Morning came in brass and coal. Ren stood again before Ferrin's hearth, the heat laying hands on him as if in greeting. He set out the failures of the night-before-last without shame. He laid the Emberweave Chestplate beside them to remind the room what the day owed him.

He purged metal with the silver skill until the old mana hissed and died, until the iron lay docile, ready. He measured runic powder into the crucible in pinches that felt like prayers measured in salt. He whispered the weave, struck the rhythm. He failed, once, twice, and changed the cadence on the third try: tap—tap—strike, pulse held for a longer breath. The glyphs settled like dust in a house finally allowed to be quiet.

He moved past the chest plate to bracers. He chose a broader band for forearm stamina, set a weave that encouraged blood to move without shouting about it. He tried a flex on the guard and it cracked. He sighed, swore, learned, softened the quench with oil, tried again.

By noon, his shoulders burned in lines that mirrored his hammer strokes. He drank water that tasted like a forge floor and apples. He reset, resumed. The wolf skull kept vigil on a hook, the pelt folded over a bench like a sleeping animal.

He thought of Lyris's lamp. He thought of Ferrin's almost-smile. He thought of the way the Emberweave had lifted his breath by the faintest margin and called that margin life.

The day bent toward him.

By late afternoon, two pieces lay on the bench that did not embarrass the chest plate: bracers that held and would hold again, with small channels etched inside that would carry heat away and luck toward. He tried them on. They felt like a handshake with a future.

He cleaned the forge as Ferrin taught him—because the fire remembered how you treated its bed—and left just as the dwarf returned with a tray of tools and a glance that counted pieces without asking questions.

"Keep at it," Ferrin said, which was more blessing than command.

Ren ate, washed, shouldered the ache he'd earned, and returned to the bookstore when the first stars bullied the sky into honesty.

Lyris met him with that lamp again, its light turning her hair to ink gloss. "Back to the well?"

"Until it runs dry."

"It won't. But you might." She set the lamp between them. "So learn to pour."

He took "Intermediate Barrier Theory," which taught him that protection, like a good lie, had layers. He took "Bindings and Bands," a treatise on straps and buckles that fit like runes and runes that fit like straps. He skimmed "On the Naming of Things," a slim book that argued that a name stitched tighter than a rivet.

He found himself formulating a set. Not a mismatched survival kit scavenged from midnight. A set with a philosophy.

Light, to move. Channels, to breathe. Weaves, to trickle mana instead of drowning in it. Leather beneath plate that hugged and did not pinch. Stitch lines that made highways for heat.

He fell asleep over "The Grammar of Glyphs," forehead denting a paragraph about why circles hate squares. Lyris woke him with a cough and a look that said I will let you be young for a little while longer.

He walked to the inn under a moon that watched like a teacher who believed. He dreamed of hammers and the way they could be gentle if you asked nicely.

Morning. Forge. Repeat.

He purged, wove, struck, quenched. He swore, laughed, learned. He made a pauldron that wanted to be a pauldron and a second that wanted to be a bowl. He talked it out of it. He fitted straps with the new tailoring skill, fingers clumsy at first, then clever. He stitched leather to plate in a pattern that would hold even if the plate forgot how.

He took the bracers, chest, pauldrons to the alley and ran, jumped, rolled, listened for pinch or clatter. The set moved with him like a partner learning the dance. He could feel the small bonuses—agility a ripple under his skin, mana like a quiet stream at his core, a coolness when he stood close to the hearth that did not exist the week before.

When Ferrin tested the fit with a craftsman's rude tenderness, he grunted. "Name it," he said.

Ren blinked. "What?"

"Trash into tool, sweat into song. It's a set now. Name it. Names make things hold."

Ren looked down at the leather, the plate, the faint traceries of glyph carved like a modest boast. He thought of the chest quenching into steam like breath, of the bracers insisting on second tries, of the pauldrons learning not to be bowls.

"Emberweave," he said. "The Emberweave Set."

Ferrin folded his arms. The cigar's ember brightened. "Hnh. Not awful."

The system, which loved the drama of a declaration, agreed.

[Signature Equipment Path Unlocked]Blueprints: Emberweave Chest (C+), Emberweave Bracers (C), Emberweave Pauldrons (C-)Naming Rights: Arclight Forge – Emberweave Series

[Crafting Fusion System: Preview Unlocked]Combine disciplines (Tailoring + Forging + Alchemy) to create hybrid gear. Requires recipes or original schematics. Success chances scale with theory, practice, and hubris.

Ren laughed, a bright sound tossed up at the rafters. Ferrin hid a smile in a cough and went back to tormenting a blade that had displeased him.

Ren gathered his tools. He donned the set. He stepped into the street where Newvale's din played the day like a drum. The armor hugged him without holding him back. Kids watched, one whispering that the wolf-head had learned to wear a man. The market smelled of spice and iron and the beginning of rain.

He had a plan now, not a wish. Forge by day. Study by night. Fail faster, learn slower—take time where it mattered, rush where it didn't. Hunt when he must. Build so he might not have to.

Seraphina stirred, her voice the smile in a dark room. "Creation suits you."

"Survival suits me," he said, but the grin in his mouth gave him away.

"Creation is survival," she said. "If you do it right."

He walked. The bookshop lantern would burn for him. The forge would open its mouth and ask for stories. Lyris would unlock cases. Ferrin would grumble. The daggers on his back hummed like wolves dreaming of the run.

Ahead lay guild postings and contracts, ore veins and bounties, horrors with names, and horrors that would earn them. But here, now, under a sky threaded with the bright veins of morning, Ren Arclight wore something he had made out of brokenness and intent.

He carried the weight easily.

He felt, for the first time since waking in this strange, edged world, th