- Location
- Train yard
The ground was made clean.
Broch’s hands worked slowly, deliberately, scraping the earth bare. He crouched low, running his palm across the soil. Every inch was inspected, every imperfection noted and corrected. When it was flat—truly flat—he stamped it down, heel to heel, over and over until the dirt answered him with silence. No crunch of looseness. No whisper of shifting grains. Only quiet, sturdy earth.
His father had always stressed the importance of this. Neglect the foundation, and the forge’s soul will extinguish before the first coal glows. That was what he’d said—what he’d sworn, with the iron certainty of a man who lived his life one hammer strike at a time. The forge was never just a place. It was a spirit, a companion, a sentinel. Build it poorly, and you buried that spirit before it had a chance to speak. Build it right, and it would walk beside you for the rest of your days—and maybe, just maybe, wait for you beyond them.
Broch stood, muscles aching, back stiff with time and memory. Four hundred years. That’s how long it had been since his father last shaped metal at his forge. Since his voice had last echoed against the stones. And though the forge was long gone, more than likely scattered by moss and wind and time, Broch still wondered: had it found him in the next realm? Did it still burn for him?
When he found a shovel—old, half-rusted but sound—he began to dig. The dirt moved easily, almost respectfully, as though it understood his assignment. Each time the spade sank in, he saw his mother again: bent over garden beds, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back with a bit of twine. Every spring, she’d take the boys into the yard and point at the corners. A little farther out this time, she’d say, and they’d help her make the garden just a bit bigger. Just a bit wilder.
He could still see her fingers pressing bulbs into the soil, her gentle command of the land. Tulips. Lavender. Blue star creepers near the edges. Was it still blooming now, somewhere beneath the vines and stone that had been Iveria? Or had the creeping gray of those new stone ‘kingdoms’ taken everything? Had her flowers vanished beneath marble and mortar, history overwritten by architecture?
Broch pressed the blade in again. The rhythm came back, slow but sure. With every lift of soil, he carved a space not just in the earth—but in memory. A foundation, as his father had taught. A garden, as his mother had loved.
Maybe this forge wouldn't be the same. Maybe it couldn’t be.
But it could be honest.
And that would be enough.
Once the pit had been made to his satisfaction, perfectly square and smoothed with a care that bordered on reverence, Broch straightened with a slow groan and turned toward the river.
The foul-smelling vein that cut through the heart of the city like an old wound that never healed. Its banks were choked with refuse and forgotten things, runoff from a civilization that had grown upward and outward, but never cleaner. He didn't grimace. Didn’t flinch. He had to ignore the rot if he wanted to find what was useful underneath.
He dug.
The shovel’s edge bit through layers of mud and slime, until he struck it—dense, cool, and red-brown: clay. It clung to the metal like it didn’t want to let go, sticky and slick, but perfect. Clay to shape the forge’s lining. Clay to whisper the old spells of heat and endurance. The twins had always been the best at finding it—better than he had been. They’d sniff the air and knock the ground with their knuckles, laughing when they struck paydirt like they were on a scavenger hunt with stakes no higher than pride. He wondered if they would laugh now, or just look at him with those same wild eyes and say, finally.
The clay here was thick with sand and gravel—some of it good, some of it just grit that needed washing. All of it was filthy. It needed cleaning, like the forge grounds had. Like everything needed now.
Broch wiped sweat from his brow and realized he’d need something to carry it in. Something that wouldn’t break under weight or crumble under damp. That meant Rhetta.
He found her eventually. He didn’t need to say much, using his hands to describe what he needed: a vase, a container or something. She eventually would understand and left to find him what he needed. He went back to dig.
She eventually returned and provided something he could use.
He grunted a thanks. She just nodded.
And then he was back at work, the container beside him, slowly filling with clay, his arms moving on muscle memory alone. The light began to fade, golden first, then copper, and finally iron-gray. Still he worked, shoulders aching, knees stiff. The river whispered beside him, low and constant like a chant that only made sense to the old gods.
He thought of his father again—of the clang of hammer on steel ringing through the dark like a heartbeat. They’d work until their fingers were blistered and bleeding, until the moon hung heavy in the sky and their shadows were long and crooked across the ground.
Work was the rhythm of life, and fire.. the breath that carried it forward.
Now, the fire was only a memory. But the rhythm—that, he could still find. One spadeful at a time as he filled the container with the materials he needed.
He continued well into the night and into the next morning. The stars blinked out one by one, yielding to a bruised dawn, but Broch didn’t pause. Didn’t sit. Didn’t drink or eat or breathe too long. There was a rhythm now, deeper than exhaustion, more sacred than sleep. His fingers were raw and red, knuckles split open where clay had bitten skin, but he pressed on.
He had to see it through.
By hand, he mixed the cob—earth, clay, straw, and water—in the vessel Rhetta had given him. He stomped it, folded it, kneaded it like dough until it held shape and promise. Slowly, steadily, he built the pit walls. Each layer pressed in place with care, each seam smoothed with his palms. His hands knew the shape the forge should take, even if his mind wandered elsewhere. Maybe his body remembered what his spirit could not forget.
He found stones along the riverside, odd ones. Red, as if scorched in some long-passed fire, some of them shaped unnaturally flat, like they’d once been part of something sacred. He didn’t question where they came from—whether they’d been tomb markers or remnants of an old sanctum. He only knew they were solid. He used them to line the inner wall, locking them in like memories too painful to name but too precious to discard.
His arms trembled. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging and hot, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The world had narrowed to the feel of earth beneath his fingers, the weight of each brick, the rhythm of effort and memory.
His father had been the first to fall that night.
The memory tore through him like a hot wind, sudden and searing. No warning. Just blood, and fire, and shouting—shapes in the dark, fast and many. Too many. They came out of nowhere, spilling through the fields like a storm with no sky to speak of, no thunder—only the tearing sound of chaos. The forge had still been hot, the coals breathing like a living thing. The twins were shouting something he couldn’t remember now. His mother had held a carving knife as if it were a sword.
And then—
Broch’s breath hitched. But his hands stayed steady as he continued to work.
He laid another layer of cob, pressed it into the shape it needed to be. Afternoon crept in behind him unnoticed. He pushed forward.
For a moment, everything around him was still. The wind held its breath. Even the river stopped its low, constant muttering.
His mother had been next. Her grief hit like lightning, pure and violent, when she saw her soulmate fall. She didn’t scream—she charged. A mother. A widow. A force of fury. And then the brothers—surrounded as the rain began to pour, drenching them in a curtain of silver and mud. All four stood back to back, steel flashing in the night, fighting against an enemy that seemed to spill from the horizon without end.
Broch grabbed another brick and placed it carefully. Brushed the sweat from his brow, leaving a smear of clay and dirt across his face.
Finn fell next.
Worn down to the bone, he collapsed mid-swing, breath hitching as the blade meant for another found him instead. His twin, Niall, didn’t have to live long without him—Fortune’s only mercy that night. Broch remembered the splash of red, warm and wet across his own face as Niall’s head was taken, clean and cruel. There was no time to mourn. No time for anything but survival.
Caden stood behind him then, a mountain of a man, the eldest, the first into any fight and the last to flee. His voice had been hoarse from shouting orders—then battle cries—then nothing at all. They fought together, shoulder to shoulder, as the enemy surged.
But there was no end. Not then.
Broch pressed the final brick into place. It sat perfectly, completing the shape. No longer just a pit. No longer just a hole in the ground. It was something now—familiar. Sacred. Something that meant something.
It would need to dry. And then he’d need bellows. A fire could not be coaxed back to life without breath.
Caden was the last.
Broch had taken his father’s axe, and Caden’s too, when the screams died and only he remained. He remembered the weight of them both—steel and grief, blood and fury. He remembered swinging until the enemy broke, or he did. Until nothing moved. Until vengeance and survival blurred into one. He would kill them. He would bring the ruin back to them.
His breath was shallow. His hands, filthy and shaking, found the hem of his shirt, and he wiped them there—old habits from a different life.
Joints cracking like tired wood, he stood and turned away. The sun was low once more in the sky.
Time to find Rhetta again.
Broch’s hands worked slowly, deliberately, scraping the earth bare. He crouched low, running his palm across the soil. Every inch was inspected, every imperfection noted and corrected. When it was flat—truly flat—he stamped it down, heel to heel, over and over until the dirt answered him with silence. No crunch of looseness. No whisper of shifting grains. Only quiet, sturdy earth.
His father had always stressed the importance of this. Neglect the foundation, and the forge’s soul will extinguish before the first coal glows. That was what he’d said—what he’d sworn, with the iron certainty of a man who lived his life one hammer strike at a time. The forge was never just a place. It was a spirit, a companion, a sentinel. Build it poorly, and you buried that spirit before it had a chance to speak. Build it right, and it would walk beside you for the rest of your days—and maybe, just maybe, wait for you beyond them.
Broch stood, muscles aching, back stiff with time and memory. Four hundred years. That’s how long it had been since his father last shaped metal at his forge. Since his voice had last echoed against the stones. And though the forge was long gone, more than likely scattered by moss and wind and time, Broch still wondered: had it found him in the next realm? Did it still burn for him?
When he found a shovel—old, half-rusted but sound—he began to dig. The dirt moved easily, almost respectfully, as though it understood his assignment. Each time the spade sank in, he saw his mother again: bent over garden beds, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back with a bit of twine. Every spring, she’d take the boys into the yard and point at the corners. A little farther out this time, she’d say, and they’d help her make the garden just a bit bigger. Just a bit wilder.
He could still see her fingers pressing bulbs into the soil, her gentle command of the land. Tulips. Lavender. Blue star creepers near the edges. Was it still blooming now, somewhere beneath the vines and stone that had been Iveria? Or had the creeping gray of those new stone ‘kingdoms’ taken everything? Had her flowers vanished beneath marble and mortar, history overwritten by architecture?
Broch pressed the blade in again. The rhythm came back, slow but sure. With every lift of soil, he carved a space not just in the earth—but in memory. A foundation, as his father had taught. A garden, as his mother had loved.
Maybe this forge wouldn't be the same. Maybe it couldn’t be.
But it could be honest.
And that would be enough.
Once the pit had been made to his satisfaction, perfectly square and smoothed with a care that bordered on reverence, Broch straightened with a slow groan and turned toward the river.
The foul-smelling vein that cut through the heart of the city like an old wound that never healed. Its banks were choked with refuse and forgotten things, runoff from a civilization that had grown upward and outward, but never cleaner. He didn't grimace. Didn’t flinch. He had to ignore the rot if he wanted to find what was useful underneath.
He dug.
The shovel’s edge bit through layers of mud and slime, until he struck it—dense, cool, and red-brown: clay. It clung to the metal like it didn’t want to let go, sticky and slick, but perfect. Clay to shape the forge’s lining. Clay to whisper the old spells of heat and endurance. The twins had always been the best at finding it—better than he had been. They’d sniff the air and knock the ground with their knuckles, laughing when they struck paydirt like they were on a scavenger hunt with stakes no higher than pride. He wondered if they would laugh now, or just look at him with those same wild eyes and say, finally.
The clay here was thick with sand and gravel—some of it good, some of it just grit that needed washing. All of it was filthy. It needed cleaning, like the forge grounds had. Like everything needed now.
Broch wiped sweat from his brow and realized he’d need something to carry it in. Something that wouldn’t break under weight or crumble under damp. That meant Rhetta.
He found her eventually. He didn’t need to say much, using his hands to describe what he needed: a vase, a container or something. She eventually would understand and left to find him what he needed. He went back to dig.
She eventually returned and provided something he could use.
He grunted a thanks. She just nodded.
And then he was back at work, the container beside him, slowly filling with clay, his arms moving on muscle memory alone. The light began to fade, golden first, then copper, and finally iron-gray. Still he worked, shoulders aching, knees stiff. The river whispered beside him, low and constant like a chant that only made sense to the old gods.
He thought of his father again—of the clang of hammer on steel ringing through the dark like a heartbeat. They’d work until their fingers were blistered and bleeding, until the moon hung heavy in the sky and their shadows were long and crooked across the ground.
Work was the rhythm of life, and fire.. the breath that carried it forward.
Now, the fire was only a memory. But the rhythm—that, he could still find. One spadeful at a time as he filled the container with the materials he needed.
He continued well into the night and into the next morning. The stars blinked out one by one, yielding to a bruised dawn, but Broch didn’t pause. Didn’t sit. Didn’t drink or eat or breathe too long. There was a rhythm now, deeper than exhaustion, more sacred than sleep. His fingers were raw and red, knuckles split open where clay had bitten skin, but he pressed on.
He had to see it through.
By hand, he mixed the cob—earth, clay, straw, and water—in the vessel Rhetta had given him. He stomped it, folded it, kneaded it like dough until it held shape and promise. Slowly, steadily, he built the pit walls. Each layer pressed in place with care, each seam smoothed with his palms. His hands knew the shape the forge should take, even if his mind wandered elsewhere. Maybe his body remembered what his spirit could not forget.
He found stones along the riverside, odd ones. Red, as if scorched in some long-passed fire, some of them shaped unnaturally flat, like they’d once been part of something sacred. He didn’t question where they came from—whether they’d been tomb markers or remnants of an old sanctum. He only knew they were solid. He used them to line the inner wall, locking them in like memories too painful to name but too precious to discard.
His arms trembled. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging and hot, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The world had narrowed to the feel of earth beneath his fingers, the weight of each brick, the rhythm of effort and memory.
His father had been the first to fall that night.
The memory tore through him like a hot wind, sudden and searing. No warning. Just blood, and fire, and shouting—shapes in the dark, fast and many. Too many. They came out of nowhere, spilling through the fields like a storm with no sky to speak of, no thunder—only the tearing sound of chaos. The forge had still been hot, the coals breathing like a living thing. The twins were shouting something he couldn’t remember now. His mother had held a carving knife as if it were a sword.
And then—
Broch’s breath hitched. But his hands stayed steady as he continued to work.
He laid another layer of cob, pressed it into the shape it needed to be. Afternoon crept in behind him unnoticed. He pushed forward.
For a moment, everything around him was still. The wind held its breath. Even the river stopped its low, constant muttering.
His mother had been next. Her grief hit like lightning, pure and violent, when she saw her soulmate fall. She didn’t scream—she charged. A mother. A widow. A force of fury. And then the brothers—surrounded as the rain began to pour, drenching them in a curtain of silver and mud. All four stood back to back, steel flashing in the night, fighting against an enemy that seemed to spill from the horizon without end.
Broch grabbed another brick and placed it carefully. Brushed the sweat from his brow, leaving a smear of clay and dirt across his face.
Finn fell next.
Worn down to the bone, he collapsed mid-swing, breath hitching as the blade meant for another found him instead. His twin, Niall, didn’t have to live long without him—Fortune’s only mercy that night. Broch remembered the splash of red, warm and wet across his own face as Niall’s head was taken, clean and cruel. There was no time to mourn. No time for anything but survival.
Caden stood behind him then, a mountain of a man, the eldest, the first into any fight and the last to flee. His voice had been hoarse from shouting orders—then battle cries—then nothing at all. They fought together, shoulder to shoulder, as the enemy surged.
But there was no end. Not then.
Broch pressed the final brick into place. It sat perfectly, completing the shape. No longer just a pit. No longer just a hole in the ground. It was something now—familiar. Sacred. Something that meant something.
It would need to dry. And then he’d need bellows. A fire could not be coaxed back to life without breath.
Caden was the last.
Broch had taken his father’s axe, and Caden’s too, when the screams died and only he remained. He remembered the weight of them both—steel and grief, blood and fury. He remembered swinging until the enemy broke, or he did. Until nothing moved. Until vengeance and survival blurred into one. He would kill them. He would bring the ruin back to them.
His breath was shallow. His hands, filthy and shaking, found the hem of his shirt, and he wiped them there—old habits from a different life.
Joints cracking like tired wood, he stood and turned away. The sun was low once more in the sky.
Time to find Rhetta again.
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