The air in Ironhollow Village reeked of soot and regret, a choking haze that clung to Kael Thorn's lungs like a bad debt. At nineteen summers, he was all sharp angles and callused hands—too lean for the forge's bellows, too stubborn for the plow. His master, old Garrick, called him a "half-forged blade," dull on one edge and brittle on the other. Kael didn't argue. He just swung the hammer harder, each strike a silent curse against the gods who'd left him orphaned and empty-handed.
Elyndor was a world of jagged scars: mountains like broken teeth, rivers of molten slag from the Great Cataclysm a thousand years past. Legends spoke of the Eternal Forge, hidden in the world's molten heart, where the first smith-god hammered out the stars. But legends didn't pay for bread. In Ironhollow, tucked in the shadow of the Ashen Peaks, survival meant feeding the village's one true god: the war machine of the Empire.
"Thorn! Ye laggard whelp!" Garrick's bellow cut through the clangor of hammers. The old dwarf, his beard singed to stubs from a lifetime of sparks, thrust a warped sword blank at Kael. "The quartermaster's comin' at dawn. This pig-sticker better sing true, or we'll both be fodder for the Void pits."
Kael caught the iron with a grunt, its heat searing through his gloves. The Empire's legions marched endless wars against the Void Emperor's abyssal hordes—shadow-beasts that slithered from rifts like ink in water. Ironhollow's forges churned out blades by the cartload, cheap and brittle, enchanted just enough to hold against the dark. Kael's job? The grunt work: quenching, grinding, praying the metal didn't shatter mid-swing.
As twilight bled into the forge's crimson glow, Kael worked alone. Garrick had shuffled off to the alehouse, muttering about "soft-bellied humans" and their fragile spines. The village beyond the anvil's roar was a huddle of thatch roofs and flickering lanterns, families huddled against the chill wind that carried whispers from the Peaks—whispers of raids, of shadows that ate light.
Kael's hammer rose and fell, rhythm like a heartbeat. Clang. For his mother, lost to fever when he was knee-high. Clang. For his father, conscripted into the legions and never returned. Clang. For the empty ache in his chest, where dreams of more—of wielding fire like the old heroes, of forging a legacy from scrap—festered like rust.
The sword took shape: a straight-edged killer, rune-etched with the Empire's sigil—a clenched fist wreathed in chains. But as Kael hammered the final temper, something shifted. The anvil—a battered slab of star-iron, older than the village—hummed. Low at first, like a distant thunder, then sharp as a blade's edge. The hammer's head, a loaner from Garrick's locked chest, grew warm in his grip. Too warm.
"What in the Nine Hells...?" Kael muttered, pausing mid-swing. The forge's flames leaped higher, unnaturally blue, casting shadows that danced like living things. In the hammer's worn oak handle, faint lines glowed—runes he'd never noticed, twisting like veins of lightning.
He should have dropped it. Run to Garrick, or the elder-mage in her herb-stinking hut. But Kael was Ironhollow-born: curiosity was a vice, and he'd never learned to quench it.
One more strike. For the hell of it.
The hammer descended, and the world screamed.
A shockwave erupted—not sound, but force, rippling through the anvil like a stone in a pond. The sword blank shattered into a thousand glittering shards, each catching the blue fire and hurling it skyward in a vortex. Kael staggered back, hammer locked in white-knuckled fists, as the runes on its haft blazed to life. They burrowed into his skin, searing brands that etched across his forearms: jagged symbols of anvil, flame, and a coiling serpent—the Mark of the Forge.
Pain lanced through him, hot as a branding iron, but beneath it... power. A rush like swallowing lightning, coiling in his veins. His vision sharpened; he saw the forge's embers not as dying coals, but as slumbering stars, waiting to be hammered into constellations. The anvil pulsed with his heartbeat, whispering secrets in a tongue older than stone: You are the temper. You are the edge. Forge or be forged.
Kael gasped, dropping to his knees. The hammer— no, his hammer now—thrummed in his hand, alive. He could feel its hunger, its need to create. To reshape the broken world.
But the whispers from the Peaks weren't wind anymore. They were howls—close, too close. Shadows slithered at the forge's open door, coiling like smoke given fangs. Voidlings. Scouts of the Emperor's endless tide, drawn by the rune-awakening like moths to a pyre.
The first one lunged: a thing of tar and teeth, eyeless but unerring, its claws raking for Kael's throat. Instinct overrode fear. He swung the hammer—not as a tool, but as an extension of his will.
Crack.
The blow connected, and reality fractured. A Forge Rune ignited in the air—a glowing sigil of anvil and hammer—and the voidling exploded into wisps of shadow, banished back to its rift. The anvil drank the remnants, the metal slab glowing hotter, feeding Kael's veins with stolen essence. Strength surged through him; his muscles bunched like forged steel.
More came—three, then five—pouring from the night like spilled ink. Kael rose, hammer singing, each swing birthing a new rune: one that wove flames into chains, binding a beast mid-leap; another that sharpened the air itself into invisible blades, shredding hides like parchment.
He fought like a man possessed, the forge his battlefield. Sparks flew as hammer met claw, rune met shadow. Blood—his and theirs—sizzled on the anvil. But for every voidling he felled, two more clawed through the door. The village alarm bells tolled belatedly, distant shouts rising: "To arms! The dark comes!"
Kael backed toward the anvil, hammer slick with ichor. His brands burned, a map of power etched in agony, but exhaustion clawed at him. This is it, he thought. Forged and broken on the first swing.
Then, a new shadow detached from the fray—not void-black, but cloaked in midnight leathers. A figure: lithe, hooded, twin daggers glinting like fallen stars. An elf, by the pointed ears peeking from her cowl—outlaw markings tattooed across her cheek.
She moved like liquid night, daggers a blur. One voidling fell, throat opened in a crimson arc; another impaled through its core. "Boy with the glowing stick," she called over the din, voice a silken taunt laced with an elven lilt. "Swing wider, or we'll both be rift-fodder."
Kael didn't question it. He swung, and she danced in tandem—a deadly duet. Her blades carved paths for his hammer; his runes flared to shield her strikes. Together, they carved through the horde, the forge a cauldron of chaos.
The last voidling shrieked, coiling for a final lunge. The elf girl vaulted over Kael's shoulder, daggers plunging into its maw. It thrashed, then dissolved. Silence fell, broken only by the anvil's fading hum and the crackle of dying flames.
She sheathed her blades, turning to him with eyes like storm clouds—gray, piercing, amused. "Lirael Voss. And you... you're the spark that lit this bonfire. Those brands on your arms? They're calling the Emperor's dogs from three valleys over."
Kael panted, hammer heavy in his grip. The village elders would brand him a heretic for this—rune-awakened were omens of doom, or so the priests droned. But Garrick's forge lay in ruins, the sword shards glittering like accusations. And in the distance, the Peaks rumbled: more shadows massing, drawn by the Forge's cry.
"Run or fight?" Lirael asked, already looting a fallen dagger from the shadows.
Kael glanced at the anvil—his anvil now, whispering promises of blades that could cleave mountains, armors that laughed at death. The power thrummed in his blood, a forge-fire unquenched.
"Fight," he growled, hefting the hammer. "But not here."
Lirael's grin was a slash of white in the gloom. "Good choice, spark-boy. The road to the Spires awaits—and the Emperor's noose tightens."
As they fled into the night, void-winds howling at their heels, Kael felt the first true strike of destiny. The Eternal Forge had chosen its smith. But in Elyndor, every forging came at a cost—and the hammer's next whisper was of blood.