Atreus Forgeheart's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Atreus turned the broken shard over in his palm, watching its engraved surface shimmer blue and violet in the forge light. The fragment was warm. Not sun-warm. Impossibly warm, the way it had been the day he pulled it from his master's cold workbench. He pressed it against a fresh ingot and willed the bellows hotter. The coals roared. The ingot glowed, sagged, and warped on the anvil before he could lift a hammer. Another ruined slug joined the pile at his feet. He lifted the shard close to his eye and felt the heat pulse through his thumb, steady and alive. His forge was not the problem. No common fire could shape what this fragment was made of. Atreus set the shard down and stared at the warped metal. He needed the ore itself, raw and whole. Tomorrow he would leave the forge behind and go find it.