The forge did not sleep, and neither did Arin.
For thirty days, he had lived beneath the hammer's song. Every sunrise began with the dull ring of metal striking metal, every sunset ended with the sound of his labored breathing and the faint hiss of his blood meeting the forge floor.
The smell of iron clung to him like a second skin.
He had stopped counting the blisters on his palms. His shoulders felt carved from stone.
When he raised his arms, the muscles trembled, but they obeyed. That obedience, Harven said, was the first sign that his body had begun to recognize the Weight.
"The Weight is more than burden," Harven told him one morning as snow drifted down from the high ridges. "It is truth. Everything in this world bears a weight, flesh, stone, even the heavens. Strength is not about lightening it. It is about learning to carry it."
Arin said nothing. He could barely speak between breaths.
The iron bar he held across his shoulders might as well have been a mountain.
"Walk," Harven commanded.
So Arin walked.
The path wound through the valley, steep and uneven. Snow gathered at his feet, melting instantly against his body's strange heat. The veins of faint silver that had once been lines of light now pulsed deeper — more alive, as if something inside him had begun to forge itself anew.
Each step felt like fire crawling through his bones.
Each breath scraped his lungs raw.
But with every heartbeat, his rhythm steadied.
He remembered the forge's pulse, the sound of hammer and flame merging into one unending song. He tried to breathe in time with that rhythm. Swing, breathe, swing. Step, breathe, step.
By the time he reached the ridge, his knees buckled. He fell to one knee, the bar slamming into the snow beside him. Steam hissed where it struck the ground.
Harven didn't move to help.
"Do you feel it?" the old man asked.
Arin gritted his teeth. "It feels like I'm breaking."
"Then good," Harven said. "Because you are. You cannot forge steel without shattering ore first."
He crouched beside Arin, voice low and rough.
"The body you were born with was weak. It obeyed pain, fear, exhaustion. Now you are making a new one, a vessel for endurance. Every time you lift the Weight, you are shaping that vessel."
Arin's vision blurred from the effort, but he listened.
He forced his hands under the bar again and lifted.
His arms shook violently. The air whistled through his clenched teeth.
Then, inch by inch, the iron rose.
"Again," Harven said.
So Arin stood.
And when he stood, something shifted.
The ground beneath his feet trembled faintly, and for the briefest moment, the snow did not fall upon him — it melted midair. Steam rose around his body like a faint aura. His heart pounded so loud he could hear it echoing off the mountain walls.
When Harven finally nodded, Arin let the bar fall.
The sound of it striking the ground echoed like thunder.
He dropped beside it, gasping, but a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Harven's expression didn't soften, but his tone did.
"You're beginning to feel the Weight properly. It's not the iron that's heavy, boy. It's the will to keep lifting it."
The next few weeks blurred into rhythm.
Harven called it tempering through repetition.
Every morning, Arin carried ore from the lower mines to the forge. Each load was heavier than the last. When his shoulders failed, Harven made him hammer until his hands bled. When his hands failed, Harven made him hold the molten ingots barehanded until his spirit refused to collapse.
And through it all, Arin never once complained.
He began to notice things others did not. The way metal hummed faintly when struck just right, as if singing. The faint shimmer in the air whenever his heartbeat matched the rhythm of his hammer. The warmth that built inside him, not from fire, but from will.
At night, he would lie awake, watching faint light move beneath his skin like flowing mercury. It frightened him at first. The veins were no longer silver, they were darkening, deepening toward a dull iron hue. His flesh looked alien, but alive.
Sometimes, in that quiet, he thought he could hear something faint within the glow, a whisper of metal grinding against metal, the faintest echo of words he could not yet understand.
One evening, while the forge roared and the snow outside fell in silence, Arin's hammer slipped.
The blow struck wrong, glancing off the anvil.
The backlash sent a shock up his arm so fierce he dropped the hammer and staggered back. Pain surged through his wrist like liquid fire.
He clenched his teeth, refusing to scream.
Harven looked up from across the forge.
"Pick it up."
"I… can't," Arin hissed. "It—"
"Pick. It. Up."
Arin bent down, breathing hard. His fingers curled around the hammer's handle, slick with sweat and blood. Pain tore through his arm again, white-hot. The hammer didn't budge.
He glared at it through the haze of agony. The forge's light blurred. The air shimmered.
Something inside him, pride, defiance, maybe madness — snapped.
He roared and lifted the hammer again.
It felt heavier than before, but the weight steadied him. He swung again, the impact sending a wave of essence up his arm. The glow in his veins flared bright, burning away the pain. He kept striking, over and over, each blow stronger than the last, until the metal sang beneath him.
When he stopped, the forge was silent except for the hiss of molten slag cooling.
Harven stared at him with quiet pride. "You've begun to resonate."
Arin blinked. "Resonate?"
"The iron answers your strength," Harven said. "It moves as you do. You've started to connect — body to metal, will to weight. Few reach this point before breaking. Most shatter long before."
Arin stared at the faintly glowing veins in his arm, still pulsing with rhythm. "So I'm strong now?"
Harven snorted. "No. You're surviving. Strength comes later."
He paused, looking into the forge flames as if seeing something far away.
"The first sign of mastery is not power. It's acceptance. When the weight becomes part of you — when lifting it feels like breathing — then you will understand the Iron Path."
Days turned to weeks.
The valley thawed. Snow melted into rivers that glistened like liquid steel under the spring sun. The miners returned to their work, whispering of the strange boy in the forge who no longer felt the cold, whose eyes glowed faintly in the dark.
They called him Harven's apprentice, but few dared approach him.
When they did, they found a quiet young man whose voice carried the weight of storms and whose presence made the air hum faintly, like the moment before lightning strikes.
Even Lira, the healer, found herself pausing outside the forge's door one evening, listening to the rhythm of his hammer. It was no longer the wild, uneven sound of struggle. It was steady, deep, almost… alive. Like a heartbeat made of metal.
She didn't enter. She just watched from the threshold, her eyes soft with a mix of awe and worry.
There was something beautiful about his focus — and something terrifying too.
By the fortieth day, Arin's training reached its next stage.
Harven placed a new task before him: lift the Great Bar.
The Great Bar was no ordinary metal. It was a forged slab used for testing the valley's strongest oxen, weighing nearly as much as three men. It rested beside the forge, coated in soot and rust.
"You are not ready," Harven said, "but readiness is a lie men tell themselves to delay their own growth. You will lift it."
Arin stared at the bar. The air around it shimmered faintly. He could feel its density before he even touched it.
He knelt beside it, palms pressed to the cold iron. It felt alive under his hands, pulsing faintly, like a beast waiting to test him.
He drew a breath and pulled.
Nothing.
His muscles strained. His veins bulged. The Iron glow flickered weakly beneath his skin, but the bar didn't move. His breath came in ragged gasps.
Harven said nothing.
He tried again. And again. Each attempt tore at him, body and spirit. His skin split along his knuckles; blood ran down his arms, hissing where it met the cold metal.
By the tenth attempt, his vision swam. The edges of the world blurred. His knees buckled.
But when he looked at Harven, the old man's unblinking gaze, the quiet fire in those gray eyes — Arin felt something rise in him that burned hotter than exhaustion.
He gritted his teeth and whispered, "I will not break."
And something answered.
The veins along his arms blazed like molten rivers. The forge's fire flared without fuel. The bar shuddered. With a guttural roar, Arin lifted it an inch, then another, until it hung trembling above the ground.
The sound that followed was not human. It was the sound of metal surrendering to will.
Harven stepped forward, voice quiet but firm. "Hold it."
Arin did. His arms quaked. His vision went dark. Blood dripped onto the floor like falling embers.
He held it for ten breaths.
Then he dropped it.
The impact shook the forge.
He collapsed beside it, gasping, half-conscious. Harven stood over him for a long moment before finally speaking.
"You have learned the truth of weight," he said softly. "It never lessens. You only grow strong enough to bear it."
He reached down and clasped Arin's wrist, lifting his arm toward the forge light.
The silver veins had turned a deep, dull gray — the color of tempered iron.
"The boy who feared pain is gone," Harven said. "What remains is the iron that endures."
Arin blinked through the haze, breathing smoke and blood, and for the first time, he didn't just endure the pain.
He embraced it.
Because it was his proof.
When Arin awoke hours later, the forge was cold and quiet. Harven had left a bowl of water and a small piece of bread beside him. The Great Bar still lay where it had fallen, faintly marked by his blood.
He sat up slowly. His body ached with a thousand tiny fractures, but the glow beneath his skin was steady. When he flexed his hands, they no longer trembled. The weight of the world no longer pressed down — it settled around him.
He looked at the Great Bar again and whispered,
"I'll lift you higher next time."
Outside, dawn broke across Ironveil Valley, turning the snowcapped peaks to rivers of light. The world was waking, but Arin was already