commanding. Not monstrous. Balanced.
Almost… calm.
The eyes weren't hollow.
They weren't his.
And they were.
He folded the paper shut and didn't show it to anyone.
Instead, he went to the training yard.
Kael and Sira were drilling sparring formations.
Ilven was resetting the spear drills.
Veit stood at the outer fence, gaze calm now, speaking lowly to a new recruit about how wind traveled differently along roots than stone.
Riku nodded once.
This was still his tribe.
Still his fire.
But the Hollow was watching.
And now, it wanted to shape more than tools.
It wanted to shape choices.