Julian had a nagging suspicion about why his system's inventory was still locked. He could not shake the feeling that it required a real, physical storage space tied to him before it would open up. Once he had enough points to buy that storage-space enchantment from the shop, he planned to test the theory.
For now, I need to decide what to put on Harry's ring, he thought seriously.
He did not want to simply copy Sanar. Giving Harry identical protections might push Dumbledore into doing something drastic. At the same time, he refused to waste the opportunity on something trivial. The enchantment needed to be genuinely useful to Harry.
Julian frowned, chewing on the problem.
He spent an entire day lost in thought, silent and inward in a way that even worried Harry. He often drifted off into his own head, but never this intensely.
That finally changed when one of the younger kids at the orphanage accidentally hit him with a ball. The impact snapped him out of the haze, something clicked in his mind, and Julian suddenly became animated again, eyes sharp and focused.
Harry noticed.
He never talked about the oddities he had seen in Julian, but that did not mean he missed them. Far from it. He had an eye for strange details, trained by years of watching the Dursleys and learning what to avoid.
Julian confused him constantly.
Sometimes it felt like he was holding himself back from saying what he really thought, as if there were words on the tip of his tongue that he refused to let out. The strangest thing, though, was how he sometimes seemed to know far more than any normal person should, with no explanation at all.
Those weird, fantastical books he had, for instance. Harry assumed they were just stories, but the way Julian reacted when he read them, the odd amusement in his eyes, suggested something else entirely.
...
Julian left those questions unanswered and slipped away to the shed.
The workshop had become a sort of unofficial off-limits zone after one of the kids hurt themselves playing with the tools. No one wanted a repeat of that, so the other children stayed away out of caution and personal experience.
Harry avoided the place for another reason too. It was always too hot, too stuffy, and incredibly boring for him. He did not have the patience to just sit and wait while metal slowly heated or cooled.
So when Julian locked the workshop door behind him, no one noticed. The windows were set high, out of reach and out of sight, and the daylight outside meant that any extra glow from within would blend into the general brightness.
Julian reached into his pocket and pulled out the bird-shaped ring blank he had kept all this time. He placed it gently on the small steel anvil he had earned the hard way, by hoarding scrap for a month and having the refinery workers smelt and shape it for him.
Here goes nothing, he thought, nerves tight in his chest as he let his crafting style fully unfurl.
His body began to glow again.
...
His mind, soul, and body had stabilized about a week after he and Harry had delivered the hammer-rings to the refinery workers. When that happened, his magic stopped surging upward and slowed to a painful crawl.
The upside was control.
Where once he had struggled to keep his spirit from spilling out wildly, now he could direct it far more easily. The light of his soul gathered in his hands on command.
He was still not at Celebrimbor's level. Far from it. The elven smith had been able to confine his spirit to a single hammer hand with clinical precision. Julian could not do that yet. His aura covered both arms, wasting maybe two-thirds of the power he was putting out.
He knew this, and accepted it.
He pressed on anyway, willing everything he knew about shields and defense into his spirit. His inner light shivered, its rhythm changing, the feeling of it shifting into something firmer, more protective.
Without wasting a heartbeat, Julian raised the hammer and brought it down.
Instead of the ring denting or deforming, nothing happened. The metal did not move. It just sat there, perfectly still, as if the blow had been an illusion.
But the sound told another story.
The sharp, echoing clang of metal striking metal rang through the shed.
He hit it again.
And again.
Each strike sent a burst of white light flaring out from the ring, faint at first, then growing with every blow. The glow thickened, the air vibrating with the resonance of magic sinking deeper into the metal.
"Ohtar!" Julian said suddenly, voice ringing with intent.
The elvish word appeared on the ring, etched in light.
He struck again.
"Mellon!"
Another word formed on the metal, glowing briefly before sinking into it. The burst of energy that followed was nearly blinding now, flooding the small shed with white brilliance.
Julian could feel his strength draining rapidly. His arms trembled, sweat ran into his eyes, and his breathing grew ragged.
With the last fraying thread of his power, he raised the hammer one more time.
"Cauma!" he cried, and brought it down.
The word flared into existence on the ring as his spirit poured into the strike.
Darkness swallowed him.
...
He woke up about an hour later, sprawled on the shed floor, every muscle aching and his magic feeling like it had been wrung dry. His body had recovered just enough to function.
On the anvil, the bird-shaped ring waited, lying still and serene. It hummed softly, almost like it was breathing, patient and complete except for one last thing.
Its name.
Julian pushed himself to his feet, swaying a little, and looked down at his work. Despite the exhaustion, his voice came out steady and commanding.
"You are Ohtar."
The ring accepted the name.
The three words reappeared, this time settling into fixed places on the metal. Ohtar etched itself along the left wing, Mellon on the body, and Cauma along the right wing.
With that, the ring was finished.
Unlike Sanar, which had been forged with a more basic approach, this piece had been made using a slightly more advanced technique from Celebrimbor's style, one Julian had only truly understood halfway through the process.
He had realized, mid-forge, that he was not quite ready for it yet.
But it was too late to back out.
And somehow, despite that, he had pulled it off.