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Verse of Still and Song – Entry XII
The anvil breathes where silence breaks,
Not with wind, but pulse of makes—
Each hammer-fall a word unsaid,
Each spark a path where mortals tread.
Death leaned close to forge and flame,
But dared not speak the rhythm's name.
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I. The Anvil's Memory
The forge was not a place for comfort.
It groaned with ancient breath, heat curling from the stones like ghostly lungs exhaling time. Firelight danced across the molten veins of ore, licking at the vaulted ceiling that bore scars older than the empire. Beneath it, Rin stood alone—barefoot on the blacksteel floor, calloused soles enduring the burn as if to offer tribute.
Here, in the caverns beneath the Crownless Mountains, where no melody had echoed for centuries, Rin had come in silence to find the voice of a blade.
And to meet the god of its breath.
The smith-god, whose name had long since been erased from all crowns and scriptures, was not bound by flesh but by echo. He did not speak in words. He pulsed—like heartbeat struck against steel. With every breath Rin took, the rhythm inside him changed.
The god did not appear as anything familiar. No face. No form. Only the pressure. A rhythm that pressed down like gravity, pulling Rin's very bones into time's old tempo. It was not cruel. It was not kind. It was truth, unshaped.
"Why are you here?" the pressure asked, in rhythm and resonance, not language.
"To forge," Rin replied, voice dry, cracked from the heat and truths unspoken.
"All blades are broken first. What will you break?"
"My fear," Rin whispered, and the forge flared.
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II. Echoes from the Warfront
Far away, in the dying plains beyond Solmarch, the war-tide surged.
Kael stood among the wreckage of another rhythm-bound battlefield. The song of the eastern Crown had fallen hours ago, broken by dissonance planted deep by enemy choirs. The land reeked of scorched tempo. Soldiers lay twisted, blood flowing in unnatural patterns—proof that the rhythm here had not merely broken, but been reversed.
He dropped to one knee and pressed his ear to the ground.
A hum.
Low. Faint. Familiar.
The gods were stirring again.
"Rin," he muttered, "whatever you're doing, make it count."
Above him, the sky split—not with lightning, but a fracture in harmony itself. And from it spilled not rain, but memory.
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III. Beneath the Anvil
Back in the forge, Rin's body was trembling. Not from heat. Not from pain. But from resonance.
The rhythm of death—still etched into his being since the encounter by the black river—had not left. It coiled beneath his ribs, not waiting to be summoned, but offering to be understood.
He reached for the shattered blade. His old one.
He did not mourn it.
Instead, he took its broken pieces and fed them to the fire. Not as sacrifice, but as truth. The flames did not resist. They drank the steel, and for the first time, the forge sang.
Not loud. Not proud. But honest.
He began to forge. Not with tools—but movement. A dance. He let the Rhythm of Death move through his limbs. He let the Rhythm of Silence shape the air. And from somewhere deep inside, the echo of a god guided his steps.
The smith-god did not interfere.
But he watched.
And when Rin struck the air—barehanded—it did not clang. It bloomed. A blade not yet formed, but possible, appeared in essence.
It shimmered with rhythm untold.
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IV. Memory and Echoes Collide
In a flash of collision, memory surged through Rin—visions of the past wars, the gods who fell in harmony and those who rose in discord.
He saw the Broken Choir, whose song had cracked reality.
He saw the Crowned Ones devouring whole nations with militarized rhythms.
He saw the blade he had not yet made—piercing through the heavens.
He saw death, sitting beside him, watching the forge. Still. Quiet. Listening.
"I can't forge for gods," Rin whispered.
Death turned, cloaked in starlight.
"Then forge what even gods will fear."
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V. Beneath the Anvil Breath
The anvil did not roar.
It sighed.
And from that sigh, Rin raised his arms and caught flame with his hands—flame that did not burn, but sang. He brought it down upon the outline of the blade, shaping it not with hammer but with intention. Not with strength, but story.
This was not the forging of a weapon.
It was the crafting of choice.
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Closing Verse – Entry XII Continued
And so he stood where echoes dwell,
To shape a blade from rise and fell—
Of death's still hush and silence kept,
Of dreams that gods themselves had wept.
Not for war, nor pride, nor throne—
But to carve a path that sang alone.
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