The whispers began before the hammer struck its first nail.
"The blacksmith boy's come back."
"He's fixing up the old place."
"Spent near all his coin, they say."
It wasn't cruel talk. Not like before. This was softer curious, almost warm. Winter Town had little to gossip about in the cold months, and Vulcan's return was a welcome ember in the frost. Children peered through cracks in the stone walls. Old men nodded from their benches. The forge had been quiet for years, and now it sang again.
He spent nearly everything he had two gold dragons, five hundred silver stags, and a pouch of copper stars. It wasn't the amount that stirred talk, but what he bought. Strange bricks from the Vale. Crates of obsidian dust. Carved stones etched with symbols no one recognized. Some thought him mad. Others thought him touched by magic.
The shop itself was large, larger than most remembered. He tore down the rotted beams, replaced the roof with slate, reinforced the walls with iron struts. The front was redone in dark oak and black stone, polished and proud. Above the door hung a new sign, carved by his own hand
The Ember Forge
---
Vulcan's Perspective
The furnace was the heart.
Not just any furnace a blast furnace, yes, but more than that. A magical one. A vessel of fire and memory. He worked in silence, marking each stone block with runes of the First Men. Symbols of heat, of cold, of balance. He remembered them not from books, but from dreams. From a life before this one.
He carved with a chisel of dragonbone, each stroke deliberate. The runes glowed faintly, not with magic yet, but with promise. The furnace would not simply burn it would breathe. It would listen. It would shape metal not just with heat, but with will.
He paused, wiping sweat from his brow. The forge was still unfinished, but it was alive. The walls hummed with potential. The air smelled of soot and old power. He touched one of the stones, feeling the warmth beneath his palm.
Not a dream, he thought. Not just a dream.
He turned back to the furnace and continued inscribing, each symbol a piece of himself his past, his pain, his purpose. The Ember Forge would be more than a place of work. It would be a sanctuary. A crucible. A beginning.