Chapter 3: The First Point
Kael did not sleep. He lay on his straw mattress in the loft, feigning exhaustion whenever Brom checked on him, but his mind was a raging storm. The events of the day played over and over in his head: the cold indifference of the Awakening Stone, the crushing weight of public pity, and the impossible, terrifying miracle that had followed. The strange, translucent bar was burned into his vision, a constant, glowing presence in the dark. It was the first thing he saw when he closed his eyes and the first thing he saw when he opened them. It felt like a brand, a secret mark that separated him from everyone else in the world. He kept expecting it to vanish, to be revealed as a hallucination brought on by grief and stress, but it remained, a steadfast and unnerving companion.
When a sliver of grey dawn finally pierced the gloom of the forge, he noticed something had changed. The glowing script beneath the bar, which had read 1 after the hammer's creation, had shifted.
Creation Energy: 2
He stared, his heart beginning to pound a slow, heavy rhythm. A single, full point of this… Creation Energy had been added overnight. He hadn't done anything. He had just existed, and it had grown. A slow-dawning, electrifying realization washed over him. This power, whatever it was, whatever its source, seemed to replenish on its own. It had a daily rhythm, a life of its own.
He spent the morning in a fog, a whirlwind of questions tearing through his mind while his body went through the familiar, comforting motions of his work. He stoked the fire, worked the bellows, and hammered out a set of simple hinges, his movements automatic. Every few moments, his eyes would dart around, half-expecting someone to see the glowing bar in his vision, to point and shout, exposing him for the anomaly he was. After Brom finished a large order of spearheads for the village militia and left to deliver them, Kael finally had the forge to himself. The silence that descended was a heavy, expectant thing.
His first act was to bar the thick oak door. His second was to retrieve the created hammer from its hiding place beneath the pile of rags. In the light of the forge-fire, it seemed to drink in the glow. The dark metal had a faint, otherworldly sheen, and the wooden handle felt warm and alive in his hand. Its perfect balance was still a marvel, a stark contrast to the worn, unbalanced tools he was used to.
He had to know more. He had to understand the rules of this impossible gift.
He was terrified of a repeat of the hammer—a large, inexplicable object appearing from nowhere. He had to start smaller, more discreetly. He focused his attention on the cluttered workbench, clearing a small space. He pictured something simple, something utterly mundane: a single, perfectly straight iron nail. He closed his eyes, recalling the intense, soul-deep surge of emotion he'd felt the day before—the frustration, the despair, the desperate want. He poured that feeling, that will, into the image of the nail in his mind.
The air in front of him shimmered faintly, a brief distortion like a ripple in a pond. There was no flash of light this time, just a soft tink as a nail dropped onto the wooden bench. He opened his eyes, his breath catching in his throat. It was flawless, with a perfectly formed head and a wickedly sharp point.
He immediately glanced at the bar in his vision. The blue light within it had depleted by a minuscule amount. The number now read: 1.9.
So that was it. A definitive answer. Creating things consumed the energy. A small, simple object like a nail took a tiny, almost negligible amount. The hammer, with its complex shape and greater mass, must have taken the full point he had started with. A new thought, both exciting and frightening, sparked in his mind. The energy grew daily, a slow and steady income. But what if there was another way? A faster way to fill the bar? The thought was interrupted by a heavy banging on the forge door.
Kael jumped, his heart leaping into his throat. He quickly swept the nail off the bench and into his pocket before unbarring the door. It was Mistress Gable, the village baker, her round face flushed and streaked with flour.
"Brom around, Kael?" she asked, panting slightly. "This blasted wheel on my cart has thrown its iron rim on the bumpy road. It's about to fall to pieces, and I have a delivery of bread for the tavern."
"He's out, but… I can fix it," Kael offered, his mind buzzing with the new idea. This was a problem. A chance. An experiment.
He took his tools—his regular set, plus the secret, perfect hammer hidden amongst them—and went to work on the cart outside. As he examined the broken wheel, he felt a strange sense of clarity. The hammer felt like an extension of his own hand, and as he wielded it, his mind seemed to work differently. He could see the stress fractures in the wood, the precise angle at which the iron rim needed to be bent back into shape. It was an intuitive, instinctual knowledge he had never possessed before. The hammer wasn't just a perfect tool; it seemed to grant him a perfect understanding of its purpose.
The work that would normally have been a clumsy, hour-long struggle for him was completed in less than twenty minutes. Every strike of the new hammer was precise, every blow landing with exactly the right amount of force to shape the metal without damaging the wood. The wheel was not just repaired; it was stronger, more secure than it had been in years.
Mistress Gable was overjoyed, her relief palpable. "Oh, Kael, you're a lifesaver! I thought I'd be stuck here all afternoon. Brom has taught you well! Here," she said, her gratitude overflowing as she pressed a large, warm, sweet-selling bun into his hand. "For your trouble. You've truly saved me."
"It was nothing," he mumbled, his face flushing with a mixture of pride and nervousness. But as he watched her grateful figure trundle away with her now-sturdy cart, a brilliant flash of golden light, visible only to him, pulsed at the edge of his vision. He instinctively looked at his energy bar.
Creation Energy: 2.4
It had jumped. It hadn't been a full point, but it was a significant gain. Fixing the cart, helping someone, using one of his creations to make a tangible, positive impact on the world around him… it had rewarded him with a surge of the very energy he had used.
A slow, genuine smile spread across Kael's face, a smile that finally reached his eyes for the first time since the dreadful ceremony. He was Kael the Unawakened, yes. That was a fact the world had branded him with. But he was not Kael the Powerless. He was something new. Something more. He was a creator, and he was just beginning to understand what that meant. He looked down at his own two hands, no longer seeing them as calloused and ordinary, but as instruments of limitless potential. His journey was just beginning.