The forge awoke before the sun.
High in the Iron Mountains, where the air thinned and the stars felt close enough to bruise the sky, Forgehome slept beneath a crust of frost and stone. Chimneys stood silent. Doors were barred against the mountain cold. Only one place breathed with quiet life—the ancient forge at the village's heart.
Elara Ironhand stood alone before it.
The hammer rose and fell in steady rhythm, a sound older than words. Each strike rang clear and true, echoing against the stone walls like a heartbeat given form. Sparks leapt and died in the dark, tracing brief constellations before vanishing into ash.
The fire burned white-hot.
Hotter than any forge should at that hour. Hotter than any coal-fed flame had the right to burn.
Elara did not flinch.
Her hands were bare, fingers darkened by soot but unmarked by blister or burn. She turned the glowing metal with calm precision, as if heat were merely another tool to be respected, not feared. Sweat dampened her brow, but her breath remained even, her stance grounded and sure.
The forge responded to her.
Metal softened faster beneath her strikes. Impurities slid away as if repelled. The iron listened, yielding not grudgingly but willingly, reshaping itself with a smoothness that defied experience.
Elara did not question it.
She never had.
Creation required focus. Doubt had no place here.
The first hint of dawn crept through the forge's high vents as footsteps gathered outside. Villagers began to arrive—early risers, traders, guards preparing for the day's patrols. They lingered at the threshold, watching in familiar silence.
Someone murmured admiration.
"Best hands in Forgehome," an older man said.
"Aye," another agreed. "Better than her grandfather ever was."
That drew a few uneasy glances.
Elara heard them all. She always did. The forge taught you to listen—not just to metal, but to the spaces between words.
She finished her work with a final measured strike and quenched the blade in water. Steam hissed upward, fogging the air. When it cleared, she lifted the finished piece and inspected it with a practiced eye.
A simple farming blade. Balanced. Clean. Honest.
She nodded once and set it aside.
Only then did she turn to face the gathered villagers.
"Morning," she said.
They answered in scattered greetings, some warm, some hesitant. Respect lived easily in Forgehome. Trust did not.
Elara wiped her hands on a cloth and stepped away from the forge, allowing the fire to dim. It obeyed, settling into a low, steady glow without being fed.
No one commented on that.
They never did.
Magic was a word spoken only in whispers here, usually followed by prayers or curses. Forgehome believed in steel. In muscle. In effort earned through sweat and scars. Mages belonged to stories—the kind that ended with cities buried and mountains split.
Elara was not a mage.
She told herself that every day.
She worked. She shaped. She created. There were no spells in her hammer, no chants in her breath. Only skill, passed down through calloused hands and hard lessons.
Creation through effort was sacred.
Anything else was fear talking.
As the villagers dispersed, Elara's gaze drifted to the far wall of the forge. The stone there was older than the rest, darker, veined with lines that sometimes caught the light in strange ways. She had grown up beneath that wall, learned to walk on its uneven stones.
It watched her.
The thought came unbidden, and she pushed it aside.
Forges did not watch.
People did.
She gathered her tools, setting them in careful order. Her grandfather's hammer lay among them, its handle worn smooth by decades of use. Roran Ironhand's mark was carved near the grip—a simple star, almost rubbed away by time.
Her chest tightened.
Memories surfaced as they often did in quiet moments.
Her parents' faces were blurred now, more feeling than image. Laughter by the hearth. A hand lifting her onto strong shoulders. Then absence.
No bodies.
No answers.
Just silence that settled into Forgehome like winter.
Roran had never spoken of that night. He raised Elara with discipline and purpose instead, filling her days with work and her mind with principles.
Steel remembers intention.
A forge reveals truth.
She had not understood them as a child.
She was beginning to.
A hesitant cough broke her thoughts.
Elara turned to see a young guard standing awkwardly near the doorway, holding something wrapped in cloth.
"Smith Ironhand," he said. "The elders sent me. This was found near the old road."
He held out the bundle.
Elara accepted it and unwrapped the cloth.
The sword inside was broken.
Not chipped. Not dulled.
Broken.
The blade had snapped near the center, the fracture jagged and dark with rust. Pitting scarred the metal, and old nicks spoke of battles long past. It was a relic of poor care and hard use—fit only for melting down.
"Scrap," the guard said quickly. "They said to—"
Elara did not hear the rest.
Something about the blade felt… wrong.
Not cursed. Not dangerous.
Incomplete.
Her fingers tightened around the hilt. The metal was cold, colder than it should have been, as if it had never known heat at all.
"I'll take it," she said.
The guard blinked. "You'll melt it?"
Elara hesitated.
Tradition said yes. Broken steel was reborn through fire or forgotten.
Instinct said no.
"I'll reforge it," she said at last.
The guard shifted uneasily but nodded. He left without another word.
Elara stood alone again, staring at the shattered sword.
The forge flickered.
She frowned.
Carefully, she placed the blade within the coals and began to work the bellows.
The fire did not spark.
It did not roar.
It deepened.
The heat folded inward, drawn toward the broken steel as if swallowed. The metal did not resist. It drank the warmth, glowing slowly, patiently, like embers beneath ash.
Elara's breath caught.
Her hammer struck.
The sound was wrong.
Deeper. Resonant. As though the forge itself answered the blow.
She adjusted her grip, tried again.
The echo remained.
A pressure built in her chest, unfamiliar and heavy. Loss surfaced—her parents, her grandfather's last days. Resolve followed, sharp and steady. Curiosity burned beneath it all, bright and dangerous.
Her strikes changed.
Technique slipped away, replaced by instinct. She did not count her blows. She did not measure the angle. She followed the pull in her hands, the rhythm that felt older than thought.
Beneath her feet, unseen, star runes stirred.
The forge listened.
When she quenched the blade, the fire dimmed all at once, plunging the forge into sudden stillness.
Elara lifted the sword.
For a heartbeat, starlight flickered across its surface.
Gone as quickly as it came.
She froze.
Silence pressed in, heavy and absolute.
Outside, the village shifted uneasily.
An elder's eyes narrowed from the shadows.
Elara wrapped the sword in cloth and hid it beneath her workbench, her pulse racing.
She placed her hand against the forge.
For one impossible moment, she felt something vast stir beneath the mountains.
Far away, unseen forces awakened.
The first thread of destiny tightened.