The forge had already found its rhythm by the time Harbek noticed the bellows weren’t his.

  The heat held steady between strikes, not climbing too fast, not falling away. Each pull came where it should—after the hammer fell, before the metal cooled. Harbek slowed without meaning to, listening past the ring of steel to the breathing of the fire itself. The work stayed true. That was the thing. Whoever was on the bellows knew how to listen.

  He glanced to the side between blows. A girl stood at the handles, sleeves rolled, stance braced wide enough to hold the weight. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed on the coals, tracking color and movement with the same quiet focus he used at the anvil. When Harbek adjusted the angle of his strike, the bellows answered a heartbeat later. No words. No signal.

  “That’ll do,” Durnek said from behind them, voice carrying easily over the forge. He stepped closer, inspecting the metal with a practiced eye before nodding once. “Runa. Hearthmere. She keeps the fire steady.”

  Runa released the bellows and finally looked up, giving a short nod before returning her attention to the forge. Durnek had already moved on, tools in hand, satisfied. Harbek turned back to his work, the weight from earlier still there—but now it had some shape.

  Harbek worked the ingot back to shape, letting the hammer fall where it wanted rather than forcing the line. The fire stayed even. He didn’t need to glance again to know the bellows would answer when the metal asked for it. That alone was rare. Most apprentices chased heat, overfed the coals until the steel dulled or burned. Runa didn’t. She waited.

  A few strikes in, she shifted her footing without breaking rhythm, adjusting to the forge’s pull as the heat changed. Harbek felt the difference through the anvil before he saw it in the metal. Cleaner edges. Less waste. He nodded once to himself and kept working.

  “You’ll warp it if you rush the draw,” Durnek said, not looking up from the rack of tools he was sorting. His voice was even, more reminder than warning.

  Harbek eased the angle of his hammer and struck again. The metal held. From the corner of his eye, he saw Runa’s hands tighten on the bellows handles, then relax as the fire settled back into balance. She didn’t ask questions. She watched. That, too, meant something.

  When the ingot was returned to the fire, Harbek stepped aside to quench his hammer head, steam hissing as it met the water. Runa moved in without being told, clearing scale from the anvil with quick, practiced strokes. Not perfect—no one expected that—but close enough that Harbek didn’t need to correct her.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Durnek paused, eyes flicking between them once before moving on. Approval, given and withdrawn in the same breath.

  Harbek wiped his hands on his apron and took up the hammer again. The forge felt fuller than it had earlier—not louder, not crowded. Just… settled. The weight he’d felt that morning hadn’t lifted, but it had shifted, distributing itself into the rhythm of work, fire and steel. For now, that was enough.

  The forge door opened without a knock, letting in a thin blade of cooler air. The fire stirred, not enough to falter, but enough that Harbek felt it through the anvil before he saw the figure in the doorway.“Good heat,” Torrik said, stepping inside. His voice was calm, worn smooth by years of use. “Even. That takes patience.”

  Harbek kept his eyes on the ingot as he refined the edge, but was aware of the weight of Torrik's attention all the same. It pressed in without a word measured and unblinking, like a tool set too close to the anvil. Torrik's always been a foreboding man, large and square with features making him feel carved more than grown. His beard is cut blunt and kept short, flecked with pale granite gray, and his skin bears the chalky scars of stone dust ground in over decades. Much like Durnek, Torrik's eyes were dark and rarely blinking.

  “Stone remembers how it’s treated,” Torrik went on, hands clasped behind his back. “Rush it, and it splits. Leave it be, and it holds for generations.”

  He paused, gaze still on Harbek's work.

  “There’s comfort in knowing what you’re meant for,” Torrik said. “Most folk spend their lives wishing for that much certainty.”

  “He’s steady,” replied Durnek. “Always has been.”

  Torrik nodded once, satisfied. “Then it’s good he’s where he belongs.” Then as calmly as he entered, he turned and left.

  The ingot cooled on the edge of the forge, its surface darkening from orange to dull red. Harbek watched the color fade, counting the breaths it took to settle. Too fast, he thought. Or maybe it only felt that way. He lifted it with the tongs and set it on the anvil anyway, the metal ringing sharper than before beneath the hammer. The sound lingered longer than it should have.

  Behind him, the forge quieted. Tools were returned to their places. The bellows rested, leather sighing as the heat ebbed. Runa wiped her hands on her apron and stepped back without a word, her part done. Durnek spoke briefly with Torrik near the door—low voices, measured, already moving on to other matters. Plans made without him. Futures spoken as if they were no heavier than iron stock.

  Harbek struck once more, then stopped. The line in the metal was clean, the work sound. It should have satisfied him. Instead, he felt the shape of it pressing in—solid, finished, with no room left to move. He set the hammer down and stood there a moment longer than needed, listening to the forge as it cooled. Earlier, the rhythm had held him steady. Now it felt set around him, stone-hard and closing. When he finally turned away, the embers still glowed—but the fire itself had already decided

  what it would become.