At sixteen, Leon Hark discovered what iron truly meant.
It wasn't in the steel beams that held Solvan's skyline together, nor in the dead iron of a father's gun. It was in the will — the brutal, unyielding refusal to break.
---
Leon found work where most boys his age found prison: a scrapyard on the city's industrial edge. The air tasted of rust and old oil. Every dawn, black smoke climbed the sky like prayers turned to curses.
The owner, Garrick "Old Iron" Mullin, was a man built from scars and spit. His face looked forged rather than born, and the rumors claimed he once bit off a rival's ear during a debt dispute.
Garrick paid pennies, but Leon took the job without blinking. Every morning, before the sun crowned the jagged skyline, Leon walked through the scrapyard gates with his breath turning to steam.
The yard was a graveyard of metal: cars split open like ribcages, refrigerators leaking rusted water, beams twisted by heat and age. Leon's hands bled daily, iron biting into flesh, but each cut healed harder than the last.
---
One afternoon, Garrick watched him haul an engine block alone.
"You keep this up, boy, you'll outlive us all," Garrick rasped, smoke trailing from his cracked lips.
Leon didn't look up. "Not planning to die poor," he muttered.
Garrick grinned, yellow teeth flashing. "That's the spirit," he said. "But remember: iron bends, boy. Even the strongest metal breaks if struck just right."
Leon kept silent. In his mind, iron didn't bend. It was the rest of the world that had to.
---
At night, he returned home, fingers stiff and bloodied, but each step felt heavier with purpose. His mother's cough deepened; the smell of sickness clung to the walls. Yet Leon brought medicine now — cheap pills, but enough to ease the fever.
The hunger was still there, but now it had a shape, a target: money.
He counted every coin before he slept, the cold weight reminding him why he'd wake before dawn.
---
The scrapyard became his forge.
Every day taught him something: how to spot copper in the carcass of an old TV, how to haggle with thieves who sold stolen scrap, how to keep your back turned to the right people at the right time.
By seventeen, Leon's shoulders had broadened, his voice carried an edge, and the softness that once lived behind his eyes had hardened into steel.
But iron wasn't only muscle. It was resolve.
---
One night, Leon caught two older men in the yard, loading copper pipes into a sack.
"Leave it," Leon barked, stepping from the shadows.
The men laughed. One drew a knife — rusted but sharp.
"You're just the boss' mutt," the taller man spat.
Leon felt fear, raw and alive. But deeper, he felt rage: the idea of losing even a handful of copper that could buy his mother's pills.
He picked up a length of rebar from the ground. The first man rushed him. Leon swung — the iron bar cracking bone. The man collapsed, cursing. The second man backed away, fear now in his eyes.
Leon stood there, chest heaving, knuckles raw against the cold metal.
"Tell anyone," Leon growled, "and I'll finish what I started."
They fled into the night, leaving the stolen copper behind.
---
Later, Garrick found Leon sitting on the hood of a rusted car, the rebar beside him.
"You've got iron in your blood, kid," Garrick said.
"Or poison," Leon replied.
Garrick laughed, a sound like gravel poured over stone. "Same difference in this city."
---
At home, Leon washed the blood from his hands, scrubbing until his skin stung. His mother asked nothing; her eyes had grown too tired for questions.
But Leon lay awake that night, staring at the cracked ceiling, the words echoing:
> Iron bends. Even the strongest metal breaks if struck just right.
He swore he'd never bend.
Not to fear.
Not to pity.
Not to love.
Only forward. Only harder.
---
In Solvan, iron didn't sleep — and neither did Leon.
He understood now:
> Hunger made him move.
But iron kept him standing.