The sword was wrong.
Kieran Ashford held the blade up to the early morning light streaming through his forge's single grimy window, squinting at the edge with an intensity that would've made most people uncomfortable. To anyone else, the longsword was flawless—perfectly balanced, mirror-polished, with an edge sharp enough to split falling silk. Three days of work had gone into this commission, and by any reasonable standard, it was done.
But Kieran saw the flaw.
There. Seven inches from the tip. The slightest irregularity in the fuller groove, a variance of maybe half a millimeter. Invisible to the naked eye. Irrelevant to function. The client would never notice in a thousand years.
He sighed and placed the sword back on his workbench.
"Start over," he muttered to himself.
"You're insane," a voice called from the doorway.
Kieran didn't look up. He knew that exasperated tone better than he knew his own heartbeat. "Good morning, Mira."
Mira Thornfield leaned against the doorframe of the forge, arms crossed, her dark hair still messy from sleep. At seventeen, she had the kind of street-smart swagger that came from growing up in Millhaven's rougher districts, and the perpetual expression of someone who'd seen through every con in existence. She was also, unfortunately for Kieran's peace of mind, objectively beautiful—a fact that brought far more customers into their struggling forge than his actual smithing skills.
"That's the Hendricks commission, isn't it?" She walked over and picked up the sword, testing its weight with the casual competence of someone who'd grown up around weapons. "This is gorgeous. He's going to love it."
"The fuller is off."
"The what is off?"
"The groove. The blood channel. It's uneven."
Mira squinted at the blade, tilted it in the light, then fixed Kieran with a flat stare that somehow conveyed both affection and the desire to hit him with something heavy. "Kieran. I'm looking right at it. There's nothing wrong with this sword."
"There's a—"
"There's a nothing," she interrupted, setting the sword down with deliberate care. "And even if there was something, which there isn't, Mr. Hendricks is a town guardsman who's going to use this to look intimidating while standing at the gate. He's not going to notice a microscopic imperfection that probably only exists in your head."
Kieran finally looked up from his workbench, pushing his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. He knew she was right. She was always right about these things. But the thought of sending out work that wasn't perfect made his stomach twist.
"I could do better," he said quietly.
"You always think you could do better." Mira's expression softened slightly. "That's why you're good. It's also why we're broke."
She wasn't wrong about that either. Kieran glanced around his forge—calling it "tiny" was generous. Calling it "struggling" was accurate. The building was barely large enough for his anvil, workbench, and forge, with a small attached room where he slept. The walls needed repair. The chimney leaked smoke. Half his tools were held together with improvised fixes because he couldn't afford replacements.
And yet, he loved it here. This space, with its smell of hot metal and coal, the rhythmic sound of hammer on anvil, the almost meditative focus of shaping raw materials into something useful and beautiful—this was where Kieran felt most himself.
"How much did Hendricks pay upfront again?" Kieran asked.
"Twenty silver. Balance of thirty on delivery." Mira picked up a rag and started wiping down the counter that served as their front desk, which was really just a battered piece of wood balanced on two barrels. "Which we need by end of week or we can't pay Old Marvin for the coal shipment. Which means no forge. Which means no work. Which means we starve."
"You're very encouraging."
"I'm very realistic." She shot him a grin. "That's why you keep me around."
"I thought it was because you're the only one who can talk to customers without hiding in the back room."
"That too."
It was true. Kieran had many talents—he could read metal like some people read books, could hear the precise temperature of heating steel by the sound it made, could visualize structural weaknesses in a blade before ever picking up a hammer. What he couldn't do, what he'd never been able to do, was talk to people.
Clients made him anxious. Haggling made him nauseous. The thought of disappointing someone with subpar work kept him awake at night. So Mira handled everything that required human interaction, and in exchange, Kieran taught her smithing and gave her a place to sleep in the forge's tiny loft.
It was an arrangement that somehow worked, despite Kieran's perfectionism and Mira's complete inability to understand why anyone would spend an extra day on something that was already good enough.
"Speaking of customers," Mira said, her tone shifting to business mode, "we've got three people coming by today. Mrs. Chen wants her kitchen knives sharpened—yes, I know you hate sharpening, but it's easy money. Then there's a traveling merchant who needs his wagon wheel rim repaired—"
"That's not even smithing, that's just—"
"—money, Kieran. It's called money. We like money. Money buys food." She held up a hand before he could protest further. "And finally, some fancy-looking woman sent word yesterday that she wants to discuss a 'significant commission.' Those were her exact words. Significant commission."
That got Kieran's attention. He looked up from the Hendricks sword, curiosity warring with his natural anxiety. "What kind of commission?"
"Didn't say. But she's coming at noon, and she sounded rich." Mira's eyes gleamed with mercenary interest. "Like, 'doesn't ask about prices' rich."
Kieran felt his chest tighten. Rich clients meant expectations. Expectations meant pressure. Pressure meant the screaming certainty that whatever he made wouldn't be good enough, that he'd disappoint them, that they'd tell everyone in Millhaven about the useless blacksmith who wasted their money and—
"Stop spiraling," Mira said, apparently reading his mind. "You're doing the thing where you panic about stuff that hasn't happened yet."
"I don't panic."
"You absolutely panic. You just do it very quietly while staring at metal." She walked over and physically turned him away from the Hendricks sword. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to deliver this beautiful, perfect, completely acceptable sword to Mr. Hendricks. You're going to accept his payment without apologizing for imaginary flaws. Then you're going to come back here, and I'm going to talk to the fancy rich lady while you lurk in the background and look mysteriously talented."
"I don't lurk."
"You absolutely lurk. It's actually kind of impressive how much lurking you can do in a space this small."
Despite himself, Kieran felt a smile tugging at his lips. Mira had that effect—she could talk him down from his worst spirals with a combination of brutal honesty and genuine affection that somehow worked where reassurance would have failed.
"Fine," he said. "I'll deliver the sword."
"Without starting over?"
He glanced at the blade one more time, saw the microscopic imperfection that would haunt him forever, and forced himself to nod. "Without starting over."
"Character growth!" Mira announced to the empty forge. "I'm so proud. Now go wash your face. You've got soot on your forehead and you smell like a coal bin."
As Kieran headed to the water barrel in the corner, Mira called after him: "Oh, and Kieran? When the fancy lady gets here at noon? Try to actually make eye contact at least once. I know it's hard, but rich people like to feel acknowledged."
"I acknowledge people."
"You acknowledge metal. People you tolerate in the spaces between metalworking."
She wasn't entirely wrong. As Kieran scrubbed the soot from his hands and face, he caught his reflection in the water—a lean young man in his mid-twenties, with perpetually tired eyes and the kind of face that disappeared in crowds. Unremarkable, except for his hands. His hands were scarred and callused and steady, the hands of someone who'd spent ten thousand hours shaping steel.
Those hands had never failed him. People, on the other hand...
"Stop overthinking and get moving!" Mira shouted. "Hendricks opens the gate in an hour and it's a twenty-minute walk!"
Kieran carefully wrapped the sword in oiled cloth, trying not to think about the imperfection he was sending out into the world. This was always the hardest part—letting go. Every piece he made felt like sending a child off to war, hoping it would be good enough, knowing he could have done better if he'd just had more time, better materials, one more chance to—
"Kieran!"
"Going!"
He grabbed the wrapped sword and headed for the door, pausing only when Mira caught his arm.
"Hey," she said, her usual teasing tone replaced with something gentler. "It's a good sword. You did good work."
Kieran wanted to believe her. Some part of him, buried under layers of self-doubt and perfectionism, knew she was right. But that part was very small and very quiet.
"Thanks," he managed.
"Now go get paid so we can eat something other than turnip stew this week."
As Kieran stepped out into the early morning streets of Millhaven, sword under his arm, he tried to focus on the practical concerns. Deliver the commission. Collect payment. Get back before the mysterious rich client arrived at noon. Simple.
But his mind was already drifting back to the forge, to the next project, to the eternal question that drove him: How could he make the next one better?
Behind him, Mira was already opening the forge's shutters, preparing for the day's business with the kind of easy confidence Kieran had never possessed. The morning sun caught her profile as she worked, and for just a moment, Kieran felt grateful.
He might not be good with people, might panic at the thought of disappointing clients, might see flaws in everything he created. But he had this—a tiny forge in a frontier town, an impossible assistant who somehow made everything work, and the quiet satisfaction of shaping metal into something useful.
It wasn't much. But it was his.
The sword felt heavy in his hands as he walked toward the city gates. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice whispered that this was just another routine delivery, just another C-rank longsword for a town guardsman, nothing special.
But Kieran Ashford had never made anything routine in his life.
He just didn't know it yet.