Aron flexed his wrist and reached for the blade again.
The moment his fingers closed around the grip, it turned molten — blazing orange, alive with heat — and he threw it back down. He stood over it, breathing hard, trying to understand what it wanted from him. No matter how many times he touched it, no matter how he approached it, he couldn't hold it long enough to shape it. The hammer was useless. The furnace had been useless. Every conventional method had come to nothing.
He crouched and stared at the blade lying on the floor of the chamber.
Then, out of pure frustration, he punched it.
He wasn't thinking. His fist came down hard on the flat of the blade — and he watched, stunned, as a tiny fraction of the metal shifted. A small dent. A slight change in the shape.
He sat back and let the realization arrive slowly.
*Could it be that the blade demands everything from me? Not a hammer. Not water. Me.*
He grabbed the blade, threw it down again to build the heat, then started punching — again and again, each strike deliberate and measured, his knuckles finding the same rhythm a hammer would. The blacksmith chamber rang with the sound of it. The heat that should have been unbearable was somehow flowing through him rather than burning him — as if the molten temperature of the blade and the blood running through Aron's veins had reached some kind of agreement. The hammer was his hand. The heat was him.
--------------
But then the water stopped working.
Each time he tried to cool the blade between rounds, the water hit the surface and vanished instantly into steam — hissing, useless. The progress stalled. He tried adjusting his approach, tried varying the timing, tried everything he could think of. Nothing calmed it.
He walked outside.
It was already dawn — he hadn't noticed the hours passing. The air outside was cool and still, and the contrast against his skin made him realize just how much heat his body had been holding. He was drenched in sweat, every muscle aching with the particular heaviness of sustained, precise effort. He pulled up a bucket from the well and poured it slowly, feeling the water run cold over his neck and shoulders.
He looked down at his hands.
The bruising across his knuckles was already deep — dark and swollen, the skin split in places. He tore strips of cloth and wrapped each finger carefully, working with the focused patience of someone who had more to do and couldn't afford to stop.
"I can't figure this out," he said aloud, not to anyone in particular. "Whatever technique this blade uses, it's beyond anything I've seen. Beyond anything I know how to work with."
He turned the problem over in his mind. The heat, he could manage — somehow, his body absorbed and expelled it in ways that defied what should have been possible for any normal person. But the cooling was the wall he kept running into. Water turned to steam the moment it touched the surface.
He stood very still.
*It demanded my strength to shape it. My blood to heat it.* He looked at the sweat still running down his forearms and dripping from his fingers. *What if — what if I'm also the water?*
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He went back inside.
He ran through the same steps again — gripping the blade until it turned molten, feeling the heat surge up through his palms and into his arms like a current finding its ground. He pulled his fist back and started punching. The chamber rang again, steady and rhythmic, the sound of each impact settling into something almost like a heartbeat.
He was soaked through within minutes.
Then a drop fell from the tip of his nose and landed on the blade with a sharp, small hiss — and the metal sighed. He watched the place where the sweat had landed cool and darken, just slightly, before the heat surged back. But it had worked. For one instant, it had worked.
He kept going.
Punch after punch. Sweat falling in a slow, steady drip wherever his body bent close enough to the blade. Each drop landed with that same quiet sizzle, pulling the temperature back just enough, just long enough for the next strike to shape the metal further. It was painstaking — slower than anything a proper forge would allow — but the blade was responding. He could see it. The shape was changing.
He worked through the night.
By the time he finally stopped, his knuckles were ragged, his shoulders burned with exhaustion, and the chamber felt close and airless. But when he stepped back and looked at the blade lying on the stone floor, he could see real progress. Half-formed, but undeniably changed. He pressed his hands against his thighs and exhaled.
Half done. And it had taken everything he had just to get there.
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Outside, the cart rolled and lurched over a rock in the road. The horse strained against the incline, hooves scrabbling for purchase in the uneven earth, until Lilith climbed down and put his shoulder to the back of the cart. With one steady push, the wheels found their grip and the cart crested the rise. Lilith climbed back up.
Balrad looked at him sideways. "You're a strong lad. I'll admit that." He paused. "Reminds me of the time Aron took the cart himself while the horse rode in the back."
Lilith turned to him. "Really?"
Balrad broke into a grin. "No. I'm joking."
Lilith's expression flattened.
Balrad laughed. "But he was strong, I'll tell you that much. Built differently. He used to say it came from years of farming and hard training — said the two of them together changed his body in ways he couldn't fully explain."
He looked ahead at the road. "We're close. New day, and we'll be there."
The words had barely settled when the wheels sank. The road had turned to mud — soft and deep from the rain that had fallen not long before — and the horse went still, legs half-buried, unable to push forward.
Balrad let out a long breath through his nose. "Right," he said, climbing down with the resignation of a man who has dealt with worse. "Let's get the horse out first."
--------------
Morning came again, and Aron was already back in the chamber.
His knuckles were badly bruised from the day before — swollen and dark, the wrapped cloth doing what it could — but he hadn't considered stopping. He understood the blade now. Not fully, but enough. It didn't ask for the tools of an ordinary forge. It asked for him — his heat, his sweat, his pain, his refusal to quit. A regular blade didn't demand that. A regular blade didn't care.
This one did.
He pounded it again. The pain arrived with every strike — *ahh* — and he struck again — *ahh* — not raging, not wild, but precise. Controlled even through the pain. The sweat fell in steady drops, hissing against the molten surface, cooling it just enough for the shape to hold. His blood kept it burning. The blade kept responding.
He lost track of time.
At some point he moved to the well to pull water — not for the blade, but for himself. He lowered the bucket and hauled it up, and when the water came up it sizzled faintly at the surface, thin wisps of steam rising from contact with his hands. He stared at it for a moment. A normal person couldn't hold that much heat inside them and simply carry it around. But Aron had stopped being surprised by what his body could do. That, too, had changed somewhere along the way.
He set the bucket down and turned his face toward the road.
A cart was coming.