Yan was hammering a new breastplate when the roof caved in. A woman crashed through the beams and landed on his forge floor, sword in hand, dust and splinters raining down. He knew her at once. Ailyne. His wife. She had walked out three weeks ago to hunt the god who stole her memory, the god who had cursed her to wander Briarthorn as a stranger to herself. Now she was back, bleeding and breathless, and something was wrong with the air around her. "Yan," she said. "Something is happening to you." He helped her up. The forge sigils flared brighter than the coals. They glowed toward him, not toward the fire. Ailyne grabbed his wrist and turned his hand over. Blue light crawled under his skin like water under ice. "I felt it a mile off," she said. "Raw power. It's inside you. It's been building since I left." Yan pulled his hand back. "I'm a smith. I make armor. I don't have power." "You do now." Her jaw was tight. "And it's untamed. It will burn you from within if no one shapes it. I've seen men die this way. Their own magic tears them apart." Fear cut through him. "Then teach me. You're a warrior. You must know how." "I don't." The word came hard for her. "I can feel power. I can't train it. My own memory is gone. I don't know what I once was." She looked away, and he saw shame on her face he had never seen before. The light under his skin spread up his arm. His fingers cramped. The sigils on the forge screamed white, and cracks split the dark stone. Yan gasped and dropped to one knee. Ailyne moved fast. She dragged him across the room to the golden tree that stood by the wall, its leaves soft and luminous. Yan's mother had kept it for healing. Ailyne pressed his glowing hand against the trunk. "Give it to the tree," she said. "Now. Let it pull." He pushed the power out. The tree drank it. Golden light ran up the branches, and the leaves burned bright, then dimmed. The blue drained from his skin. His arm went still. He breathed again. But the tree was changed. Its leaves had gone dark at the edges, curling. A sound came from inside the trunk, low and slow, like breathing. Ailyne stared at it. "That should not happen." "What did we do?" Yan whispered. She stood between him and the tree, sword raised again. "We didn't tame your power. We fed it into the one thing that could hold it." The leaves shivered though no wind moved them. "And now it's holding something back." The tree groaned. A crack opened down its golden trunk. Ailyne set her feet. "Whatever answers," she said, "stay behind me."

The crack in the golden tree stopped spreading. The breathing sound faded. Ailyne kept her sword up until the leaves went still. Then she lowered the blade and turned to Yan. He was on his feet, pale, his hand still marked where the power had left him. She had come back to fight beside him. But she saw now she had no soldier at her side. She had a smith. "When it breaks free, and it will," she said, "I can't fight it and guard you both. You have no sword. You've never held one." Yan wiped soot from his face. "I don't need a sword." He walked past her to the anvil. His hand rested on the timeworn face of it, and something in him steadied. "I need this." "You can't hammer that thing to death, Yan." "No." He looked at the runebound forge behind the anvil, its sigils burning low against the dark stone. "But I felt the power. I know its shape now. I held it in my own blood." He fed coal into the firebox. The flames leapt orange, then flared blue at the edges. "Give me a piece of that tree. A branch. The corrupted wood." Ailyne stared at him. "You want to touch it again? It nearly killed you." "It's mine. My power made it." He set his jaw. "I don't want to carry it in my body. I want to forge it into something I can hold." She understood then. He could not train magic like a warrior. But he could shape it like metal. She cut a branch from the dark trunk. It writhed in her grip. She dropped it on the anvil. Yan worked fast. He laid the branch on the glowing sigils. The runebound forge drank the corruption from the wood and fed it into the iron he heated. He drew a blade from the fire, blue veins running through the steel. He hammered. Each strike rang and threw sparks. The dangerous power that had poisoned the tree bent under his hands. He was not fighting it. He was forging it. Ailine watched sweat run down his arms. The blade cooled from white to deep blue. He quenched it. Steam hissed. When he lifted it, the sword hummed with the same power that had almost burned him alive. He turned the edge in the forge light. "Now I can stand beside you." Ailyne took the blade from him and tested its weight. It was true. She handed it back. For the first time since she returned, the shame left her face. "You can't swing this," she said. "Not yet. I'll teach you the little I feel of power. You'll teach yourself the steel." She glanced at the tree. The crack was widening again. "We're out of time to practice." The trunk split with a sound like tearing bone. Something inside pushed against the light. "Then we learn now," Yan said, and raised his own sword.