Gareth Ironheart's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Gareth woke to hammering at the door. Not the polite knock of a customer—something desperate. He grabbed his shirt and crossed the workshop, passing the flower still wrapped on his bench. The pounding came again, harder. He opened the door and a man collapsed across the threshold. Blood soaked through the stranger's shirt in dark patches. His skin showed marks Gareth recognized from the flower the woman had left—raised welts that shifted color like oil. The man's breathing came shallow and quick. Gareth dragged him inside and propped him against the wall. "The flower," the stranger gasped. "It's spreading. Metal flowers growing in the ground. They mark how far it's reached." He grabbed Gareth's arm with shaking fingers. "You're the only smith who can stop it. The lodge sent me to find you." His hand fell away. Outside, Gareth could see a trail of tools scattered across the clearing—ornate pieces dropped one by one as the man had staggered forward. Each tool gleamed with strange symbols. Gareth needed answers, but the stranger was dying. He couldn't forge protection against something he didn't understand, and this man had traveled through the corruption itself. Gareth pulled down the decorative tin box from his shelf—the one painted with warnings and flowers that he'd always kept empty. He cleared space in the corner of his workshop and laid out blankets inside the box's shadow, creating a makeshift recovery space. The stranger needed time to heal enough to explain what the lodge wanted. Gareth cleaned the wounds with water and wrapped them in clean cloth. The welts on the man's skin pulsed faintly with the same colors as the flower on his bench. The stranger's eyes opened halfway. "Metal flowers," he repeated. "Growing closer every day. The corruption spreads through people, through proximity." He coughed. "The lodge chose you. The armor you're making—it's not just for one person." His breathing steadied slightly under Gareth's care. Gareth sat back on his heels. He'd accepted an impossible commission to forge protection against a supernatural flower. Now he understood the real scope. The woman's daughter wasn't the only person who needed protection—the entire spreading infection needed to be stopped, and somehow his metalworking was the key. He looked at the flower on his bench, then at the stranger's wounds, then at his forge. He didn't know how metal could fight a living corruption, but he knew he wouldn't turn away from trying. The question wasn't whether to help anymore. It was what form the protection needed to take.