Morning cracked open with the smell of metal and resin.
Haven's forge was no longer a shed with a fire pit and hope. It was a district now—two connected bays, a vented chimney stack, and a floor scored with channels that carried heat like blood. The Father's remains had been rendered into parts: chitin plates stacked in disciplined rows like dark bronze shingles, carapace ribs hung from hooks to cool, and barrels of iridescent oil shimmered in the half-light like captured stormwater.
The air had that sweet, sharp tang that meant resin was curing and metal dust was settling. Every breath tasted like work.
Maria stood in the center of it all like a conductor before an orchestra.
Wrath and Reason—her forearm gauntlets—glowed along their seams, faint blue lines pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Sparks flared as she brought a hammer down on a chitin plate set across an anvil. The ring was high and clean, the kind of sound you could trust.
"Two millimeters thicker on the chest plates," she called, loud over the roar. "And don't overheat the bolts—if the resin flashes, it cracks before the mold sets!"
"Got it!" someone shouted back.
A team hauled a steel frame onto the bench. Another apprentice stirred a vat of black slurry that looked like melted armor mixed with honey and smelled like neither, and both.
Ethan ducked under the lintel and the heat hit him like a physical shove. Sweat started instantly. The forge had changed since the last time he'd walked through it—more benches, more organized chaos, cooling pipes snaked overhead, and the floor was marked with chalk geometry like someone had tried to tame fire with math.
"Captain on deck," someone called—half joke, half habit.
Maria didn't look up. "If he touches anything without gloves, he loses a hand."
Ethan smiled. "You wound me."
"I'd rather not," she shot back, then jerked her chin toward the back table. "You're just in time. We're making your people harder to kill."
"That's a noble goal," he said, scanning the bustle. "How's it going?"
Maria wiped her brow with her forearm, leaving a clean streak through soot. "See for yourself."
On the back table lay a set of new armor—raw, unfinished, but unmistakably different. The plates were segmented like insect scales, yet fitted together with clean overlap. Each edge carried that oily sheen that only the Father's shell had, like it remembered being a fortress.
Inside, resin-thread padding flexed when Ethan pressed it—soft enough to move, strong enough to stop the bite of impact.
He lifted a pauldron. It was lighter than it had any right to be.
"You finished it?" he asked.
"Version one," Maria said, and the pride in her voice was small but real. "Bugskin composite. Chitin base, resin laminate, iron powder in the seam mix. It stays flexible until it gets hit—then it hardens where the blow lands. Not great against heat yet. We're experimenting."
Marcus arrived mid-sentence, still damp from morning drills, helmet tucked under one arm. He picked up the cuirass, tested the weight, then knocked it with his knuckles like a butcher checking a watermelon.
"Stops claws?" he asked.
Maria's eyes flicked up, bright and hard. "Stops them or snaps them. Depends how angry the claw is."
Marcus grinned, broad and wolfish. "Issue it."
"After a field test," Maria snapped automatically.
Marcus's grin didn't fade. "Fine. Field test it on something that deserves it."
Ethan set the pauldron back down carefully. The plates felt warm—alive, almost—like they were listening.
A shout rose from the open bay doors. "And vehicles—don't forget the vehicles!"
Ethan turned.
Sunlight spilled across a half-armored truck frame. An old military chassis, salvaged months ago, now skinned in chitin panels sealed with black resin. The body looked like a beetle that had learned to imitate a machine.
Keith leaned out of the cab, goggles crooked, grin wide. Ellie sat on the hood with her dogs at her feet like she belonged there.
"Maria said we couldn't make cars out of bugs!" Keith yelled. "So we proved her wrong!"
Maria didn't even glance over. "I said we shouldn't. Not that we couldn't."
Ellie waved. "They purr now!"
"They'll explode if you push them over forty," Maria muttered.
"Still purring," Ellie said cheerfully.
Ethan shook his head, amused despite the heat. "What's it called?"
Keith slapped the plate beside him like it was a faithful animal. "The Beetle."
Maria made a sound of suffering. "Of course it is."
Ethan looked back at the armor rack. "How much can we make?"
Maria's expression sharpened into the part of her that counted limits before dreams. "With what's left of the Father? Two heavy sets, maybe six light. Plating for one vehicle—this one. After that, we're on brood-grade material. Good resin yield, not enough density for full plate unless we layer it."
"So we hunt," Ethan said.
"Always," Maria replied, flat as a rule.
He nodded once. "Show me the weapons."
Maria snapped two fingers at an apprentice. A tray arrived—two compact crossbows, their limbs curved from chitin arcs reinforced with metal ribs. The bolts glimmered faintly, oily essence threaded through the shaft like veins.
"Snapbows," Maria said. "Carapace elasticity gives you power without a crank. Faster reload, more range. The limbs don't warp the way wood does."
Kira appeared at Ethan's elbow like a thought you didn't hear approaching. "Do they work?"
Maria's mouth curved. "You're holding one. Try it."
Kira didn't waste a second. She raised it, tested the tension like she was listening to the weapon, then fired at a steel plate twenty meters away.
The bolt hit with a crack that turned heads. It punched through the plate and buried itself in the post behind it with a sharp ringing note.
The forge went still.
Kira lowered the Snapbow slowly and stared at it like it had just spoken her language.
"I like it," she said.
Maria was already scribbling on a slate. "Line up. I want consistency. If it misfires, I want to know why."
Ravi entered next, ledger under one arm, glasses fogging from the heat. "I heard shouting," he said. "That means success, right?"
"Close enough," Ethan said.
Ravi smiled faintly. "Then we record it before the System decides it didn't happen."
He cracked his book open and wrote as if the ink itself could hold the town together.
A soft chime rolled through the air—not the alarm, not the cruel kind. The polite System note.
Gold text shimmered above the forge door:
[System Notice — Production Registered]
Discipline: Essence Engineering (active)
Forge Output Validated: Bugskin Composite (Tier I)
Prototype Output Validated: Snapbow Frame (Tier I)
Local Modifier: +2% Crafting Efficiency (Haven)
Remark: Innovation spreads fastest where hands share heat.
The letters sank into the air and faded like embers.
Someone whooped. A few others clapped. The sound was quick, bright—then immediately swallowed by the forge resuming its roar.
Maria turned back to her tools without ceremony. "Celebration's over. We've got eight people waiting for armor and two engines that hate me."
Ethan lingered by the rack, fingertips brushing the edge of a chitin plate. Warm. Smooth. Too aware for something dead.
"You realize," he said quietly, "we just built something the old world never had."
Maria's hammer paused mid-swing. She looked at him across heat shimmer and soot.
"No," she said. "We earned something the old world couldn't afford to learn."
Ethan's smile softened. "Fair."
—
Outside, the sound of the forge carried across Haven.
Children paused to listen. Hunters heading out touched the wall for luck. Even the ants seemed to move faster, resin loads glinting as they stitched repairs along the lower seams like tiny masons.
On the parapet, Alina stood with her ledger, watching smoke rise cleanly from the chimney. It was not siege smoke. It was work smoke. That mattered.
"Another line on the board," she murmured.
Beside her, Marcus adjusted his shield strap. "What's it say?"
She smiled faintly. "Progress."
Marcus grunted. "Dangerous word."
Alina's eyes drifted to the yard where the Beetle's engine coughed once, twice, then settled into a steady rumble. "So is standing still."
—
By evening, the forge quieted into a low, satisfied heat.
The first finished light set hung on a rack, ready to issue—marked and logged. Maria wrote the numbers herself, Ravi beside her, both of them refusing to let the town's future become a rumor.
Outside, Ethan watched the orange glow fade through the high windows as smoke softened against the stars.
One last System chime, gentle as an exhale:
[Haven — Daily Contribution Summary]
Crafting Tasks Completed: 31
Engineering Experience: Distributed (Maria, Ravi, Apprentices: 12)
Morale: +3% (Reconstruction Momentum)
Core Stability: Holding (91%)
Remark: Fire teaches hands what fear cannot.
Ethan stared at the last line a second longer than the rest, then let it fade.
Fire had taught them a lot lately—and not all of it about destruction.
He turned to go, forge warmth at his back and cool night ahead.
Haven was still small. Still fragile.
But it wasn't just surviving anymore.
It was learning how to last.