03:00. Dead of night.
The furnace never slept.
It breathed like a dragon with asthma: whoosh, roar, whoosh, roar. Special air channels turned the coal bed into a white-hot hurricane. The dome glowed dull red, pulsing with each blast from the bellows.
Li stood shirtless in front of the inferno. Sweat carved pale rivers through the soot on his chest and arms. The bandage around his cracked ribs had cooked to charcoal grey. He didn't feel it. All that existed was the crucible and the temperature.
He slid a long iron rod through the spy-hole and stirred.
"Still too low."
The rod came out orange. Not white.
"More coal. Crank the blower to the stop."
A terrified smith shouted over the roar: "My lord, the walls are shaking! She's gonna blow!"
"She won't."
Li's voice was calm, almost bored. "Arch can take twenty percent more pressure. Do it."
The smith obeyed. The bellows screamed like a dying horse.
Inside the furnace the fire changed color the way a man changes when he decides to kill: orange to yellow to blinding white edged with impossible blue.
Fourteen hundred degrees.
The line between solid and liquid.
The line between medieval and modern.
Li stared through smoked-mica goggles into the heart of the sun he had built.
The pile of dirty quartz sand and plant ash was gone.
In its place floated a lake of molten glass, clear as mountain air, bright as molten starlight.
Bubbles rose, burst, vanished. Impurities skimmed off like sins at confession.
"Crucible," he said.
Isolde was already there, impossibly, at his elbow. Her face glowed furnace-orange. She handed him the iron mould without a word. Her hand shook, not from heat.
Li dipped the gathering iron, brought up a glowing honey-thick gob of liquid light, rolled it, shaped it, blew once through the pipe.
The gather, marver, blow, shape, transfer, knock off.
The motions were older than empires, but the clarity was new.
The finished piece went straight into the annealing lehr to cool slow enough not to shatter.
"Four hours," he said, and poured a bucket of cold water over his own head. Steam exploded around him like surrender.
07:30. Dawn struggled through coal fog.
The entire workforce, maybe twenty souls, stood in a silent semicircle around the lehr door.
Li opened it. Heat rolled out and died.
He reached in and lifted the thing by its rim.
It weighed almost nothing and everything.
He set it on a square of black velvet Isolde had ready.
Silence.
Then a collective intake of breath sharp enough to cut skin.
On the black cloth, there was… nothing.
Only the faint distortion of light where the goblet bent the world around it. The velvet's weave was perfectly visible through the glass that did not exist.
Isolde's fingers hovered, afraid to touch.
When she finally did, the goblet was cool, flawless, impossible.
"This is… crystal?" she whispered. "No. Even northern rock crystal has fractures. This is…" She couldn't find the word.
"Silicate," Li said. "Same stuff as beach sand. Difference is temperature and control."
He flicked the rim with a fingernail.
A clear, pure note rang out, like a bell forged from ice.
Isolde's pupils were huge. "Cost?"
"Five coppers each once we're running three shifts."
Five coppers.
In Blackstone that bought two mugs of sour small-beer and a kick in the teeth.
She lifted the goblet to the weak morning light. Rainbows danced across her face like captive auroras.
"We do not sell these as glass," she said slowly. "We sell them as relics."
Li shrugged. He didn't care what story she told as long as the conversion rate was good.
"Get them into the hands of the men who want to own you," he said. "Make them bid until their coffers bleed."
Isolde's smile was slow and terrible.
"Li."
First time she had used his real name. It sounded like a vow. "When we scale this, what do you need?"
"Everything," he said, eyes on the furnace that still breathed fire. "More hands. More coal. And soon, more sulfur."
"What for?"
He didn't answer. Just patted the nylon backpack where the handbook lived.
Glass bought gold.
Gold bought time.
Time bought the next step.
Isolde cradled the invisible goblet against her chest like a beating heart.
Somewhere in the city, church bells began to toll for morning prayer.
Here in the ruins, only the furnace spoke, and it spoke in the voice of the future.