The wind off the Frostfangs bit through his cloak, but Vulcan didn't mind. He walked beside his horse, not atop it he preferred the rhythm of his boots in the snow, the weight of the world in his shoulders, and the ache in his bones. Winter Town rose ahead, its crooked chimneys coughing smoke into the pale sky. It had been years since he'd seen it. Longer still since he'd called it home.
The letter had come by raven, sealed in soot-black wax. "This is mine. Now it is yours." That was all it said. No name, but he knew the hand. The man who had taken him in at sixteen. The man who'd taught him the forge, who'd called him son when no one else would. The man who'd told him to leave.
And Vulcan had obeyed.
He'd gone first to the mountains, to the clans who still spoke the Old Tongue. There he learned to listen to stone, to find the veins of ore hidden beneath frost and moss. He traded labor for knowledge, scars for secrets. It was there, in the high passes, that the dreams began fragments of another life. A forge of bronze and fire. A hammer that sang. Weapons shaped not by hand, but by will.
He left the North then, chasing the memory south. The Citadel gave him little only what the public could touch. He sold daggers to pay for scrolls, worked under a smith who made nails and hinges. But even there, he learned. Dornish folding techniques. Southern alloys. The way heat moved through copper like blood through a vein.
And now, he was back.
Winter Town had not changed much. The same crooked alleys, the same frostbitten faces. He passed a few who looked twice men and women with red hair like his own. His siblings. They didn't recognize him, not truly. He was taller now. Broader. A flame giant in a town of snow.
He didn't stop.
The forge stood where it always had, hunched between two stone buildings like an old dog waiting for its master. He led the horse to the stables, then returned to the door. His hand hovered over the wood. He remembered the first time he'd touched it how the old man had caught him sneaking in, how he'd made him scrub soot until his fingers bled.
He smiled.
Inside, the air was stale with ash and memory. Dust clung to the rafters. The tools were where they'd always been. On the workbench lay a second letter, shorter than the first.
"The building is old. Transform it into something new. My son, give it a name."
Vulcan folded the parchment and set it aside. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. He moved to the forge and began to work.
He chose the metals carefully iron from the mountains, bronze from the south, a sliver of blackened steel he'd carried for years. He remembered the shape of the hammer from his dreams. Not the one from the Citadel, nor the one from the old man's rack. The other one. The one from before.
He took up his master's hammer Old Gorran, he called it now and began to strike.
The fire roared. Sparks danced. Sweat poured from his brow, but he did not stop. He worked through the night, shaping the head, carving the haft, binding it with leather and memory. It was not Valyrian steel. It was not enchanted. But it was his.
When it was done, he inscribed the base with runes old words, half-remembered, half-invented. A name for the forge. A name for the hammer. A name for the man he had become.