The morning after his awakening, the forge still smelled of smoke and sweat. Arin's arms ached from the night before, but the pain was no longer sharp. It was alive-moving through him like molten metal cooling into form.
He rolled up his sleeves. Beneath the skin, faint black veins shimmered like lines of iron dust. They pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
When he stepped outside, frost cracked under his boots. The village roofs gleamed white in the early light, and smoke curled lazily from the chimneys. A few miners paused to stare at him—at the boy who had spent all night hammering as if possessed.
"Back to digging graves, Kael?" someone muttered.
Arin ignored them. His father's forge waited, silent but not empty. The hammer lay where he had left it, still warm to the touch though the fire had long since gone out.
He gripped it again. The weight that once humbled him now felt... right. As if the hammer and his arm were forged from the same ore.
When the hammer fell, sparks leapt high, brighter than before. The metal beneath glowed fiercely, and for an instant he thought he saw the shape of chains twisting through the flames—shifting, writhing, then gone.
He stumbled back, chest heaving. The mark on his palm—the one seared there by the black tablet—throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
Do you seek strength?
The whisper echoed faintly, as if from deep below the earth.
Arin clenched his fists. "If this is strength," he hissed, "then show me how to use it."
But no answer came. Only the sound of wind through the forge.
Hours passed before he noticed the shadow at the door.
It was the elder—the same man who had told him to stop digging. His gaze swept the room, from the cracked anvil to the hammer glowing faintly in Arin's hand.
"You've been working since before dawn," the elder said. "A boy's body can't withstand that kind of strain."
Arin didn't look up. "It can now."
The old man frowned. "You've touched something dangerous, haven't you?"
That made Arin pause. "What do you mean?"
The elder's eyes darkened. "Long ago, before Ironveil was built, the valley was sealed. The earth here isn't ordinary. The iron veins run too deep-deeper than the miners ever reached. The last man who tried to dig that far... his heart turned to stone before morning."
He took a step closer. "If the mountain whispers to you, boy, you must not listen."
Arin gripped the hammer tighter. "Then maybe it's time someone did."
The elder's expression hardened. "You sound like your father."
For a long moment, neither spoke. Then the old man sighed and turned away. "Be careful what you forge, Arin Kael. Some metals can't be reforged once they break."
When he left, the forge fell silent again.
Arin stood there, breathing hard. He could feel the weight of his father's anvil, the pulse in his veins, and beneath it all, the distant hum of something vast and ancient—calling.
He pressed his palm to the iron. It thrummed under his touch, like a heartbeat answering his own.
Then teach me, he thought. I'll bear the cost.
Outside, clouds rolled across the valley, and the wind carried the scent of rain and rust.
Deep within the soil beneath Ironveil, the black tablet stirred once more.