The silence that followed the test of "The Black Widow" felt heavier than any anvil in Theron's forge. The old northern smith stood there with his hands hanging, his palms blackened with soot, his eyes fixed on the shredded oak door. It wasn't the destruction that chilled him—he had seen rams batter through fortress gates. It was the speed, the surgical precision of the slaughter. Thirty bolts fired in less time than it took a man to draw his sword and make a useful move. He had spent his life forging weapons for duels, for battles where strength and skill still mattered. What this boy had just produced was not a weapon. It was an end. A death without honor. And he sensed there were more tricks yet to come.
He turned to Tony. The boy—because that's what he was, in the end—didn't gloat. There was no trace of triumph on his grease-smudged face. He was bent over the crossbow, brow furrowed, already analyzing the reloading mechanism, tapping a cam with one finger—his mind clearly miles away from the violence he had just unleashed. He looked like a jeweler inspecting a delicate piece, not a would-be warlord admiring his handiwork. And that was perhaps the most terrifying thing. For the boy, death was merely a variable in an engineering equation.
Part of Theron—the craftsman, the master of fire and metal—was awestruck. He felt drunk with pride. His hands, those old knotted hands, had given shape to perfection. He had produced a tougher steel, braided a stronger cable, assembled a mechanism more complex than what most smiths could manage. It was the pinnacle of his life's work. But the other part of him—the man, the father who had once lost a son to war—was overwhelmed by a sacred terror. He had just put apocalyptic power in the hands of a child with an old man's gaze, a child he knew nothing about except that he was driven by a cold, patient fury.
"Nine more," Tony said suddenly, without looking up. "Exactly like this one. No more prototypes. Production."
And so began the secret new life of Theron. By day he was the same taciturn smith, hammering horseshoes and nails for a few copper coins, enduring the jibes of wealthier competitors. He played his part, saluted the Gold Cloaks on patrol, sold a kitchen knife to a servant. But his heart was no longer in it. That work, which had once been his whole life, now felt dull, absurd—as a child's game after witnessing a real battle. His true work, his true existence, began only when the moon rose.
Every night, after he bolted his door twice, he went down to the forge, where Tony was already waiting. And the forge blazed—not for the town's trivial needs, but for the armory of a single boy.
Tony had transformed the process. The first crossbow had been an exploration; the nine that followed were the product of a method, a science (a strange word, but one Tony used). The boy introduced concepts wholly foreign to Theron. He spoke of "tolerances," drawing chalk margins of infinitesimal error Theron had to respect. He spoke of "interchangeable parts," insisting that every trigger, every gear, be a perfect copy so it could be mounted on any of the ten frames. He was, without knowing it, planting the seeds of mass production.
Theron became the instrument of this vision. His days blurred into one long haze; his nights were a symphony of fire and steel. He forged composite bows, layering fine blades of steel with an expertise the boy had awakened in him. He drew steel wires and braided them into deadly cords, his muscles protesting the grueling, repetitive work. He hammered frames, ground the mechanism parts—his labor guided no longer by instinct but by the precise diagrams Tony sketched on pieces of slate.
The boy was a relentless master builder. He never shouted, never lost patience. He observed, analyzed, and corrected in a calm voice far more intimidating than any yell. One evening, Theron presented a loading cam he had finished. To the naked eye it matched the others.
"It's fine," he said, fatigue weighing on his shoulders.
Tony slid the piece along another, then shook his head. "No. The bevel on the lower angle is too pronounced by half a degree."
"Half a degree!" Theron exploded. "No eye can see that! It'll work perfectly fine!"
"It will work fine fifty times," Tony replied without flinching. "On the fifty-first time, the premature wear caused by that friction will create a micro-crack. On the sixtieth time, the mechanism will jam. That's not acceptable. Do it again."
Theron, the respected master smith, obeyed. He returned to the fire, face flushed with shame and a furious admiration. The boy wasn't asking for craftsmanship. He demanded mathematical perfection.
As the weapons accumulated in the cache beneath the cellar, aligned like somber idols, Theron's fascination warped into a dull, mounting dread. One crossbow was a weapon. Ten crossbows of that nature were a declaration of war. One night, as they finished the seventh, he could no longer hold back the question burning in his throat.
"Against whom?" he asked.
Tony paused, polishing a magazine. "What?"
"These weapons," Theron said, sweeping an arm toward the arsenal. "They're not for hunting deer or defending against thieves. That's enough to equip a lord's personal guard. So I ask you, who are you fighting, boy? An army?"
Tony set down his rag and turned to him. His face, lit by the forge's orange glow, was blank, but his eyes flashed with an ancient light.
"I'm not fighting an army, Theron. I'm fighting an idea."
His voice was low, nearly a whisper, but it carried the weight of absolute conviction.
"The idea that the strong have the right to take from the weak. The idea that brute force is the only law. The idea that a man can be another man's property. To fight an idea like that, strength alone will not do. You must be a certainty. An overwhelming force. You must become a law of nature. Basically, I'm fighting the black dogs."
Theron felt a shiver run down his spine, a chill not from the cellar but from the thought itself. He understood. The boy did not fight for land or gold. He sought to destroy the principle that had broken him. And he planned to do so by applying that same principle back—on a scale and with an efficiency a thousand times greater. He was no longer just the boy's smith. He was the armorer of a personal crusade, the priest forging idols for a new and terrible god of vengeance.
When the tenth and final crossbow was finished, an odd silence fell over the forge. Two months of clandestine labor were complete. The ten "Black Widows" lay on a large cloth, lined with military precision. They were at once beautiful and horrifying—objects of dark perfection.
Tony inspected them one by one, testing each mechanism, each string, each magazine. His work was done. He turned to Theron and, wordlessly, produced a roll of parchments.
"Your payment," he said. "Plans for a double-action bellows for your forge and a new plow design that will turn the earth twice as fast. You held up your end of the bargain."
Theron looked at the parchments. It was more wealth and knowledge than he had ever hoped for. But all he felt was an icy emptiness. The boy began to wrap the crossbows carefully in long jute cloths.
"And now?" Theron asked, his voice barely audible.
Tony stopped and looked at him, and for the first time Theron thought he saw a flash of the child he might have been—a flicker of sadness quickly swallowed by an iron determination.
"Now," Tony said, "a debt will be repaid. With interest."
The boy vanished. Theron found himself alone in the forge, the sudden silence deafening. He was richer. He was keeper of secrets that could change the face of craft. But he felt complicit in something terrible that was about to unfold. He had helped unleash a monster on the city. A monster by its own admission, a marvel of his own making. He found himself praying to the old gods of the North that the boy would succeed.