The coop was silent.
Clucksworth sat in the ashes, legs folded beneath him like props in a puppet show. Plush. Decorative. Useless.
He had evolved. He had risen. But his legs… hadn't followed.
They were cotton. Soft. Symbolic. And they betrayed him with every breath.
But Cedric had known this day would come.
Beneath the floorboards of the cabin, Clucksworth found the hatch — the one Cedric had shown him only once, with a whisper: "If I fall, you rise."
Inside was a forge. Small. Cracked. But alive.
Maps lined the walls — routes to allies, to ore veins, to places demons feared. A chest held iron ingots, leather straps, and a bundle of nails wrapped in velvet. And beside it all, a journal. Cedric's handwriting, rough and warm.
"To walk, you must suffer. To stand, you must stitch. To fight, you must forge."
Clucksworth dragged himself to the anvil. He tore open the seams of his thighs, exposing the soft cotton within. He heated the nails until they glowed, then drove them into his legs — one by one — each puncture a scream swallowed by purpose. He stitched them in place with thread pulled from his own chest — tight, angry loops that bound metal to softness. Then came the boots.
Forged from Cedric's iron. Fitted with leather. Hammered into place with the hilt of his rapier.
His legs twitched.
Then trembled.
Then burned.
He tried to stand.
He collapsed.
The forge groaned. The iron shifted. But he did not fall again.
He rose.
Not gracefully. Not cleanly. But he stood.
His legs were no longer cotton. They were stitched steel. Ugly. Heavy. Real.
He took a step. The forge creaked beneath him.
He took another.
Outside, the wind stirred. The forest whispered.
Clucksworth picked up his rapier — its tip now wrapped in copper wire, its hilt bound with thread. He strapped the stitched scabbard to his side and limped toward the cabin door.
He didn't look back.
He couldn't.
Cedric was gone.
But his forge remained.
And Clucksworth — stitched, nailed, and burning inside iron boots — would carry his
legacy to vengeance.
And to Sir Thorne a master at knightship