The forge glowed like a dying star when Kaden stepped in at dawn, the embers from last night's fire still smoldering in the hearth.
Serena had left the "clean metals" laid out on the workbench, their surfaces unmarred by the town's usual grit—pale mithril shavings, a sliver of orichalcum, even a fragment of moonsteel, each pulsing with a faint, unearthly hum.
He'd never seen such purity in Ashmane's scrap-heavy supply.
Not since… not since Holt's last journey to the northern mines, the one he'd returned from with a blade wrapped in oilcloth and a look like he'd stared into a dragon's maw.
"Serena," Kaden called softly.
The girl materialized from the shadow of the anvil, her hands signing faster than his eyes could track.
"Pure. For the dead. For her." She nodded toward the small clay urn on the shelf—Vera's ashes, left by her brother with a plea: "Make her a blade. Something she can… hold. In the dark."
Kaden's palm itched.
The red mark, a twisting rune he'd thought a birthmark, flared warm against his skin as he lifted the hammer.
The system - he still wasn't used to calling it that - had whispered last night: "Soul Imprint Engraving unlocked. Requires 10% mental energy as medium. Failure risks backlash." Backlash, he could handle. What worried him was the why.
Why would a system tied to a broken forge know such a technique?
Why now, when the first dead customer knocked?
The mithril hissed as he submerged it in the soulfire, Holt's old trick to draw out impurities.
But this wasn't ordinary fire.
The flames burned blue at the core, fed by the shavings Serena had scavenged—clean, she'd insisted.
Untouched by the town's rot.
As the metal softened, Kaden pressed his palm to the hilt, letting a thread of his own mind seep into the molten mass.
The system's voice, cold and precise, echoed in his skull: "Imprinting soul signature. Target: Vera Mornshadow. Deceased 12 days. Cause: ???"
"Focus," he muttered, sweat beading on his brow.
The metal warped under his will, taking the shape of a longsword—Vera's brother had said she favored slashing strikes, hated the weight of a mace.
"She was quick," the man had whispered, eyes darting to the fog beyond the shop.
"Too quick for what got her."
Then it happened.
A cry.
Not a clatter, not a creak—a cry.
High, thin, like a child's whimper, but layered with something older, rawer.
The blade, still malleable, trembled in his grip.
Kaden's breath hitched.
The fire flared, turning crimson, and suddenly he wasn't in the forge anymore.
He stood in a cavern of flame.
A figure loomed ahead, cloaked in shadows so thick they devoured the light, its face hidden by a hood that seemed to writhe like living smoke.
"Awaken," it rumbled, voice like a forge collapsing.
"The blood of the First Smith does not rust. It forges."
Kaden staggered back, hitting the anvil.
The vision shattered.
His palm burned—no, glowed.
The red rune pulsed, brighter than before, as if carved into his skin with liquid fire.
The blade, now solid, lay on the bench, its edge etched with fine lines that hadn't been there before: Vera's name, he realized, written in a script older than Ashmane's founding.
The system pinged.
"Soul-Forged Blade completed. Customer satisfaction: Barely Adequate. Reward: 120 Artisan Soul Points." "Barely," Kaden huffed, wiping sweat from his forehead.
He glanced at the shop status that was floating in his peripheral vision - Shop Level: Ruins (Upgradable to Crude Workshop: 200 Craft Soul Points needed). Not enough yet.
But the blade… he lifted it, testing the balance.
Light, almost weightless, but when he swung it, the air sang with a note that made his teeth ache.
Like it was calling to something.
Night fell, thick and foggy, the kind that seeped into bones.
Kaden was dozing by the hearth when a sharp gasp jolted him awake.
Serena stood at the foot of the stairs, her nightgown clinging to her frame, her hands shaking as she pointed at the cellar door.
"Bad dream?" he asked, already moving.
She nodded, signing frantically: "Cold. Chains. It's hungry."
The cellar door—old, iron-reinforced, always locked—had no keyhole.
But as Kaden approached, the blade on his hip thrummed.
He drew it, and the metal edge aligned with a hidden groove in the wood.
A soft click, and the door swung inward, a wave of chill air rolling out, reeking of damp stone and something else—copper, like old blood.
Inside, the cellar was no longer empty.
Vera's body, which Kaden had helped her brother lay here two days ago, was gone.
In its place, carved into the stone wall, were words: "You have roused it."
Behind him, Serena whimpered.
Kaden turned.
Her eyes—pale, usually so quiet—were now veined with red, the same twisting rune from his palm flickering in her irises, like a reflection in a cracked mirror.
And from deeper in the cellar, where the light couldn't reach, came the sound of chains dragging.
Slowly.
Closer.