The morning air was pale and brittle, as if the light itself hadn’t fully woken.

Tarrek stood at the threshold of the Temple of Light, dressed now in simple linen and boots a size too large. The linen wrappings on his torso itched slightly where the healer had wrapped fresh salve beneath his tunic. A small pack was slung over his shoulder—filled not with possessions, but offerings from the acolytes: dried fruit, a waterskin, and a chipped copy of a beginner’s primer on reading.

The Temple of Light in Larrow’s End held a crystal of its own—just like the Capital city from what Tarrek was told.

At his side stood Kessa, the younger of the two healers who had cared for him. She adjusted the strap of his pack and smiled.

“You’ll need more than prayers to get by now,” she said. “But if you keep at your studies in the evenings, you’ll be reading better than most by year’s end.”

Tarrek looked down at the worn primer in his hands. “Reading’s harder than plowing a field.”

“It also pays better,” she teased gently. “Try the forge in the lower market. They’re always short on help. Work by day, study by night.”

He gave a quiet nod. “Thank you. For everything.”

Kessa smiled again and stepped back as the temple doors creaked closed behind him, shutting with a final, soundless click.

Before him, the city of Larrow’s End stretched out—less radiant than he had imagined.

Its streets were not bustling but slow. The stone roads were clean, but mostly empty. A handful of carts creaked by. The people who moved through them did so with their heads lowered, steps steady.

Color existed, but only in traces—a yellow cloth hanging from a merchant’s stand, a faded mural on the side of an inn, a thread of red twine around a child’s wrist. The rest was muted: grey walls, brown cloaks, the occasional blue sash of a patrolling guard. The buildings leaned inward slightly, as though whispering to each other. Tarrek walked slowly, quietly absorbing the fact that this city, for all its holy light and wealth of knowledge, felt less like a capital and more like a patient recovering from illness.

It didn’t feel alive.
It felt… functional.

The forge was a squat, stone structure wedged between a shuttered pottery shop and a tailor’s stall strung with moth-eaten cloth. Black smoke drifted lazily from the chimney above, and the smell of scorched metal and old coal clung to the street.

Inside, heat swallowed the air. The fire was kept small, but steady—like everything else in this city. Racks of unfinished weapons and bent tools lined the walls. A few well-maintained blades hung in pride of place behind the anvil.

Rovan stood near the furnace, speaking with the blacksmith.

The blacksmith was a broad-shouldered man, maybe fifty, maybe older. His beard was the color of storm clouds, braided once down the middle, and his eyes were dark and sunken like someone who hadn’t slept properly in years. His hands were massive, marred with old burns and blackened scars.

“Didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Rovan said as Tarrek stepped inside.

Tarrek gave a small nod. “Didn’t expect to walk again so soon.”

Rovan clapped a hand on the blacksmith’s shoulder. “This is Brennar. One of the last honest smiths left in the city.”

“Flattery doesn’t make me younger, knight,” Brennar muttered. He eyed Tarrek up and down. “So. You’re the forest boy.”

“I guess I am.”

“Hmm.” Brennar turned, picked up a pair of tongs, and adjusted a half-formed blade in the coals. “And you’re here for what, exactly?”

“Work,” Tarrek said. “I don’t want to sit around. I want to earn coin. I want to… build something. Maybe stay.”

Rovan crossed his arms, watching quietly.

Brennar didn’t answer immediately. He moved like a man who didn’t rush for anything anymore. Finally, he set the tongs aside and looked at Tarrek.

“You ever hold a hammer?”

“No.”

“Swing an axe?”

“Not properly.”

“Split stone? Sharpen iron? Fix a cart?”

“No.”

Brennar gave a grunt—not disappointed, just confirming his suspicions. “Then you’ll start where the rest do. Bellows. Coal. Cleaning slag. Work like that.”

“I’ll do it.”

“You will,” Brennar said. “And if you don’t break or cry, I’ll even pay you.”

There was a flicker in Rovan’s eye—approval, maybe even amusement. He stepped forward.

“If you stick with it,” Rovan said, “and the blisters don’t scare you off, I’ll teach you something more useful than hammer swings.”

Tarrek raised a brow. “Like what?”

“Swordplay. But not until you’ve earned the blade yourself.” He nodded toward the forge. “Forge one. Your own. From scratch. That’ll prove you’re worth the time.”

Tarrek straightened, surprised by the offer. “I will.”

“Do you ever think before you agree?” Rovan chuckled, then turned to leave. “Then I’ll see you again.”

The door creaked shut behind him.

Brennar moved toward a bucket and sat on its overturned base with a soft grunt, wiping his hands on a rag. He motioned Tarrek to sit nearby. For a moment, neither spoke. Only the hiss of iron and the dull roar of heat behind them filled the space.

“You want to know something, boy?” Brennar said at last. “This city used to be loud. Too loud. Bells rang every day. Apprentices bickered in every damn alley. People laughed like the world wasn’t ending.”

He stared at the fire for a long time. “Now it’s just quiet. Like we’re all waiting for something we know’s coming but won’t admit.”

Tarrek nodded slowly. “Where I’m from… there were no bells. Just silence. And rotted fields.”

Brennar chuckled without humor. “Then maybe you’ll fit in fine.”

They fell quiet again.

Then Tarrek said, softly, almost unsure of himself, “But… maybe not everything has to be dying.”

Brennar raised a brow.

“I mean… I don’t know,” Tarrek added quickly. “It just feels like… if we’re still breathing, still showing up to work, still lighting the fires… that has to mean something, right?”

Brennar looked at him for a long time. His face didn’t soften, but something in his eyes shifted—like a knot loosening, just slightly.

“You don’t believe that,” he said.

Tarrek gave a crooked smile. “No. But I want to.”

The blacksmith leaned back on his hands and let out a long, low breath. “Good. That’s how it starts.”

Tarrek started the next morning.

There was no welcome, no formal instruction—just the slam of the forge doors and Brennar’s voice barking, “Water barrel’s low. Coal’s a mess. Get to it.”

And so he did.

He fetched water from the closest well, hauling it in buckets that strained his arms and soaked his boots. He swept the forge twice a day. Organized the shelves, cleaned rusted tools, restacked the firewood. He burned his hands more than once. Dropped a set of tongs on his foot. Cut himself on a chipped blade while trying to polish it.

Brennar never coddled him.

He gave orders like hammer blows—blunt, loud, and without room for complaint. When Tarrek hesitated, Brennar growled. When he rushed, Brennar shouted. When he got it right, Brennar grunted and moved on.

It wasn’t cruelty. It was necessity.

And Tarrek took it without protest.

Some days, he came to the forge before dawn and worked until his arms trembled. Other days, he made foolish mistakes out of exhaustion—once nearly singeing his eyebrows trying to stoke the fire too fast.

Still, Brennar didn’t send him away.

There was something about the boy’s silence, his effort, the way he took correction without flinching. He had no natural gift for smithing, that was certain. His hands weren’t skilled. His first dozen pieces—practice nails, hinges, scrapwork—were bent or brittle or ugly.

But he tried.

And more importantly, he came back every day.

Weeks passed. Then months.

Tarrek began to understand the rhythm of the forge. The heartbeat of the coals. The hiss of water on hot steel. He learned how to feel the color of the metal with his eyes. How to listen for its temper with his ears. How to strike, not wildly, but with purpose.

He ruined far more than he finished. His first attempt at a dagger came out warped and useless. The second cracked in the quench. The third… held its shape.

Not perfect. But whole.

Brennar said nothing about it. Just took the blade, looked it over, handed it back, and moved on.

That night, Tarrek smiled for the first time in weeks.

In the evenings, when the fire dimmed and Brennar slumped into his creaking stool with a battered cup of broth, Tarrek opened his book.

The same primer the acolytes had given him. Its pages worn soft with thumbprints, the ink faded in places. He would stare at the letters for minutes at a time, trying to remember their shapes. What sounds they made. What they meant when they came together

Some nights he gave up and fell asleep on the bench. Other nights, he asked Brennar.

The blacksmith would grumble. Scoff. Pretend to ignore him. But after enough sighs and muttering, he'd shift closer and grunt, “No, that’s not a G. It’s a Y. Turn the page.”

Brennar had never learned formally. But he had picked up enough from order forms and old contracts. Enough to stumble through the basics.

Helping Tarrek stirred memories.

Memories of his father, who had once tried to teach him numbers by carving them into wood. Memories of a son he never had—a boy he once imagined standing where Tarrek did now, hammer in hand, hair soaked with sweat, teeth gritted against failure.

Tarrek was no son. But he was something.

A reason to try again.

One night, Tarrek stayed up too long trying to read a line from a manual about heat treatment and metal grain. He was muttering it aloud, half-whispered, like he could summon its meaning with repetition.

Brennar watched from across the forge, arms crossed, face unreadable.

“You’re wasting time,” he finally said.

Tarrek looked up, startled. “I’m trying to understand it.”

“Then look at what it says, not what you think it says. Read it like you're working steel. Slow. Deliberate.”

Tarrek turned back to the book and tried again.

Slower this time. More careful.

When he finished the sentence, Brennar nodded once and poured another mug of hot broth. Without a word, he placed it beside the boy and walked off.

That night, Tarrek didn’t fall asleep on the bench.

He finished the page.

Brennar never praised him. Not directly. But he stopped double-checking his work. Stopped barking every order. Occasionally, he’d grunt, “Good weld,” or “Better fire today.”

And sometimes, when Tarrek thought the old man wasn’t looking, he’d catch him watching. Not judging. Just… watching.

Tarrek wasn’t just surviving now. He was learning. Earning.

And though his muscles still ached and his fingers were blistered raw, he stood straighter.

The city outside still felt half-dead. Still whispered of decline. But inside the forge, there was breath. Noise. Heat.

A kind of life that hadn’t existed for Tarrek before.