Hephaestus braced his weight against the anvil and brought his hammer down on the breastplate one last time. The metal sang beneath the blow, perfect and finished, ready for a war god who would never thank him. He set the hammer aside and wiped the soot from his hands. The delivery arrived without warning — no messenger, no announcement, just a sealed crate appearing at the threshold of his forge as if the stone itself had birthed it. The chest floated a hand's width above the floor, golden and elaborate, sealed with patterns he didn't recognize. No mark identified the sender. No seal bore a god's sign. Hephaestus circled it twice, searching for some hint of origin, but found nothing. He pried the lid open with careful fingers. Inside lay a chunk of ore unlike anything he'd worked in a thousand years — blue-black stone shot through with veins of red fire that pulsed like a living heart. He lifted the ore from its nest of silk. It was warm, almost hot, and the red glow brightened at his touch. The metal in his workshop — bronze, iron, divine gold — all of it felt dead compared to this. His pulse quickened. Someone wanted him to forge something from this material. Someone who couldn't ask openly. Someone who knew he'd never refuse the challenge of working something new. Hephaestus carried the ore to his private forge, the one built into the clouds where no other god ventured. If this was a test, he would meet it. If this was a trap, he would spring it on his own terms. He set the strange metal on his workbench and reached for his hammer. Whatever weapon this material wanted to become, it would be the finest thing he'd ever made.