Kael placed the hammer in Hatim's hands with the weight of a sentence passed—not a gift, but a verdict.
Or perhaps… a curse passed from father to son.
The hammer was heavier than it looked.
A long-handled brute of blackened steel, cold as consequence, its surface worn smooth by countless grips—some that faltered, some that endured. No glyphs adorned it. No delicate lines. Just raw mass. Pure purpose. Its weight settled deep in Hatim's palms, dragged down his spine, lodged in his gut like a stone sinking into dark water.
"This is where you begin," Kael said.
Flat. Unvarnished. No mercy.
Around them, the forge breathed—a living beast.
Bellows groaned, deep and guttural, sounding less like tools and more like chained monsters beneath the floor. Heat warped the air into trembling glass. Flames curled and hissed, licking smelters' edges, casting gold-red scars across soot-blackened walls. Metal screamed—red-hot bars crushed, bent, folded beneath merciless hands.
The hammer's song on the anvil was no mere noise. It was rhythm. A war drum. A sermon. A threat.
Hatim's eyes dropped to the billet resting on the anvil—an angry shard of orange heat, glowing like a wound not yet scabbed. Raw Akar pulsed within—not the clean, elegant current of glyphs, but something dense. Heavy. Animalistic. Ugly.
Kael's voice cut through the furnace roar. "Hammer's song, boy. It ain't about strength. Ain't about force. It's rhythm. Feel the iron. Listen. You don't beat it. You talk to it."
Then Kael moved—fluid, practiced.
His shoulders coiled, wrists loose. The hammer rose—not with strain, but as an extension of breath—and crashed down.
CLANG.
The sound shivered through Hatim's ribs. Sparks fled the anvil in perfect arcs—tiny, dying stars. The billet flattened, obedient.
Beneath Kael's skin shimmered a soft pulse, veins woven from light. Not blazing, not showy. Controlled. Disciplined. The Sennari glyph inked along his spine glowed faintly as he moved, partnering with muscle and bone until the line blurred.
"Your body's the hammer."
"Your Akar's the flame."
"Shape reality with both—or shape nothing at all."
Kael stepped back.
Hatim swallowed. The hammer twitched in his hands—too long, too top-heavy, biting into blistered skin. His grip felt wrong. His stance wrong. His breath ragged.
Still, he raised it.
The weight pulled at his shoulder. His fingers slipped.
He brought it down.
THUNK.
Wrong.
A dull, graceless thud. Sparks flinched but didn't fly. The iron barely shifted, sneering beneath the blow. Pain jolted up Hatim's arms, sharp as snapped wire.
"Stop fighting it," Kael snapped. "You don't win against iron. You lead it. Let it push back. Answer it."
Hatim gritted his teeth. Sweat poured. He adjusted. Raised the hammer again.
Harder this time.
CLANG.
The hammer jolted—rebounded like it wanted to tear from his hands. The blow was crooked, off-center. His shoulder flared, white-hot pain igniting through joint, bone, down his spine.
The Akar inside him—those clean, precise Veshan channels—refused him. Silent. Dim. Like a friend turning away.
This wasn't glyphwork. Not lines of light and elegant flow. This was violence. Pressure. Honest.
And it was undoing him.
The forge didn't care.
The iron didn't care.
The apprentices didn't look.
Didn't laugh.
Worse—they expected it.
Hatim felt pressure climbing—raw Akar flaring under skin, desperate to help. It surged, unbidden, wild.
He gave in.
Pushed.
Too fast. Too much.
Heat exploded inside his chest. Vision swam—the forge walls rippled like cloth in a storm. Limbs trembled so hard the hammer slipped.
It fell.
The sound echoed sharper than any failure.
He staggered back. Hands groped for the waterskin at his belt, tore the stopper free. Water hit his tongue like cold iron—but it couldn't cool the fire chewing at his bones. Couldn't drown the shame.
"Overheating already?" Kael's voice landed somewhere between disappointment and expectation. Not cruel. Not angry. Just fact.
"That Akar of yours… raw. Wild. You don't channel it. You bleed it."
The words hit harder than any hammer.
Hatim looked at his hands—cracked, smeared in blood and soot, shaking, small.
He remembered Kander's eyes—watching him conjure a Veshan shield weeks ago. The pride. The quiet belief.
And now—
Now he was just a boy. A hammer he couldn't lift. An anvil that didn't care. A wall of iron that might as well have been the sky.
Kael didn't soften. Didn't lean. Didn't offer.
A scream cut the air—an apprentice clawing at his eyes. Above, a Veil-Wasp droned, wings humming a frequency that warped the anvil's shape. The metal rippled, mimicking a face Hatim half-recognized. Lyra's?
Kael crushed the wasp midair. "Focus," he snarled. "Illusions thrive on distraction."
"Again," he said.
Hatim stared at the billet—still glowing. Still waiting.
Then at the hammer, lying like judgment at his feet.
His breath dragged in—shaky, thin.
The fire didn't relent.
The pain didn't fade.
But neither did he.
Fingers closed around the handle.
He stood.
Raised.
Struck.