In Smoke City, there were two kinds of people.
Those who were allowed to leave.And those who were allowed to return.
Kael belonged to neither.
That was the problem.
The city understood departures. People left when they had coin, when they had backing, when they had a name that could be carried across districts without being questioned. The city also understood returns. Returns were for those with stations: apprentices returning to masters, debtors returning to pay, workers returning because hunger did not accept resignation.
Kael had no station.
He had no home to return to, and no place that would claim him. Over the years, he had asked again and again about his village, about his home. He asked if anyone knew of the World Tree Village, or the River of Time. But nothing ever rang a bell. People thought he was mad.
At first, they assumed he was a child from some lost cultivation family spoken of only in legends. Then they looked at his stump, his thin frame, his empty sleeve, and the assumption turned into irritation. Legends were entertaining from far away. Up close, legends demanded explanation, and explanation required effort. Smoke City conserved effort the way it conserved warmth.
So the only "return" left to him was repetition—showing up again and again at a place that had not accepted him, until that place grew tired of denying him.
Most nights, he slept under awnings until he was nudged away. When there was nowhere else to go, he returned to the temple, even on days when no food was given out. He did this not because he believed the temple was kind, but because it was predictable. Predictability was the closest thing the Lower City offered to safety.
This was how the city treated the poor.
The poor stayed poor—unless you were talented enough to pass recruitment and enter one of the schools, or desperate enough to sell your body and life away. Since Kael was crippled, no one wanted him. Even pity had standards here.
That was how the city trained the powerless.
Not with words.
But with doors that never fully closed.
Morning came as it always did in Smoke City: half-light, damp stone, and the sour aftertaste of yesterday's smoke. The alleys still held the night's cold, but the forge district already breathed heat. Even from a distance, Kael could smell iron waking up, that sharp metallic tang that seemed to scrape the inside of the nose. He had come earlier this time. Early meant less traffic, fewer bored eyes, fewer chances for someone to decide to make him a lesson.
He walked the same route as yesterday—not because it was safe, but because he knew where danger usually stood.
A guard leaned at the corner near a broken water spout. The man's posture spoke of boredom, the kind that came from standing in one place long enough to begin believing the world existed to be watched. He chewed something slowly, jaw working, gaze drifting from face to face without interest.
Boredom in Smoke City was not kindness. It was a guard deciding which problems were worth effort.
Most guards had graduated from martial academies; that was the requirement. Smoke City did not trust its streets to men who could not enforce decisions with their bodies. Any one of them could beat a civilian senseless with ease. At best, you would be slammed face-first onto cold cobblestones. At worst, you would die from a single punch and be remembered as "unlucky."
Kael lowered his head and did not hurry.
Hurrying invited questions.Walking as if you belonged invited none.
The guard's eyes slid across him and moved on, filled with bored indifference.
Not mercy.Not cruelty.A calculation: not worth the trouble.
Kael exhaled only after he had passed the corner and the guard's boots could no longer be heard behind him. His breath fogged faintly. He forced his chest to settle.
In through the nose.Hold.Out through the mouth.
He did it even when no one asked. Especially when no one asked. Fear made bodies loud, and loud bodies got noticed.
Some guards, however, Kael always avoided. Those were the ones who did not lean. They prowled. They looked for entertainment, and entertainment required victims that could not complain to anyone important. Kael had learned their faces the way other children learned songs. He did not know their names. Names were too generous. He knew their habits. That was enough.
That was the city's default judgment.
Kael reached the forge district and slowed—not out of fear, but understanding.
In the streets, anyone could stand anywhere until someone stronger disagreed. Everything was legal until a guard appeared. But a forge district had a different law: space belonged to tools, heat, and the men who paid for coal. Even a wealthy man stepped carefully here. A child with one arm was always one wrong step away from being told he was "in the way."
So Kael stopped at the edge and watched.
He saw the apprentice again.
The boy's build was similar to Old Master Ren's—just slightly shorter, younger muscle packed onto a frame that still looked like it was growing into itself. He had pitch-black hair and broad shoulders. His hands moved with surprising carefulness for someone who looked like he should break doors for a living.
He swept ash, adjusted coals, shifted a water trough with one arm as if it were a bucket. The delicacy of the work made his size look absurd, and yet the absurdity was exactly what made him believable. This was what the forge produced: bodies that learned to obey weight.
Kael stood across the street, watching.
The same line.The same posture.The same waiting.
Old Master Ren's hammer rose and fell in steady arcs, striking iron glowing a dull orange. Neither Ren nor the apprentice appeared drenched in sweat. Their brows were dry, their breathing controlled, as if heat did not bother them at all—almost as if it cooled them instead.
Kael paid attention to the sound.
The hammer was heavy, not loud. Each strike carried weight, pressing into bone the way authority did.
Clang.Clang.Clang.
Kael's breathing tried to sync with it.
He forced it into his own rhythm instead.
In through the nose.Hold.Out through the mouth.
Yesterday, silence had been the verdict.
In Smoke City, silence did not mean nothing.
Silence meant the cost was not finished.
Old Master Ren quenched the iron. Steam hissed, brief and controlled. He set the piece aside and finally glanced at Kael.
He did not greet him.He did not ask why he returned.He did not ask if he understood anything.
He looked once—only once—as if confirming no tool had gone missing.
That alone made Kael's throat tighten. In a place like this, being looked at could be an accusation. It could also be an acknowledgment. The difference was decided by the person looking.
The apprentice—Silas—glanced over as well. This time, there was no indifference. Instead, a bright, almost foolish smile appeared on his face, a smile that did not match his bulky frame at all.
Silas even lifted his hand and waved.
Kael froze, stunned.
The narrator clarifies: Kael was not startled by friendliness. He was startled by being remembered without contempt. In Smoke City, memory was usually a weapon.
Old Master Ren leaned slightly and said something under his breath. Silas's grin faltered. He flushed, scratched the back of his head, and immediately pretended he had been waving at something else.
They had expected him.
Old Master Ren turned his gaze toward the scrap Kael had sorted the day before.
The piles were still neat—by size, then weight, then sound. Kael had sorted them until his fingers were raw, until hunger stopped screaming and became a dull ache that sat behind the ribs like a stone.
Old Master Ren knew exactly how the boy had felt. Not because he was kind, but because he had lived the same arithmetic. In the forge, emotion always leaked into motion.
"Call him over, Silas," Ren said calmly. "Let him do it again."
Silas crossed the street with the energy of someone who had never learned to be ashamed of his own optimism. That alone marked his background. He wasn't a street child. He didn't carry caution in his shoulders. His fear, if he had it, had been trained into respect instead.
"It's you again," Silas said, too loud at first, then quieter when he noticed Ren's eyes shift. "The one who smells like the temple."
He said it like a fact, not an insult, because Silas hadn't learned that facts could be knives.
"Master wants you to sort another barrel today."
Kael nodded. He did not respond with gratitude, because gratitude was noisy. It made people think you owed them something.
Silas leaned in anyway, voice dropping in conspiratorial excitement, as if sharing a secret would make it real.
"If you do it properly," he said, "Master might keep you."
Then he slapped Kael's back a little too hard, laughed at his own enthusiasm, and added with sincere confidence that made the men across the street snort quietly:
"Good luck, junior brother. I hope you succeed."
Kael's shoulders went stiff for a heartbeat.
Junior brother.
In a sect or a school, those words meant family. In Smoke City, they meant hierarchy. They meant you could be ordered, you could be blamed, you could be used. The warmth of the phrase did not erase its edges.
Kael knelt without hesitation.
In this place, hesitation was the only confession that mattered.
He began sorting.
This time, the pieces felt almost weightless. Some had heft, but nothing like before. His body remembered the thread between control and failure. His hand adjusted before the mind finished thinking.
Metal was honest. It did not flatter. It did not forgive. It did not care that Kael was small, missing an arm, hungry enough to feel pain at the smell of food.
Metal only cared whether you could control it.
That was why Kael kept coming back.
The streets did not care about control.The streets cared about winning.
Time passed. Heat rose. The forge's breath thickened, oil and ash turning the air into something that stuck to skin.
Then Old Master Ren spoke again.
"Wrong," he said.
Kael froze.
Ren's voice was not loud. It did not need to be. Loudness was for people who lacked authority. Ren's voice carried the quiet weight of someone who could end a life by deciding it wasn't useful.
Ren took a piece from the pile and struck it lightly against the anvil.
The sound was dull—soft, almost wet.
"Too much slag," Ren said. "You hear nothing at all?"
Kael swallowed. His throat felt scraped raw.
"I… only hear it when I set it down," Kael said.
The words were plain, practical. Kael's voice did not plead. It reported. That was how survivors spoke.
Ren frowned briefly, then relaxed.
"Listen better," he said.
He returned to his hammer as if the mistake was already resolved.
The narrator clarifies: That was the cruelty of the forge. Mistakes were not negotiated. They were corrected through repetition until the body learned. Ren did not argue because arguing wasted heat.
Kael tapped the piece again, slower, closer to his ear. He listened not just for sound, but for resonance, for the way the vibration died too quickly.
His fingers trembled.
He forced them still.
If your body shook, people looked.If people looked, the city claimed you.
Kael did not want to be claimed.
By midday, Ren stopped hammering.
That pause was more dangerous than sound.
Sound meant work. Pause meant judgment.
"Come," Ren said. "Stand by me."
Kael obeyed.
Ren selected an iron rod—not the heaviest, not the lightest—and placed it before him.
"Lift."
Kael did.
Pain flared. He steadied his breath.
"Walk."
Step by step, he crossed the forge. Each step was measured. His legs did the work his missing arm could not share. His shoulder burned, but he held the rod steady, refusing to let it clatter and announce weakness.
"Put it there."
The rod touched down without a scrape.
Ren looked at Kael's palm.
"You're bleeding," Ren said.
It wasn't concern. It was inventory. Blood on work was contamination.
Then, calmly: "In my forge, you don't bleed on my work."
He tossed Kael a cloth.
"Wrap it. Then sort again."
Kael wrapped his hand quickly, tight enough to stop blood, loose enough to keep feeling. Feeling mattered more than comfort. He returned to the barrel. He sorted again.
Hours passed. The forge district grew louder outside, but inside Ren's workshop the rhythm remained controlled, as if the forge refused to be dragged into the city's noise.
Ren did not praise him.
Praising created expectation. Expectation created weakness.
Silas brought water, sometimes too quickly, sometimes spilling a little, then muttering an apology with the embarrassed grin of someone who wanted to be competent. Ren did not scold him either. He simply looked once, and Silas corrected himself. That was how hierarchy should work in a place that valued efficiency.
When evening came, the light outside shifted from pale to bronze. Shadows stretched across the street. Kael's body felt hollow, the way it always did after labor. Hunger had returned, more focused than before, as if work sharpened it.
Ren finally set his hammer down.
The sound of metal touching wood was quiet.
Quiet carried weight.
"You have belongings?" Ren asked.
Kael froze.
The question was almost nothing. But in Smoke City, almost nothing could change everything.
"Yes," Kael said, voice steady.
"Bring them," Ren said. "Silas will arrange a room."
Kael did not move for a heartbeat. He waited for the strike. He waited for the correction. He waited for the word wrong.
None came.
"You've paid the fee," Ren continued. "And I accept you as my apprentice."
Kael's throat tightened.
Ren reached into his sleeve and returned the pouch Kael had struggled years to gather. The pouch felt heavier than before, not because it contained more, but because it now carried a different meaning.
"When you are my apprentice," Ren said, "you do not pay. You are taught."
He paused, eyes narrowing slightly, as if deciding how much to permit.
"One day," he said, "if worthy, you may become my disciple."
For the first time, Ren's mouth shifted—not quite a smile, but the edge of one, the smallest acknowledgment that the world contained something other than dismissal.
Kael's eyes burned.
He did not cry.
Crying wasted water. It also drew attention. Old habits did not disappear because one door opened.
Silas burst in, unable to contain himself. His optimism poured out of him like heat from an open furnace.
"I finally have a junior brother!" Silas laughed, then immediately slapped his own mouth when Ren's gaze shifted. "I mean—Master—sorry—"
Ren did not react.
That was permission.
Moments later, Kael was dragged away to be washed and clothed. The water was cold. The soap was harsh. Cleanliness stung like punishment when you weren't used to it.
Silas talked while he worked, unable to keep quiet.
"You'll get used to the heat," Silas said, scrubbing Kael's sleeve, then stopping when he remembered there was no arm inside it. His voice softened, awkward for the first time. "I mean… you'll get used to everything. Master's scary, but he's fair. In his way."
Kael said nothing.
Silas filled the silence anyway, because he did not know how not to.
"You sorted by sound," Silas said, impressed. "I couldn't do that my first year. I still mess it up sometimes. Don't tell him I said that."
Kael nodded once.
That was enough.
Ren watched them leave.
He stood alone beside his anvil, the forge heat painting the edges of his silhouette. He looked down at the sorted piles, then at the hammer resting on the wood block, then at the doorway Kael had just passed through.
"…Impossible," he murmured, so quietly it barely existed. "A body the city would discard… still standing."
He exhaled slowly.
"I hope I do not regret this."