Akire Black wanted one blade that held both light and dark, and her latest attempt lay broken on the anvil. The steel had split down the middle at the joining. She had poured a shard of trapped sunlight into black iron, and the two forces tore the metal apart. Three blades this month, three cracks. She pressed her blue palm to the cold split and felt the truth she kept dodging. Her forge was too weak. She was tall enough to stoop under her own rafters, and her long tail dragged ash across the floor as she paced. No fire she could build reached the heat the joining demanded. Light fought darkness, and only a furnace hotter than any hearth would force them to hold as one edge. She had the skill. She had the sunlight and the iron. She lacked the flame. So she went to the one place that might own such a flame. The alchemy hall stood three floors high, its chimneys breathing colored smoke. Every wall bristled with mounted weapons, blades and hammers stacked to the roof beams. Inside, the air hit her like an open oven. Forges lined the room, each one burning a different color. This was heat she had never touched. But the master forges were spoken for, and the keepers waved her off. "Those fires are booked a year out," one told her, not looking up. Akire's ears flattened. A year would kill her purpose. She turned to leave, and her tail knocked a shelf near the back wall. Something heavy fell and rang against the floor. She knelt and lifted a dark metal disk, wide as her chest. Runes coiled across its face in three colors, blue, gold, and pink, glowing faint under the grime. The surface had the same forged sheen as a blade. She had never seen its like. When she held the sunlight shard near it, the runes brightened, and the disk grew warm in her hands. An old keeper limped over and stopped short when she saw what Akire held. "Put that down," she said. "That relic hasn't answered anyone in forty years." But it was answering now. The blue runes pulsed toward the light in Akire's pouch. The pink runes pulsed toward the dark iron on her belt. The disk knew both. It wanted both. Akire understood then. This was not a forge. It was a key to one, a heat-source that fed on light and darkness together. "How much?" she asked. The keeper named a price Akire could not pay in a lifetime of blades. Then the keeper studied Akire's flattened ears and split knuckles, and her face changed. "Or," she said slowly, "you forge me something first. Something impossible. Prove the relic chose right." Akire closed her hand around the disk. She had her flame at last. Now she had a debt, and a test she did not yet know how to pass.