Chapter 3: The First Forge
Dawn in Luminas was announced not by a sun, but by sound.
A deep, resonant bong echoed from the highest spire of the Grand Templum, vibrating through the stone of Kaelan's small room. It was followed by the distant, rhythmic chanting of morning prayers, a susurrus of devotion that felt as much a part of the city's fabric as the cobblestones.
He hadn't slept. He'd spent the night sitting on the floor, back against the wall, listening to the forges below. Each clang was a hammer blow against the fragile reality he'd known. The cold, clinical knowledge from [Progenitor's Gaze] had settled in his gut like a lump of lead. Propagation. Assimilation. The words were barbed hooks in his mind.
When a different acolyte—this one younger, with nervous eyes—brought a tray of breakfast (a coarse brown bread, a lump of white cheese, a tart apple), Kaelan ate without tasting. The food was fuel. The act was necessary. He was operating on a new, grim logic.
The same acolyte returned shortly after, clutching a slate similar to Scribe Corvin's, though simpler. "Artificer Vance," he said, the title sounding absurd. "You are to report to Forge-Master Holt in the Lower Artisan's Annex for orientation and preliminary skill assessment. The… the Saintess and the others have been taken to the Hall of Radiance for their own evaluations."
Kaelan nodded, pulling on the stiff leather apron over his tunic. The acolyte led him not through the grand, marbled halls of the Templum's upper levels, but down a series of narrow, spiraling service staircases. The air grew warmer, thicker, carrying the familiar smells of coal smoke, hot metal, and sweat. The polished marble gave way to rough-hewn granite, the stained-glass light replaced by the orange, flickering glow of furnace vents and magical sconces.
The Lower Artisan's Annex was not a single room but a cavernous, vaulted underworld beneath the Templum's majesty. It was a symphony of industry. Dozens of forges lined the walls, their fires banked or blazing. The clang of hammers was a constant, overlapping percussion. Apprentices hauled buckets of water and barrows of ore. Journeymen shaped glowing metal on anvils, their faces smudged with soot and concentration. The air hummed with heat and purpose.
The acolyte deposited him at the entrance to a large, organized forge bay where a man who could only be Forge-Master Holt stood, arms crossed over a barrel chest. Holt was bald, his scalp and face a roadmap of old burns and shiny scar tissue. His eyes, a surprisingly clear gray, appraised Kaelan with the same detached, evaluating look one would give a new piece of stock iron.
"Vance," Holt grunted, his voice a low rumble that cut through the ambient noise. "The 'other' summon. Blacksmith, eh?" He didn't wait for a response. "We'll see. Appraisal slates measure potential, not skill. Potential's worthless without a callus. You know the basics? Fire, metal, hammer?"
Kaelan thought of the useless shop class he'd barely passed. Of hitting a piece of soft copper until it was a mangled lump. He gave a slow, uncertain nod.
Holt's expression didn't change. "Right. We start simple. No magic-infused ore for you. Not yet. See that hearth?" He jerked a thumb toward a smaller, cooler forge at the bay's edge, away from the main work. "You'll find iron stock, tongs, a basic hammer. Your task: take a rod, heat it, and draw it out into a simple nail. A square nail. Ten inches. Straight. Uniform taper. I'll judge the grain, the temper, the finish." He fixed Kaelan with his gray eyes. "This isn't about making art. It's about control. About listening to the metal. The metal doesn't care who summoned you. It only cares about your respect. Get to it. You have until the noon bell."
He turned and stomped away, already barking at a journeyman whose steel ingot was cooling too fast.
Kaelan was left alone at the minor forge. The tools were heavy, solid, unfamiliar in their quality. The iron rod was cold and rough in his hand. He'd never felt so profoundly out of place. The other smiths, even the apprentices, moved with a confident, ingrained rhythm. He was a statue of hesitation.
He built up the fire in the hearth, clumsily using the bellows until the coals glowed a steady orange. He thrust the rod in with the tongs, watching it slowly turn from black to dull red.
As he waited, his mind wandered. To Elara, in some luminous hall, probably making flowers bloom or healing a sick bird with a touch. To Lysandra, no doubt shattering training dummies with supernatural strength. To Selene, weaving spells of light and force. And here he was, in the underworld, trying to make a nail.
A strange, hot resentment simmered in his chest. It wasn't the old, numb apathy. This was sharper. Darker. It whispered that this was beneath him. That he was a king forced to play a peasant.
The rod was cherry red. He pulled it out, laid it on the anvil's face, raised the hammer.
Clang.
The sound was wrong. Harsh, flat. The metal deformed, but it was a brutish, ugly deformation. He struck again.
Clang.
He was forcing it. He wasn't listening. He was imposing his frustration onto the unyielding iron. The rod began to twist, to develop a fatal weak point. Sweat beaded on his forehead, stung his eyes.
This is who they see, he thought, the bitterness a tang on his tongue. The useless one. The mistake. The one who can't even do the one thing he's supposedly good for.
He looked at the rapidly cooling, misshapen metal. Failure. Public, tangible failure. Holt would see it. The story would spread: The Saintess's burden can't even make a nail.
Something in him rebelled. A cold, quiet defiance rose from that new, dense place inside. The place that held the silent [Progenitor's Gaze] and the sleeping bloodline.
No.
He wasn't just Kaelan Vance, the ghost. He was a Progenitor. His bloodline was [Demon God Progenitor]. His true class was [Consort of Darkness]. He was the heart of a potential dynasty. And he was about to be humiliated over a piece of pig iron.
He took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing the heat of frustration down, letting the cold, analytical stillness rise. He looked at the ruined rod not as a task, but as a problem. He looked at the hammer not as a tool, but as an extension of will.
He reheated the rod. This time, as he watched the color change, he didn't just see heat. He felt… a resonance. A faint, almost imperceptible ping in his blood. It was his passive [Bloodline Sense], triggered not by a person, but by the material. He felt the crude, earthy nature of the iron, its simple, stubborn essence.
When he pulled it from the fire, it wasn't just glowing metal. It was a puzzle his blood understood.
He laid it on the anvil. He didn't just swing the hammer. He placed the blow. A sharp, precise tap, not to crush, but to guide. The metal moved under the strike, flowing rather than fighting.
Clink.
A different sound. Cleaner.
He rotated the rod, struck again.
Clink.
A rhythm found him. Not the fast, powerful rhythm of the master smiths, but a slower, more deliberate cadence. Each strike was a conversation. He wasn't imposing his will; he was negotiating with the iron's nature, convincing it to become something else. The twisted section began to straighten under this new, patient persuasion. He drew the metal out, the taper forming not from brute force, but from controlled, incremental surrender.
He wasn't aware of the other sounds fading. He wasn't aware that a few nearby apprentices had stopped to watch, their own hammers still. He was in a bubble of singular focus, where the world was the heat, the sound, the feel of the metal yielding to his newfound, instinctive understanding.
When the rod was the correct length and taper, he heated the very end and carefully hammered a simple, flat head. He then quenched it in a bucket of oil with a sharp hiss, the steam momentarily veiling his face. Finally, he heated it once more to a low blue temper and let it cool in the air.
He held the finished nail in his tongs. It was straight. The taper was even. The head was square and solid. It was, by any objective measure, a perfectly serviceable, well-made iron nail.
But it was more than that.
Held in his hand, having been shaped under that strange, cold focus, the nail felt… different. It wasn't magical. It held no enchantment. But the grain of the metal, locked in during the quench, seemed unusually fine, almost serene. It didn't look like a first attempt. It looked like the work of a journeyman with a quiet, peculiar talent for fundamentals.
The noon bell rang, its deep tone echoing through the forge.
Forge-Master Holt appeared at his side as if summoned by the sound. He said nothing. He took the tongs from Kaelan's numb fingers, held the nail up to the light of a furnace. He turned it, examining the finish, the evenness. He took a small file from his belt and scraped the shaft lightly, studying the color and texture of the filed spot. He grunted.
He looked from the nail to Kaelan's face, his scarred features unreadable. "Hmph. Control came late. But it came." He tossed the nail onto a nearby workbench where it landed with a definitive clack. "The metal listened to you. Eventually. Most first-timers scream at it until it breaks." He eyed Kaelan's hands, noting the lack of new blisters, the steady way they were held. "Potential might not be worthless after all. Report back after the midday meal. We'll see if you can make two that match."
He walked away, already calling for a report on the batch of templar sword blanks.
Kaelan looked down at his hands. They were steady. They didn't ache. He felt a faint, strange warmth in his palms, a lingering echo of the connection he'd felt with the iron. It wasn't the prickling of holy light. It was something intrinsic, foundational. The satisfaction was cold, quiet, but it was real.
As he turned to leave the forge bay for the designated meal hall, he passed a grimy, leaded-glass window that looked out onto a sunlit courtyard. Across the way, he saw a flash of white and gold. Elara, Lysandra, and Selene were being escorted by a contingent of brightly-armored knights, heading toward the main keep. Elara was speaking animatedly to a robed councilor, her hands moving, a faint, happy smile on her face. Lysandra walked with a new, confident swagger, a practice sword now solid and real at her hip. Selene had a faint, tired but triumphant look, a wisp of arcane smoke still curling from her fingertips.
They were shining. They were being celebrated.
Kaelan watched them pass, a pale shadow in a sooty apron framed in a basement window. The cold satisfaction from the nail curdled slightly, mixing with the old, familiar loneliness and the new, sharper resentment.
They were heroes in the light.
He was down here, in the heat and the dark, learning a different kind of power. One strike at a time.