The staircase from the third floor rose like a serpent's spine, curling in ways that defied geometry. Each step was made of something different—bone, glass, obsidian, wood—as if the tower had stitched the path together from pieces of other places.
When Kael reached the landing, the air felt heavier, not from heat or dampness, but from meaning. The space ahead did not exist in simple dimensions—it was a sphere, a hall, a pit, and a vast open plain all at once, shifting as he looked at it.
The Sovereign Flame pulsed inside him, flickering, not with weakness but with anticipation.
This was the Forge.
The First Strike – Childhood Unmade
He stood in a village.
His village.
The sky was the warm gold of summer dusk, and the smell of woodsmoke drifted lazily through the air. Children played near the well, their laughter soft and far away. Kael's mother was there, kneeling by the garden, brushing dirt from her hands.
Only—her eyes were wrong. They were glassy, reflecting no light. When she looked up at him, her voice was flat.
"You were never born," she said.
The world trembled. The houses shifted, their shapes melting like wax. The children at the well froze mid-motion, their limbs dangling unnaturally.
"You were a mistake," the voice continued, though her lips no longer moved. "And mistakes can be undone."
Kael staggered back, his hand reaching instinctively for the bone knife. The Flame surged, a barrier of heat snapping around him.
The Forge was not simply showing him memories—it was replacing them.
With a sharp cry, he slashed the knife through the air. The scene shattered into shards of color, falling away to reveal blackness.
The Second Strike – Victory Turned to Ash
He stood on a battlefield he remembered well—muddy earth, banners torn, the stench of blood and iron.
This had been his greatest victory, the day he broke the siege of Hallowmere. But now, the scene was wrong. His soldiers were not cheering—they were dead. Their armor lay split, their bodies rotting where they fell.
Across the field, the enemy commander—who Kael remembered killing—was still alive, standing tall, smiling faintly.
"You think you won," the man said, voice like a blade across glass. "But you never did. You died here, and everything after was the dream of a coward's soul."
Kael's heart thundered, but the Flame hissed like an angry beast. Not true, it whispered inside his head. You are more than this. You are mine.
The words didn't feel comforting—they felt possessive.
Kael roared and charged the enemy commander. Their swords met in a spray of sparks, but each clash made the battlefield twist and warp—the mud turned to molten glass, the sky bled red, and the corpses began to whisper his name in voices he almost recognized.
With one final strike, Kael cut through the man's chest—and the whole scene fell away like cloth ripped from a table.
The Third Strike – The Flame's Truth
This time, the Forge didn't give him an old memory.
It gave him one he'd never seen.
He stood in a throne room made of black stone, lit only by a vast brazier at its center. Flames roared within it—flames the color of molten gold.
On the throne sat Kael himself, older, his eyes burning like embers. Around him knelt an army—not of men, but of creatures made from shadow and fire.
The older Kael smiled. "This is what you are. This is what I made you for."
The younger Kael—the Kael that was—felt his throat tighten. "You're not me."
"You will be. This is the only truth that matters. Everything else—your village, your victories, your name—they were chains. I burned them away for you."
The Flame inside him pulsed hard, agreeing with every word.
Kael stepped forward, trying to ignore the heat clawing at his skin. "You didn't burn them away for me. You burned them for yourself."
The older Kael's expression turned cold. "And without me, you are nothing."
The throne room began to close in, the walls folding like the pages of a book. Heat roared through Kael's skull, his vision burning at the edges.
The Forge wasn't just showing him possibilities—it was trying to choose one for him.
The Fourth Strike – The Choice
The air split.
Kael stood on a narrow bridge suspended over nothingness. To his left, the past—his real memories—flickered like dying candle flames. To his right, the future the Flame wanted blazed with gold fire.
In between was only the drop, endless and dark.
The Forge whispered in both ears.
Left ear: "Take back your name. Take back your life. You'll be weak, but you'll be free."
Right ear: "Give yourself to the Flame. You'll be strong enough to break the world."
Kael looked down into the dark between the two paths.
"What happens if I choose neither?" he asked.
The Forge hesitated. Then it laughed.
"You cease to be."
Kael grinned—something fierce and defiant. "Then I'll make my own path."
The Fifth Strike – Breaking the Forge
The bone knife flared white-hot in his grip, and Kael drove it straight into the bridge beneath his feet.
The entire scene screamed—not just sound, but vibration and heat, like the collapse of a forge's heart. The left and right paths shattered, memories and visions flying apart like sparks in a windstorm.
Kael fell.
But it was not into nothingness—it was into himself. A thousand images slammed through him at once: his mother's smile, the first man he'd killed, the taste of blood in the snow, the fire's heat on his face, the sound of his name whispered by someone he could no longer see.
When he hit the ground, he was back in the real tower—or what passed for real here. The walls were the familiar fused bone and metal. His body ached as though he'd been hammered into shape on an anvil.
The Flame was still inside him, but quieter. Not defeated—but watchful.
The Forge had failed to rewrite him.
The Keeper's Warning
A voice spoke from the shadows.
"You've passed."
From the darkness stepped a figure in blackened armor, its face hidden behind a visor. "Few leave the Forge intact. Fewer still keep the Flame afterward."
Kael's voice was rough. "What is the Forge?"
"It is hunger," the Keeper said. "It eats what you were, and replaces it with what it wants you to be. You broke it. That makes you dangerous… to more than just your enemies."
Kael tightened his grip on the knife. "Then it should fear me."
The Keeper chuckled. "It already does. But fear has teeth. And it will bite again."
The floor trembled beneath them. Somewhere above, the tower groaned like a dying beast.
The Keeper stepped aside, revealing another staircase—narrow, steep, and lit by a faint, cold light.
"Go," he said. "The next floor waits. But it is not the Forge you'll face. It is something… older."
Kael took a breath, feeling the Flame stir uneasily at the word older.
Without another word, he climbed