Atreus turned the broken shard over in his palm, watching its engraved surface shimmer blue and violet in the forge light. The fragment was warm. Not sun-warm. Impossibly warm, the way it had been the day he pulled it from his master's cold workbench. He pressed it against a fresh ingot and willed the bellows hotter. The coals roared. The ingot glowed, sagged, and warped on the anvil before he could lift a hammer. Another ruined slug joined the pile at his feet. He lifted the shard close to his eye and felt the heat pulse through his thumb, steady and alive. His forge was not the problem. No common fire could shape what this fragment was made of. Atreus set the shard down and stared at the warped metal. He needed the ore itself, raw and whole. Tomorrow he would leave the forge behind and go find it.

Before he could chase the ore, Atreus needed a direction. His master had kept private notes, and those notes had to point somewhere. He climbed the narrow stairs to the old study and stopped at the dark wood desk. The center drawer was locked. He knelt and found the hidden keyhole tucked beneath the lip. He tried his own ring of keys. None turned. He slid a thin file from his apron and worked the pins until the bolt gave. Inside lay folded letters, a cracked compass, and an iron lockbox scorched black along its bronze hinges. Atreus lifted the box out. It was warm in the same wrong way the shard was warm. He carried it to the floor and pried the latch with his chisel until the wood split and the lid sprang open. Inside, a single map lay folded over a charcoal sketch of a mountain pass, marked with his master's shaking hand. One word was circled twice: north. Atreus closed his fist around the map. He had his direction now, and the forge behind him already felt like somewhere he used to live.