The sun was a white, searing coin in the sky, its heat baking the pale stone of Sybaris as Kaelen followed Quintus through the winding streets. He had all his worldly possessions: the satchel with its impossible weight—the Godclimb—and the gladius at his hip that now felt like a child's toy. They moved away from the main forums, descending into a district where the air itself changed. The scent of spices and perfumes was burned away, replaced by the honest smells of coal smoke, hot metal, and seared hoof.
Kaelen tried to make small talk, grasping for the familiar. "The 14th Legion was stationed near the Argent Pass. The wind there could strip the skin from your bones."
Quintus grunted, not breaking his stride. "Aye. I fought there. Thirty years ago. The wind hasn't changed." His movements, even in simple walking, were a lesson. His feet seemed to glide, each step perfectly placed, his balance so absolute that he moved with a silent, unnerving economy of motion. It was the walking version of his sword style—no energy wasted, every motion with purpose.
Kaelen's observation was cut short as Quintus asked a question that was both casual and brutally direct. "What made you leave the army?"
The ghost of Lucius rose before Kaelen's eyes, vivid and bloody. He felt the old, familiar grief, a cold stone in his throat, but he forced it down, locking it away in the hollow place where his burned memories used to reside. "A friend died," he said, his voice flat. "In a battle. Afterward… my heart wasn't in the work. They encouraged me to leave."
Quintus didn't look at him, his gaze scanning the street signs. "I've seen that happen to many good people," he said, and the simple, non-judgmental acknowledgment held more weight than any pity. His sentence hung in the air, unfinished, as he stopped before a low, wide building made of yellow clay, its roof blackened by decades of soot. The air vibrated with the distant, rhythmic song of a hammer. "We're here."
Quintus pushed open a heavy wooden door, and the full force of the forge's presence hit them—a wave of blistering heat and a cacophony of hammers and hissing steam. Apprentices, slick with sweat, moved like demons in the semi-darkness, feeding fires and pumping bellows. Quintus approached a burly man hammering a glowing plowshare.
"Find me 'Ash-Scarred' Lycus," Quintus said, his voice cutting through the din. "Tell him his old friend Quintus has come to call in a favor."
The smith nodded, wiping his brow with a soot-blackened rag, and disappeared into the gloom at the rear of the main forge. He returned a moment later and gestured. "Follow me."
They passed through an archway into a private, hotter section of the smithy. Here, a massive, muscular man stood before a furnace that roared like a captured sun. His back was to them, his form silhouetted by the inferno as he hammered a piece of metal with blows that spoke of immense, controlled power. As he turned, Kaelen saw the source of his name. The left side of Lycus's face and his thick, powerful forearms were a tapestry of silvery, pockmarked scars—a lifetime of intimate conversations with fire and sparks.
"Quintus," Lycus's voice was a low rumble, like stone grinding deep underground. A rare smile cracked his ash-scarred face. "The years have been kinder to you than to me. What brings the lost blade of Aethelia to my fire?"
"The years have given you better stories, Lycus," Quintus replied with a hint of genuine warmth. He gestured to Kaelen. "I need a weapon. For him."
Lycus's sharp, intelligent eyes shifted from Quintus to Kaelen. They did not linger on his face, but dropped to his hands, to the forearms exposed by his traveler's robes. His gaze fixed on the faint, silver tracery of veins that pulsed just beneath the skin. The hammer in his hand stilled. The air in the forge seemed to grow heavier.
"Quintus," Lycus said, his tone now thoughtful and deliberate. "I will not forge a sword for this man."
Quintus raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
"Instead," Lycus continued, his eyes never leaving Kaelen's, "I will teach him to forge his own."
Quintus was silent for a long moment, then gave a slow, understanding nod. "If you so wish, it would still fulfill my request." He glanced at Kaelen, a look that was part warning, part encouragement. "I will wait outside." Without another word, the former legend turned and left, the door closing behind him and shutting out the world.
They were alone with the fire. Lycus set his hammer down with a definitive clang.
"I know what you are," he said, his voice low enough that the roar of the furnace almost swallowed it. "The silver in your veins is not a sickness. It is the mark of one who defies. An Ascender."
Kaelen's hand twitched toward his gladius, his body coiling, every enhanced sense screaming. He calculated the distance to the door, the potential threats.
Lycus raised his scarred hands, palms out. "I do not wish to pry, and I will not cause you harm. I am no friend to the Lictors or the Church. I have seen what they do to your kind. I simply want to give you the tools to protect yourself from the hunters. A weapon you make yourself, with the power you now hold… it will be a part of you. It will answer to your soul, not just your hand."
Kaelen searched the man's eyes and found no deceit, only the hard, unyielding honesty of forged steel. The tension slowly bled from his shoulders. He had run out of trustworthy options. "I'm willing to learn," Kaelen said.
Lycus's laugh was a short, sharp burst, like a bark of gunpowder. "Alright then. Walk over to the forge. You should know enough about steel-making as per the knowledge given to you by your defiance. But we will not start with what you know. We will start with what the metal knows."
Lycus guided him to the heart of the heat, before the main furnace. He handed Kaelen a pair of heavy, scarred tongs and a rough, unworked bar of steel.
"This is not just ore," Lycus said, his voice taking on a ritualistic tone. "It has a desire. A potential form sleeping within. Our job is not to force it into a shape. It is to listen. To understand its nature, and help it become what it already wants to be."
He had Kaelen place the steel into the heart of the coals. "Wait. Listen."
Kaelen stared, his enhanced perception focusing on the bar. He saw it begin to glow a dull red, then a cherry, then a brilliant, vibrant orange.
"Stop," Lycus commanded. "Do you hear that? The metal is singing. A low, steady hum. It is content. It is ready to be worked."
Kaelen heard nothing but the roar of the fire. He shook his head.
Lycus moved with surprising speed, grabbing Kaelen's wrist and forcing his hand, still holding the tongs, closer to the heat. The glow of the metal reflected in the smith's intense eyes. "Not with your ears, boy. With your intent. You are not its master. You are its partner. Ask it if it is ready."
Kaelen closed his eyes, pushing past the fear of the heat, past the logical part of his mind that called this superstition. He reached out with his will, the same way he reached for Ulos, but this time not to take, but to perceive. And then he felt it—a subtle, thrumming resonance, a vibration in the air around the glowing steel. It wasn't a sound, but a sensation of readiness, of potential yearning to be released.
"I… I feel it," Kaelen breathed, astonished.
"Good," Lycus said, releasing his wrist. "That is the first word. Now, we begin the conversation."
He guided Kaelen to the anvil. "The hammer is your voice. It is not for screaming." He gestured for Kaelen to strike. Kaelen brought the hammer down with his enhanced strength, a blow that would have shattered the anvil if Lycus hadn't expertly guided his arm, redirecting the force.
"No! You are arguing, not conversing! You are a sledgehammer. Be a sculptor's chisel. You are not breaking its will; you are persuading it. Again."
For what felt like hours, they worked. Lycus described the process of folding the steel as a negotiation. "This layer is rigid, it desires to be the unyielding spine. This one is flexible, it wishes to be the resilient heart. They are arguing. Our job is to make them understand they are stronger together. Each fold is a compromise."
Kaelen's body, still aching from the morning's sparring, now burned with a new, profound exhaustion. But with each controlled, precise strike, he felt a connection to the glowing metal forming under his hands. He was not defying it; he was collaborating with it. It was the most peaceful, and yet most demanding, thing he had done since his Ascension.
As the blade began to take its first, crude shape, Lycus looked at the silver tracery on Kaelen's sweating forearm.
"The power inside you," Lycus said quietly. "When it is time, you will not command it into the steel. You will not burn it as fuel. That is the path of the Bloodprice, and it leaves a cursed weapon. You will offer it. Introduce your Ulos to the metal's desire. Let them mingle in the heat. If they are compatible, the blade will drink it willingly and become something unique. A true extension of your defiance."
Kaelen looked from the smith's scarred, earnest face to the glowing blade beginning to form on the anvil. For the first time, the path before him felt less like a headlong rush into damnation, and more like a craft. It was still terrifying, but now, it held a glimmer of something else: purpose.