Kael dreamed of fire.
Not the kind that devours, but the kind that remembers. It burned in silence, folded through itself like a breathing sun, each pulse carrying echoes of hammers striking stars. He was weightless, suspended above a sea of molten light, and the world around him seemed to shape itself from his thoughts — fragments of mountains, ruins, constellations half-forged and trembling on the edge of being.
He thought it was a dream. Then the fire spoke.
You are late.
The voice was not sound but vibration — deep, metallic, resonant, like the world's heart beating beneath the surface of the cosmos. The flames rippled outward, forming vague silhouettes of figures kneeling around an anvil that stretched into infinity.
Kael tried to speak but found no breath. The heat pressed into him, not burning, but filling.
You carried me once, the voice said. A spark buried beneath your flesh. You ran from me. You died, and still I waited.
The air quivered. Kael saw himself reflected in the metal ocean — his eyes molten gold, his veins flickering like rivers of fire.
"What are you?" he whispered, though no sound left his mouth.
I am the First Forge. The womb of creation. The echo of every god who dared to build. And you—
The fire surged, swallowing him whole. Stars screamed into life and died in a single blink.
—you are the last hand to shape the dying world.
The weight of it crushed him. He saw endless galaxies like shards of broken metal drifting through the void, each humming with faint light. And at their centers, blackened cores — worlds consumed by hunger, by war, by gods who'd forgotten the promise of fire.
He saw what he could make if he accepted it.
He saw what he could destroy if he didn't.
"Why me?" he forced out. "I'm no god."
All gods began as thieves. You stole a spark once — when you lived, when you fought, when you bled for others. Now I will make it a flame.
The voice thundered through him, almost tender, almost cruel.
Rule them. Forge your own heavens. Or burn beside them. The choice is yours, Kael.
He reached out — and the fire reached back.
For a moment, he felt everything. Every atom singing, every galaxy trembling like strings in his veins. The forge wasn't giving him power; it was asking him to accept it, to fill the void left by all the broken creators before him. He almost said yes.
Almost.
Then a sound pierced the void — a human voice, faint but real.
"Kael!"
The dream cracked. The heat shattered into mist. His breath tore from him as the vision collapsed inward, and he awoke gasping in the cold night.
Smoke curled above him, painted silver by the moon. The ruins around him still steamed where the fire had touched stone. His palms glowed faintly, pulsing with veins of red-gold light before dimming.
The woman knelt nearby, eyes wide but unafraid. Her face was streaked with ash and tears. "You stopped breathing," she said quietly. "The fire—it moved inside you."
Kael sat up, trembling. The scent of iron clung to him. "It wasn't just a dream."
"No," she whispered. "The ground burned with your heartbeat."
He looked down at his hands. The forge's glow had faded, but when he closed his eyes, he could still feel it — that voice echoing through his chest like a promise waiting to be spoken.
Forge or fall.
The words lingered, half-remembered, half-command.
He gazed at the horizon where the stars shimmered like embers scattered across the void. Somewhere beyond them, he felt the Forge watching — not as a master, but as a reflection of what he could become.
And in that silence, Kael realized: the fire was awake now.
And it would never sleep again.
Far beyond the ruined world, in the silent gulf between stars, something stirred.
A city made of light — long dead, long forgotten — flickered awake as Kael's heartbeat rippled through the fabric of creation. Statues turned their faces toward the void, eyes rekindling like dying suns.
And upon a throne of broken constellations, a figure opened his eyes — pale as moonfire, ancient as the first dawn.
"The Forge breathes again," he murmured. His voice drifted through the emptiness like falling ash. "Then so must the gods who buried it."
The stars flared once, as if in answer — and the cosmos held its breath.