The commission arrived three days after signing the Consortium contract, delivered by a courier in silk livery who treated the forge like it might contain something precious and fragile.
Which, Kieran supposed, it now did. Him.
The sealed envelope bore the Consortium's wax stamp and Sylvie Merchant's elegant handwriting. Inside was a single page of parchment and a money order that made Kieran's hands shake when he read the amount.
Master Ashford,
Your first official commission comes from Lord Harlan Wavecrest, an A-rank Tide Warrior and prominent member of the Coastal Defense Initiative. Lord Wavecrest requires a longsword optimized for water-based combat and his particular fighting style.
Specifications: Corrosion-resistant construction, enhanced water manipulation capabilities, optimized for underwater use while maintaining surface effectiveness. Client budget: 2,000 gold. Your commission (75% per our agreement): 1,500 gold.
Lord Wavecrest will arrive in Millhaven in six weeks to claim the finished work. Materials are being shipped separately and should arrive within three days.
This is a high-profile commission, Kieran. Lord Wavecrest is well-connected and influential. A successful delivery will establish your reputation within Consortium circles. I trust you'll deliver something worthy of both our partnership and your considerable talents.
- Sylvie
P.S. - No pressure.
"No pressure," Kieran repeated hollowly, staring at the letter. "Just two thousand gold and my entire professional reputation riding on this first commission for powerful merchants who could destroy my life if I disappoint them."
"You're spiraling again," Mira observed from the doorway, already dressed for the day despite the early hour. She'd taken to sleeping in the forge's small loft, claiming it was more convenient for handling the increased business traffic. Kieran suspected she was also keeping an eye on him.
"I'm being realistic. This is exactly the kind of high-stakes situation I was trying to avoid."
"Too late now. You signed the contract." Mira plucked the letter from his hands and read it with calculating efficiency. "Tide Warrior, water manipulation, six weeks. That's actually perfect for you—plenty of time to obsess over every detail."
"What if I can't do it? What if Dawnbreaker was a fluke? What if—"
"Kieran." Mira gripped his shoulders, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Listen to me very carefully: you are annoyingly talented. Your problem has never been capability—it's been confidence. You made an A-rank artifact in six weeks while having constant panic attacks. Imagine what you could do if you actually believed in yourself."
"That's not how anxiety works."
"I know. But it's still true." She released him and moved to the workbench, already organizing space. "The materials arrive in three days. Until then, you research water-based enchantments, plan your approach, and try not to spiral into complete terror. Can you do that?"
Kieran took a shaky breath. "I can try."
"Good enough. Now, I'm going to handle the seventeen other people who've shown up asking for commissions this week. You focus on preparing for this one."
After she left, Kieran stood alone in his forge, feeling the weight of expectation pressing down like a physical thing. This wasn't like Celeste's commission—that had been personal, a desperate noble willing to take a chance on an unknown smith. This was professional, high-profile, with the Consortium's reputation tied to his performance.
No pressure at all.
He pulled out his notebooks and began researching.
Kieran buried himself in technical documentation about water-based combat, fluid dynamics, and corrosion-resistant metallurgy. His small collection of smithing manuals was inadequate, so he haunted Millhaven's modest library, checking out every book on elemental magic, maritime warfare, and oceanic environments.
The librarian, a elderly woman named Ms. Pemberton, watched him accumulate a stack of seventeen books with raised eyebrows.
"Planning to build a navy, Master Ashford?"
"Just researching," Kieran muttered, already reading three paragraphs ahead in a treatise on underwater weapon dynamics.
Back at the forge, he filled notebook after notebook with calculations, sketches, theoretical approaches. Water manipulation wasn't like radiant enhancement—it required the weapon to interact with fluid in ways that defied normal physics. The blade needed to cut through water resistance while also being able to control water flow, redirect currents, potentially even shape water into offensive or defensive formations.
The technical challenges were immense. Exciting. Terrifying.
This is impossible, part of his mind whispered. You're going to fail.
This is fascinating, another part countered. You're going to create something incredible.
The two voices warred in his head while his hands sketched compulsively, trying to visualize the impossible.
On day three, the materials arrived.
The merchant caravan that delivered them was even more excessive than Celeste's had been—twelve guards, two wagons, and a manifest that required Kieran's signature in four different places.
The crates contained treasures that made his previous materials look pedestrian:
Deep-sea steel, forged in underwater volcanic vents, naturally resistant to corrosion and imbued with latent water affinity. The ingots were dark blue-black, heavy with potential, and hummed with a sound like distant waves.
Aquamarine crystals the size of Kieran's fist, perfectly cut, pulsing with captured ocean energy.
Scales from a Leviathan—an actual sea monster, S-rank, probably killed by a coordinated raid team. Each scale was worth more than most people earned in a year, and Kieran had been sent thirty of them.
Moonsilver wire, incredibly rare, naturally attuned to tidal forces and lunar cycles.
Kraken leather for the grip, water-resistant and nearly indestructible.
And suspended in a preservation chamber filled with seawater: a pearl the size of Kieran's thumb, radiating power that made his Artifact Smith class practically vibrate with recognition.
Siren's Heart Pearl, the manifest identified it. Legendary tier material. Handle with extreme care.
Kieran stared at the materials spread across his forge, his anxiety transforming into something else entirely: the hungry, obsessive focus that came when craft demanded everything he had.
"Okay," he whispered to the waiting metal and crystals and impossible components. "Let's make something worthy of you."
The deep-sea steel required different treatment than mithril-alloy. It was denser, more resistant to change, but also more willing to accept water-aspected enchantments. Kieran heated it carefully, watching the color shift from dark blue to a lighter shade that reminded him of deep ocean illuminated by bioluminescence.
The first hammer strike sent a shockwave through his arms—the metal was hard, resisting the blow, demanding respect.
Good. He could work with demanding.
He fell into the rhythm: heat, hammer, fold. But this time, he incorporated something new. Between each folding cycle, he quenched the metal not in oil but in seawater he'd prepared with dissolved aquamarine dust. The water hissed and steamed, and the steel drank in the elemental energy like a man dying of thirst.
Sixteen folds. Thirty-two. Sixty-four.
Each cycle made the metal more responsive, more aligned with water's essential nature. By day eight, the ingot had transformed from resistant to eager, practically singing with oceanic resonance.
Kieran's shoulders ached. His hands were blistered despite his calluses. He'd forgotten to eat for the past twelve hours.
He'd never been happier.
Drawing out the blade required understanding how water moved—not just physically, but conceptually. Water was adaptable, flowing, finding paths of least resistance while also capable of overwhelming force.
The sword needed to embody that duality.
Kieran forged the blade longer than Dawnbreaker—thirty-six inches to accommodate Lord Wavecrest's presumably larger frame and need for reach in underwater combat. The profile was slightly different too: more curved, optimized for slashing through water resistance, with a reinforced tip for piercing.
The fuller—always the fuller, the detail that obsessed him—ran the entire length of the blade this time. But instead of a simple groove, Kieran created a pattern: wavelike undulations that weren't just decorative but functional, designed to channel water along the blade's length, reducing drag while increasing control.
He worked the Leviathan scales into the fuller while the metal was hot, using techniques his Artifact Smith class provided. The scales bonded with the steel at a molecular level, creating channels that would allow the wielder to manipulate water flow around and through the weapon.
On day thirteen, he ground the bevels. The deep-sea steel took an edge differently than normal metal—sharper, more refined, with a subtle iridescence that caught light like water's surface.
The blade was beginning to develop personality. Kieran could feel it—not sentient exactly, but present. Aware. Waiting to discover its purpose.
"You're going to move like the ocean," he told it during a late-night grinding session, his voice hoarse from disuse. "Adaptable but overwhelming. Gentle but devastating. You're going to be perfect."
The blade seemed to hum in response.
Heat treatment for water-aspected steel required a different approach. Kieran heated the blade to precisely 2,100 degrees—watching the color shift to that perfect shade of ocean-blue-white—then plunged it into a quenching bath he'd prepared with extreme care.
Not just seawater. Seawater mixed with dissolved aquamarine, moonsilver shavings, and three drops of essence extracted from the Siren's Heart Pearl through a process that had taken Kieran six attempts to get right.
The blade hit the enhanced seawater and the forge exploded with elemental energy.
Water erupted upward in a geyser, steam filling the room, and for a heart-stopping moment Kieran was certain he'd ruined everything. The blade glowed white-hot beneath churning water that somehow wasn't evaporating despite the temperature.
Then, slowly, the chaos settled. The water calmed. The steam dissipated.
And Kieran lifted the blade from the quenching bath to find it transformed.
The steel had taken on the deep blue-black of deep ocean, but with an internal luminescence that made it seem to glow from within. Patterns moved across the surface—not static, but flowing, like currents beneath waves.
It was beautiful. More beautiful than Dawnbreaker, in a completely different way.
And it wasn't finished yet.
Sharpening took another full week. The deep-sea steel held an edge like nothing Kieran had worked with before—sharper than should be physically possible, the edge so fine it seemed to disappear when viewed from certain angles.
He used water stones exclusively, the blade singing against their surface, each pass refining the edge closer to theoretical perfection.
By day twenty-two, the blade could split falling water droplets. Kieran tested this obsessively, dropping water from increasingly greater heights, watching the blade divide each drop into perfect halves.
"You're showing off," Mira observed, watching this demonstration with a mix of amusement and concern. "Also, you haven't slept in thirty-six hours. That's not healthy."
"Almost done," Kieran muttered, not looking up. "Just need to verify the edge retention after prolonged exposure to—"
"Kieran."
"—saltwater corrosion, which theoretically shouldn't be an issue but I want to confirm through empirical testing before—"
"KIERAN."
He looked up, realizing dimly that Mira was holding a plate of food and looking at him with the expression she reserved for when he was being particularly impossible.
"Eat. Sleep. The sword will still be here in eight hours."
"But—"
"No buts. You're going to make yourself sick, and then you'll be useless for the actual important work." She set down the food with finality. "Eat. Now. Or I'm confiscating your hammers."
Kieran ate, though he couldn't have said what the food tasted like. His entire mind was still on the blade, on the remaining work, on the assembly that would make or break the entire piece.
After Mira bullied him into his bed, he lay awake staring at the ceiling, mentally rehearsing the next steps.
He fell asleep still calculating.
The guard was forged from the same deep-sea steel, shaped into two sweeping curves that evoked waves cresting. Set into the center guard was the largest aquamarine crystal, positioned to act as a focusing point for the wielder's water manipulation abilities.
But the real masterwork was the pommel.
Kieran had been planning this for weeks, ever since he'd first seen the Siren's Heart Pearl. The pommel would be more than counterweight—it would be the weapon's power source, the heart that drove all its enchantments.
He created a hollow sphere from deep-sea steel, lined it with crushed Leviathan scales mixed with moonsilver dust, and at its center, suspended in a lattice of microscopic water channels, he placed the Siren's Heart Pearl.
The assembly required three days of painstaking work. The pearl had to be positioned exactly right, the channels aligned perfectly, the whole system sealed in a way that would protect the pearl while allowing its energy to flow freely.
When he finally completed it, the pommel pulsed with rhythmic light—like a heartbeat, like waves on a shore, like something alive.
The grip was wrapped in Kraken leather, bound with moonsilver wire in a pattern that Kieran's class knowledge suggested but which he'd never seen documented anywhere. Each wrap had to be precisely placed, each twist of wire at exactly the right tension.
He rewrapped it four times before he was satisfied.
On day thirty, he assembled the complete weapon for the first time.
The moment the pommel connected to the tang, the sword activated.
Water condensed from the air around the blade—not a lot, just a thin film that flowed along the steel in mesmerizing patterns. The wavelike fuller channels glowed with soft blue-green light. The aquamarine crystal in the guard pulsed in time with the pommel's heartbeat rhythm.
And Kieran felt, through his connection as creator, the weapon's essential nature crystallizing:
This sword wanted to flow. Wanted to adapt. Wanted to move like water itself—unstoppable, finding every gap, overwhelming obstacles through patient persistence or sudden overwhelming force.
"What should I call you?" Kieran whispered.