Gareth Ironheart's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Gareth woke to find the stranger's fever had broken, but the metal flowers on his skin had spread overnight. The tools still glowed beside the unwrapped flower, their symbols forming patterns that shifted too quickly to follow. He understood what they were showing him—the flower's language, its structure, the way it infected metal and flesh alike. But the symbols wouldn't hold still long enough to read completely. The lodge had given him a cipher, not a translation. To see the full pattern, he'd need to stand where the stranger had stood. He lifted the golden breastplate from the wall, the one adorned with flower vines that the mysterious woman had left as proof of his old work. It felt right to wear his own armor for this. He strapped it across his chest, checking the fit twice out of habit, then picked up the unwrapped flower with bare hands. The tools flared white. The symbols locked into place, no longer shifting but burning steady and clear. His skin began to itch where the flower's stem touched his palm. The workshop twisted around him. Walls bent inward, then snapped back. His anvil rang without being struck. But the symbols stayed fixed now, readable at last—a formula written in metal and light that showed him exactly how the corruption moved through matter, how it rewrote steel and bone into its own image. He saw the path to forge protection against it. The cost arrived with the knowledge: a small metal bloom pushed through the skin on his wrist, identical to the ones covering the stranger. It didn't hurt. It just was. Gareth set the flower down and examined the mark. The tools had given him everything—the pattern, the method, the answer he needed to forge armor against the spreading infection. In exchange, he carried the corruption now. He looked at the stranger sleeping in the corner, then at his own wrist. The lodge had known this would happen. They'd sent him someone who understood the price. He wrapped his wrist carefully and returned to the workbench. The symbols were fading from the tools, but he'd already memorized what mattered. The metal flowers growing from his skin would remind him if he forgot.