Days bled into each other. Dawn — coals in the forge, cold water from the well, the creak of the hand pump. Sorting iron. Hauling coal in sacks that burned his shoulders raw by evening. Working the bellows — a mindless push and pull that numbed his arms and filled his ears with a low, constant roar. He didn't complain. Didn't feel the tiredness as anything more than a physical fact, like the cold floor under his bare feet. Same stew. Same sheepskins. His hands grew new calluses on top of old ones he didn't remember earning. His fingers learned to tell good steel from slag by weight and sound. He listened to Hollen's grumbling and to the occasional villager who came in to fix an axe or shoe a horse. His thoughts were as simple and circular as the work. Coal is heavy. Water is cold. Stew is salty. Night is dark. Sometimes, watching Hollen pull a glowing strip from the forge, he'd think: Why bend it? So it can become a different piece of iron. Why? No answer. The world was made of actions without higher purpose. Eat to work. Work to eat. Sleep to do it again. There wasn't even sadness in the emptiness. Just a statement of fact. * * * On the fifth day, late in the afternoon, noise broke the routine. Not the usual village sounds — something else. Metal clinking in a way that had nothing to do with the smithy. Loud, confident voices. Laughter. Hollen set down his tongs. "Adventurers. Or mercs. Damn." He looked less scared than annoyed, the way a man looks at a storm he can see coming but can't avoid. They stepped to the doorway. Three riders came down the muddy street. Two men in worn but well-made leather armor, swords on their hips. Between them — a woman. No armor. A long cloak, deep blue, almost black in the shade. A clean, simple tunic underneath. Dark hair pulled back into a practical knot. Calm face, high cheekbones, eyes that looked straight ahead and didn't bother with the mud or the staring villagers. But that wasn't what caught his attention. It was the feeling. A faint, barely-there pressure, like the air before a thunderstorm, without the smell. It came from her. The red-bearded one called out to the village elder. "Looking for a guide to Black Stone Pass. And supplies. We'll pay silver." The elder scrambled. The riders dismounted. The village held its breath and watched. Children gawked at the weapons. Adults calculated. The woman — a mage, he knew, though he couldn't remember learning how he knew — stepped off her horse with an ease that made the movement look like nothing. She didn't join the bargaining. Her gaze swept the rooftops, the river, the treeline. Then the smithy. For a moment, her eyes met his. No interest. No contempt. Just appraisal. The way you note a fence post. She looked away. The red-bearded one was showing off. He drew his sword for a cluster of boys. "Ever seen steel quenched in mountain troll blood? Ivory handle from the south!" He swung it in a wide arc, grinning. A local — half-drunk since noon — smirked. "Fancy stick! My granddad hammered nails with those!" He stepped forward, puffing out his chest. The mage, without changing expression, turned her palm toward him. No word. No gesture beyond that small rotation of the hand. Just intent. The air between her and the man compressed. Invisible force, quiet and absolute, drove him to his knees in the mud. His face went white — shock, airlessness. The pressure lasted one second. Then it was gone. She lowered her hand. Silence. The grinning had stopped. The red-beard sheathed his sword, clearing his throat. The elder stuttered something about a guide and hurried the guests toward the tavern. Hollen, standing next to him, exhaled through his teeth. "See that. Magic. Not a joke. Not muscle, not sharp steel. Just… will. And knowledge." His voice carried equal parts disgust and deep respect. "They're a different breed. Higher rank. You don't argue with them." He watched the mage follow her companions without glancing back at the man now shakily climbing out of the mud. There'd been no malice in what she did. No effort, even. The way you brush away a fly. Naturally. As it should be. And in that moment, looking at her back in the blue cloak, a thought formed. Quiet and clear. Not a hope. Not a dream. A statement, as plain as "coal is heavy." I can do that too. It came without images, without memories. Not "I want to learn this." But — "I can." Like looking at the hammer and knowing you're able to lift it. A deep, internal certainty, surfacing from the same emptiness where his past used to be. And right behind that thought, cold as river water, came a wave of raw, animal bewilderment. Why? How do I know that? What inside me can do that? Who am I, that my forgotten self is certain it can crush air with a thought? He stood there, covered in soot and sweat, callused hands, barefoot, wearing a smith's apprentice rags. And inside him echoed an order, issued by whoever he'd been before. An echo of ability that frightened him more than any unknown danger. He looked at his hands. The same ones that had hauled coal. They weren't shaking. But everything inside was upside down. Hollen shoved his shoulder. "Stop standing there like a post. Show's over. Come on, the furnace needs stoking." He turned and walked back into the hot, familiar gut of the smithy. But now the familiar place felt different. It wasn't just shelter. It was a mask. A cage for whatever was hiding inside him. And the question "Why?" had a new edge to it. Sharp. Frightening. Why do I know this? And what happens if I try? * * * He went back to work. Coal, iron, water. But now a new note threaded through the monotony. The thought — I can do that too — wouldn't leave. It sat in the back of his mind like an unanswered question that itches even when you're not thinking about it directly. The first attempts weren't attempts at all. More like involuntary reactions. Two days after the adventurers, he was hauling fine, dusty coal. The dust crawled into his nose, his mouth, stung his eyes. He squinted, turned away, but the work needed doing. And when another cloud of black powder rose straight into his face, his left hand — not holding the sack — made a short, sharp movement on its own. A flick from the wrist, fingers spreading slightly, as if pushing something away. He didn't think about it. It was reflex, like swatting a fly. But the air in front of his face flinched. A small, barely noticeable push, like a breeze born not from outside but right here. The dust recoiled for a moment, scattered, then settled back. He froze, the coal sack half-lowered. He stared at his left hand. Nothing special. Just a dirty hand. What was that? He tried to repeat it. Deliberately. Same flick. Nothing. The air stayed still. Dust hung in place. He frowned. Not disappointment — more like clinical interest. As if a door that always opened was suddenly locked, and he needed to find a different key. Mechanics. Hollen talked about mechanics all day. To bend iron, you heat it in the right spot, strike at the right angle, cool it in the right sequence. Random hammering is waste. Everything has an order. The mage in the blue cloak hadn't just wanted the man pressed to the ground. She did something. Something specific. A gesture? A word? A thought shaped a certain way? That evening, putting away the sorted iron, he stopped in front of a pile of small scraps that needed moving to the corner. Tedious work — bending down for every piece. Laziness. Simple, physical laziness of a tired body. His hand moved on its own again. But different this time. Not pushing — gathering. The fingers of his right hand folded into a strange, unnatural shape: index and middle fingers extended, the rest curled under, palm turned up. And mentally, soundlessly, a short, precise sequence of syllables flashed through. Not a word in any language he knew. More like a combination of sounds with weight and shape. "An-tel." Nothing happened. The iron stayed on the floor. He felt a brief, almost instant void in his head — like standing up too fast. And a strange tension in his folded fingers that vanished immediately. He opened his hand, stared at it. The gesture and the sound had come from somewhere deep, like the knowledge of how to breathe. He hadn't invented them. He'd remembered them. But only the form, not the content. Like finding a key without knowing which door it fits. The next day, he experimented more carefully. In secret, when Hollen left for the village or was absorbed in forging. He tried to reproduce the gesture and the mental sound. Nine times out of ten — nothing. Sometimes — only a faint, useless push of air that wouldn't even shift a dust mote. But once, frustrated, trying to blow sweat off his forehead, the combination of a different gesture — two fingers drawn away from his temple — and a new inner sound, "Ven" — worked slightly stronger. A weak but directed current of air whispered past his temple, carrying the drop of sweat with it. The success was microscopic. Useless in any practical sense. But it was real. It didn't make him happy. It made him uneasy. Where do I know these gestures? These sounds? He hadn't learned them here, in the smithy. They lived in him, in the muscle memory of his fingers and in some dark corner of his mind where the discarded scraps of his past were stored. Magic, it seemed, was not a force of pure will. It was a skill. Strict, precise, demanding specific actions. Like forging. Only the tools weren't hammer and anvil — they were his own body and mind. And that skill, apparently, he had. Broken, rusted, like the iron in the corner of the smithy. But it was there. One afternoon, Hollen was deep in a tricky sword quench, demanding perfectly even temperature in the forge. The hero stood at the bellows. The heat was unbearable. The air shimmered. Hollen barked: "Steadier! Blow it even, damn you! Smooth!" He tried to level the rhythm, but his tired arms were shaking. Heat hammered his face. And in that moment — almost from desperation — his left hand, resting on the bellows lever, made a tiny circular motion with the thumb. And in his mind: "Star-en." He wasn't trying to move anything or create anything. He wanted… stability. For the heat to stop lurching so wildly. Something strange happened. The cloud of heat and light in front of the forge didn't die down, but its flickering, its chaotic flames, seemed to slow. Grew a fraction more predictable, a fraction more dense. For just a second. No more. Hollen, eyes locked on the blade, muttered: "Better. Hold that rhythm." He didn't notice. He attributed it to the apprentice finding his groove. And the hero stood there, feeling a light, pleasant emptiness in his chest — like after a deep exhale — staring at his own thumb. That gesture, that sound… they had done something. Not to the fire directly, but to the air around it? To its movement? He didn't understand. But the fact remained: there was knowledge inside him. Knowledge that operated by strict, unknown rules. Knowledge that frightened him with how alien it felt, and at the same time pulled at him with its potential usefulness. Why did he have this? Who had he been, to know such things? Was he like the woman in the blue cloak? Or something… else? He looked at his working hands again. At the soot packed under his nails. On the outside — an apprentice. On the inside — a hidden mechanism, its key lost. And now he was fumbling for it in the dark, afraid of opening the wrong door.

Chapter 2: Sparks