Theron Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Theron Nightshade needed iron, and the tyrant's soldiers had taken all of it. He crouched behind a snowbank at the edge of the market square, watching them load the last wagon. His blade needed raw ore. Only his hands could forge it, and only that blade could end the tyrant's reign. But the soldiers seized every scrap across Leeward before it reached a single forge. Theron had melted stolen buckles and broken hinges for weeks. Tonight even the scraps were gone. His fox pressed against his leg. She was no ordinary animal. Ice crystals studded her gray fur, and her coat held the dull shine of raw ore. He had raised her since she was a pup, pulled half-frozen from a river. She growled low at the soldiers, and he set a hand on her back to quiet her. "Not here," he whispered. "Too many." A soldier shouted. Two more turned toward the snowbank. Theron froze. His fox bolted the other way, straight across the open square. The soldiers cursed and chased her. Theron ran while their backs were turned. He did not follow the road. He followed his fox. She led him down the frozen river, her claws sure on the ice. Then she stopped and dug at the bank. Theron cleared the snow with his hands. Beneath a sheet of cracked ice sat a black gap in the stone. A cave, sealed under the frozen river, hidden from every road. He squeezed through the icy mouth. Inside, the walls glittered. Veins of ore ran through the dark stone, thick as his arm. The soldiers had stripped every mine and forge above ground. They had never found this. His fox trotted ahead, and the crystals in her fur matched the ore in the walls. She had known. She had led him here all along. Theron pressed his palm to a vein and felt the cold metal. Enough here to forge ten blades. But he needed heat to free it, and he could not haul stone past the soldiers to any forge in Leeward. Then he saw it at the back of the cave. A squat stone well, ringed with old iron. He looked over the rim. No water waited below. Coals glowed there instead, banked and patient, a hidden forge built into the shaft. Someone had made this place a smithy long ago and left it whole. Theron laughed once, quiet and sharp. He had ore the tyrant could not seize. He had fire the tyrant did not know existed. He fed a chunk of coal to the coals and watched them brighten. But heat and ore were only the start. His blade needed more than iron. It needed the rare thing that would bind the enchantment, the thing no forge alone could give. He did not have it yet. He knelt by the fire, his fox at his side, and began to plan how to get it.