The night sky above Veyrith burned with falling stars. From the cliffside village of Kalroth, their streaks looked like molten silver dripping from a cracked heaven. Children pointed and gasped, old priests whispered prophecies, but only one person saw the pattern hidden in the falling light — Kael Draveren, the blacksmith's apprentice.
Kael's palms were calloused from years of hammering steel, yet tonight they trembled. The stars were falling exactly as they had in his dreams — the same angle, the same rhythm, like hammer strikes on an invisible anvil. He could almost hear it: clang… pause… clang… an echo deep inside his skull.
His master, Orlen, worked beside him in the forge, unaware. The heat was alive with a low hum, the kind that vibrated through the soles of your feet. Sparks jumped from the coals and danced like fireflies.
"Boy," Orlen grunted, turning the iron in the flames. "You're staring again. Strike while it's hot or it will crack."
Kael blinked, shook himself free, and raised his hammer. As he struck, the iron glowed, but then something impossible happened — a second glow bloomed from within the metal, pale blue and pulsing like a heartbeat. The hammer's impact sent a shockwave of sound not into the air but into Kael's mind.
—We have found you— the voice whispered.
Kael dropped the hammer. The world blurred, the forge walls bending and stretching. He clutched his head, heart racing, as more whispers slithered through his mind, each one like a hot breath on his neck.
"What's wrong with you?" Orlen barked.
Kael opened his mouth but the words caught in his throat. His fingers brushed the glowing iron. It didn't burn him. Instead, it pulsed once more, then shattered into shards of light that spun upward and vanished into the ceiling like sparks from a dying fire.
Orlen staggered back. "By the Ancients… what did you do?"
Kael couldn't answer. His hammer hand still trembled, but deep inside, beneath the fear, something else stirred — a pull, like gravity, urging him toward the cliffs where the stars were falling. The whispers were growing louder.
—Come to the Forge Eternal… follow the sparks…
Outside, the first star struck the earth with a sound like a bell.