The metallic murmurs had barely faded when two hulking Sentinels, armored in soot-stained obsidian scale, materialized from the rain-slicked gloom. They didn’t speak, didn’t acknowledge Kord’s petrified stare or the shattered saber at his feet. One simply seized Ignat by the arm – Valdis’s frail arm – with a grip like cold iron. The other nudged Kord, who still hadn’t moved, with the blunt end of a war-halberd. “Move, lordling. Trials await.”
The Atrium was a hungry maw carved into the earth. Its gothic archways dripped with condensation, the air thick with the smell of damp stone and something coppery. Below, a labyrinth of scarred flagstones spread, dimly lit by phosphorescent moss clinging to the cavern walls. Awakened youth, drawn from every district of Ostromar, gathered in nervous clusters. Warrior lineages swaggered across the center in polished greaves and mirror-bright blades, while auxiliary apprentices shrank toward the moss-slick margins.
Ignat felt the familiar throb of Valdis’s weak heart, but it was overlaid with a new, insidious chill. It wasn’t pain, not yet. More like a slow, internal calcification creeping up his left arm, where the Crucible Weaver had settled its mark. The first calcifying touch of ‘Soul Rust’.
“Look at this one,” a sneering voice cut through the murmur. A gaunt youth with high cheekbones pointed a scornful finger at Valdis. “A Mend-Smith. They’re allowing *Mend-Smiths* into the Harrowing now? What’s next, seamstresses?” Laughter rippled across the pit floor.
Ignat ignored them, his gaze tracking the instructors pacing the lower levels. One, a burly veteran in charcoal mail and gorget, Sir Roric, bellowed over the crowd while gesturing with a gauntleted fist. His armor, though functional, bore the scuffs and dents of a hundred minor repairs. An immaculate target.
“You there! Mend-Smith!” Sir Roric’s voice echoed, drawing every eye. “Come forth! Let us see what you’ve been taught.” His tone was heavy with derision. “Perhaps you can polish my boots.”
Ignat walked forward, his steps deliberately slow. The other auxiliaries shrank back, leaving a wide berth. The young duelists snickered, and the Forgemaster's boy made a show of coughing behind a silk sleeve.
Sir Roric extended an armored arm, his elbow joint a mesh of interlocking steel laminates. “My elbow, boy. It catches, sometimes. A Mend-Smith’s work is to make things *whole*, yes? Show me.”
Ignat nodded, closing the distance. He reached out, his fingers brushing the cold metal. The armor was heavy, expertly crafted, but its complex articulation had minute imperfections. He closed his eyes for a breath, the System's rasps droning like cicadas in his skull. He didn’t try to ‘mend’ the armor in the traditional sense. Instead, he channeled the Kinetic Imprint, tracing the hairline tolerances between iron segments. He packed a minuscule surge of stored force into the steel grain, a directional clamp rigged to catch the instant the joint shifted. A seamless, invisible lock.
[Kinetic Imprint applied. Potential energy stored: 0.001 units. Wager initiated: Public humiliation. Failure will result in immediate Soul Rust.]
He pulled his hand back. “Mended, sir.”
Sir Roric scoffed. “Already? That’s hardly a demonstration, boy. Let’s see it move, then.” He bent his arm, intending to flex his bicep. But the elbow joint, which had been stiff moments before, now refused to budge. It was as if the plates had fused, perfectly aligned but utterly locked. He tried again, straining, a vein bulging in his neck. His face reddened. The armor was an unyielding cage. He was a statue.
A ripple of nervous laughter, quickly suppressed, spread through the onlookers. Sir Roric thrashed, grunting, but his arm remained fixed at a ninety-degree angle, rigid as iron.
“What… what is this sorcery?!” he roared, his voice muffled by his helm. “You… you damned serf! Unhand me!”
Ignat merely stood there, a faint, savage smile playing on his lips. “It is mended, sir. Without flaw.”
[Wager complete. Echoes of the Forge gained: 1. Soul Rust averted. Current Echoes: 3. Next wager: Life-or-Death confrontation. Failure will result in immediate Soul Rust.]
***
The Sentinels escorted Valdis to a bare, shadowed corridor, presumably waiting for Sir Roric’s armor to be pried apart. A few students, too curious or too bold, lingered, their murmurs trailing his heels.
“The Mend-Smith actually did it,” one murmured. “Sir Roric looked like a gargoyle.”
Then a different presence entered the corridor. A woman. She wore robes the color of ash, her face obscured by a hood. She carried a gnarled staff, tapping it rhythmically on the stone floor. Her eyes, or where they should have been, were covered by a blindfold of rough linen. Vesna, the Elder of the Ash-Seers.
She stopped a few paces from him, her head tilted, as if listening to the echoes in the air. The lingering students melted away, unwilling to cross the eerie elder.
“Ignat,” she said, her voice a dry rasp, like rustling leaves. “Or should I call you Valdis?”
Ignat froze. No one knew. How could she know?
“Do not look so surprised. The city has many eyes, and the Ash-Seers have… deeper senses.” Her sightless gaze seemed to pierce through the linen, through the stone, directly into him. “The Crucible Weaver does not merely take souls; it leaves a mark. A unique resonance.”
She took a step closer. “Your old body is cold in the earth, devoured by the Gloom. Your new one, a Mend-Smith’s shell, is fragile. But you, Ignat, are a storm. And storms can be guided.”
“What do you want?” he demanded, his voice rough. The Soul Rust was still a dull ache, a creeping cold that made his fingers tingle.
“An alliance,” she replied. “Ostromar is a festering wound. The elites, those combat-lords you so despise, are preparing a purge. A grand spectacle, they call it. The ‘Cleansing of the Low-Reach.’ To test a new weapon during the upcoming tournament.”
Ignat’s stomach clenched. His crew. The Low-Reach was their home.
“They will declare it a necessary defense against the Gloom, a culling of the ‘undesirables.’ But it is a massacre, Ignat. A blood sacrifice to their ambition.” She extended a hand. In her palm lay a small, tarnished copper token. It was bent, scarred with a fresh, dark stain. A child’s toy. A crude, carved owl that Ignat recognized instantly. It belonged to Wren, the youngest of his crew, barely eight years old.
The blood on it was still wet.
“The massacre has already begun,” Vesna whispered. “Your wager, Ignat. It is no longer just your soul.”
The rage ignited, a searing inferno that threatened to consume him. This time, it wasn’t blind. It was focused, honed to a razor’s edge.
***
The academy kitchens reeked of stale grease and boiled cabbage. Ignat, directed there to select a ‘regulation support-tool’ for the trials, walked past rows of gleaming knives and polished ladles. The young aristocrats who had trailed him broke into snorts. “Looking for a bread knife, Valdis?” the Forgemaster's son called out.
His eyes scanned the shelves, past the pristine utensils, until they landed on a neglected corner. There, beneath oxidized kettles, lay a cast-iron skillet. It was ancient and thick-bottomed, its lip pitted with grease scale, the short handle dense enough to crush bone or absorb a reservoir of brute momentum.
He picked it up. The balance settled hard and true against his palm.
“This one,” he declared, holding it aloft. “This is my weapon.”
Silence hung for a heartbeat before braying erupted. The Forgemaster's heir doubled over. “A *skillet*?! You’re going to mend your enemies to death with cookware?!”
Ignat ignored them, the heavy iron steady in his grip. He looked at Vesna, who had silently appeared in the doorway, her blindfold fixed on him. Her hand, hidden beneath her ash robe, made a subtle gesture. An almost imperceptible shift, pointing towards his left arm. The Soul Rust was spreading, a faint metallic sheen visible beneath his skin, the chilling numbness now reaching his elbow. He had to gamble. He had to win.
He turned, the iron swinging low. The blade of the Crucible Weaver was sharp, but the massacre of the Low-Reach had already begun, and Wren’s bloody token was proof. He would shatter this city before he let them take another one of his own.