Alph stood in the training hall, the heavy axe a familiar weight in his hands. The parchment, now folded into a tight square, pressed against his thigh in his pocket. It felt like a small, insistent pebble. He had read it, absorbed its stark details. Gloomwater Docks, public execution, a wooden token. One week.

  He raised the axe, mimicking the Axe Fighter’s stance. The overhead cleave, powerful, fluid. He had studied it, broken it down. His muscles remembered the precise angle of the wrist, the torque of the hips, the explosive extension of the arms. He began the first repetition.

  Footwork. A subtle shift of weight, a pivot. He felt his left foot drag, a fraction of a second too late. He corrected it mid-swing, the blade whistling through the air. The impact against the training dummy was solid, but not resonant.

  He frowned.

  I need to focus on this training; it’s supposed to build muscle memory, yet his mind charted routes, calculating travel time to Gloomwater which usually took a full day round trip, meaning I can't travel back and forth.

  He envisioned the docks, the winding alleys, the shadows cast by the ships. Where would I strike? How would I avoid leaving a trail back to me?

  He reset his stance and took a deep breath.

  The axe arced, a blur of steel. His shoulders tightened, a tension he recognized as misplaced effort. He adjusted, relaxing into the movement, letting the axe’s momentum guide him. Better. The dummy shuddered from the impact.

  Alph's thoughts fixed on the target, a thief. The parchment offered a physical description, no name.

  'The man appears shorter than average, broad-shouldered. His distinguishing mark is a deep scar that snakes from his mouth to his earlobe. He should have calloused hands, stained with dark soil, and wearing mismatched rings. He usually appears in a worn, frayed green waxed canvas coat. He may display a limp from a recent fight that slows his gait.'

  Focus, Alph. This isn’t just a job; it’s a chance to prove yourself.

  A public execution. That meant a crowd, a message. He needed to be swift, decisive, and vanish without a trace. He imagined the faces in the crowd, the potential witnesses, the guards.

  He paused, lowering the axe. He ran a hand over the rough wood of the handle. His mind battled within him. One part craved the pure focus of training, the satisfaction of perfecting a physical skill. The other, shaped by years of navigating complex cases, constructed scenarios, weighed risks, and assessed probabilities.

  He began again, slower this time. He visualized the Axe Fighter, the effortless power, the almost casual brutality. He tried to channel that raw energy. His hips rotated, his core engaged, his arms extended. The axe cleaved the air, a clean, powerful stroke.

  He continued, repetition after repetition. Each swing was a battle, not just against the dummy, but against the fracturing of his own attention. He corrected his footwork, adjusted his grip, refined the arc of his swing.

  I need to be stronger, faster, more precise. I need to be both, and I need to figure out how to be both without losing myself in the process.

  He was a blacksmith’s apprentice by day, a nascent assassin by night. The axe felt heavier now, burdened not just by its own mass, but by the weight of his divided focus. He swung again, the blade biting deep into the dummy’s shoulder. The impact jarred his teeth.

  The daylight outside the training hall faded as evening turned into night, and Alph finally halted his training, breathing heavily.

  I need to come up with a plan. I have to dig into this thief's background; what did he do to deserve such a public execution?

  He wiped the sweat from his brow with the corner of his open hood and sank onto the side bench to ease his muscles.

  Is this like what Corbin did back in Stoneford?

  His thoughts returned to Corbin's words when he questioned why Stoneford faced such tragedy. He had simply replied he was doing his job, initiating a new member into the Dark Tower.

  What if… this is similar? Rook might have tried to comfort me with his nonsense all the while merely seeking a hired hitman. No. I have to rise above that. I need to be better than that.

  Varrick descended into the basement workshop. The cool, damp air carried the scent of ozone and heated metal.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  The metallic bite of the forge filled his lungs. He remembered years of shaping steel, learning its secrets.

  The stone walls held echoes of his past, childhood laughter in the dark corners, the steady ring of hammer on anvil woven into the bones of his home. Humidity clung to his skin. Rough stone pressed against his fingertips. Embers glowed beneath the forge, casting a warm light.

  Haldrix stayed hunched over the workbench, shoulders tense, like he hadn’t even heard Varrick. A sharp beam of light from a floating crystal cut through the dimness, picking out every precise line he carved into the clay mold. The air around him hummed, thick with the kind of energy that made the hairs on Varrick’s arms stand up—raw magic, barely contained.

  "Faster," Haldrix muttered, his voice a low rumble. "The mana flow needs to accelerate the cooling, not just guide it. Tolerances are too wide otherwise."

  His hands moved like a man possessed—one flesh, one brass—carving into the clay with terrifying precision. Each drag of the tool sent up sparks of condensed mana, the grooves left behind throbbing with eerie light. This was where Haldrix lived, where the world fell away and only the runes, the metal, the hum of magic existed.

  Varrick dropped the spare mold onto the workbench. The heavy clay hit the wood with a dull, heavy thunk that vibrated through the table’s legs. This was the second one he had hauled from the back storage room, a replacement for the failure currently littering the floor.

  Beside the worktable, the first mold lay in ruins. It had shattered under the pressure of Haldrix’s erratic mana, the once-solid form now nothing more than a pile of gray, crumbled slag. Varrick wiped his palms on his leather apron, the grit of the basement floor crunching beneath his reinforced boots.

  This stubborn obsession is literally turning our inventory to dust.

  "Brought you a second," he grunted, arms crossed. "Don’t wreck this one. If you do, you’re out of luck till tomorrow. Alph’s not here to help me forge another."

  "Where is the boy?" Haldrix asked, without looking up. The question was abrupt, a sudden break in his hyper-focused state, as if Alph’s absence had only just registered.

  Varrick shifted his weight against the unworked ingots, their chill pressing through his tunic. "Alph’s out for his evening walk. Even apprentices need some rest."

  Haldrix scoffed, a short, dismissive sound. "Downtime? The boy has the gift. He needs to see this. He needs to understand how to etch the runes onto the molds themselves, not just the final product."

  Varrick felt a familiar tightening in his chest. "I've shown him the runes for basic durability, mana conduction. Practical things, father. Things he'll use every day." He had spent hours with Alph, patiently explaining the subtle differences between a mana conducting rune and durability runes when they forged the pickaxes two days ago.

  Haldrix finally looked up, his amber eyes, usually distant, now held a glint of genuine, if misplaced, concern. "Those are fine, Varrick. For a blacksmith. For a craftsman. But Alph has the spark. He is an Apprentice Crafter. He needs to see the true work. The shaping of reality, not just the shaping of metal."

  He tapped the clay mold, tracing the complex runes with a calloused finger. "These patterns don’t merely extend durability or guide mana; they rewrite the rules, forcing molten metal to solidify at an unnatural speed."

  Haldrix spoke without malice, Varrick knew. His father stated a technical distinction, a simple fact. Haldrix never understood how his words landed.

  Varrick had spent his life in the shadow of his father’s genius.

  I know I can never reach the same theoretical heights. I am not a craftsman, but a fighter; a man of practical application.

  The real pain came from how his father emerged from his work—never to ask about Varrick's day or share a moment, only to discuss his own projects. It was always the next discovery, the next mind to shape. Never the son who kept the smithy running, managed guild relations, or carried the Grimforge name.

  Haldrix’s fingers hovered over the mold, then plucked a finer tool from the clutter. "Secondary flow channel here," he muttered, already half-lost. "Otherwise, the cooled surface can fracture under stress."

  The rune-glow painted his beard in shifting blue. His breath came slow, measured, as the etchings pulled him under once more.

  Varrick watched him for a moment longer, the familiar ache settling in his chest. He turned and ascended the stairs, leaving his father to his solitary brilliance. The smithy above was dark and quiet, the sounds of the city muted. He walked past the main forge, its hearth cold, the bellows still.

  Varrick's calloused fingers traced the anvil's worn edges, the iron smooth and cool against his skin. This work surface had endured years of honest labor, not runecraft's brilliance but dependable craftsmanship. He exhaled, the scent of oil and hot metal filling his lungs.

  His life as an adventurer felt like someone else's story now, though the Axe Master's muscles still remembered those days. Those were clean battles—enemies you could see, wounds that healed. Here in the smithy, the fight never ended, just changed form into ledgers and guild fees. The weight of Haldrix's legacy pressed down on him daily, not with the sharpness of a blade but with the slow erosion of stone under running water.

  This is my battlefield now, he thought, tightening his grip on the anvil's edge until his knuckles whitened. The ancestors watched from their stone halls, judging his every strike. Would they see a son upholding tradition, or a failure who couldn't measure up? The quiet of the smithy offered no answers, just the lingering echo of hammers that should have been ringing by now.

  Tomorrow’s workload is light. Let the boy rest.

  Varrick stopped at the doorway, eyes scanning the shadowed street.

  Old man can rant all he likes, but Alph is my apprentice.