After about seven months of silence from the mountain, the whispers amongst the villagers started going around when Mark stopped coming to the square for meals. The villagers were prone to gossip, usually, but the whispers were becoming worrisome. They were worried about the mountain, and they were also worried about their blacksmith.
The caravans continued to come and deliver goods while mingling with the villagers, but they could sense the tense atmosphere. The villagers were just glad they didn't need their absent blacksmith with any more guards.
The village chief started pulling the caravan leaders to the side to ask them to keep their men under control due to the incident they had experienced before. They were all too happy to keep their guys in line.
The orders were completed on time, but Anabel stopped letting people come to the smithy. She would personally deliver anything mended or created by Mark to the village square for villagers and caravan guards alike.
Annabel brought food to the forge every evening. Bread from her father's oven was paired with the stew from the communal pot, and she always included some of the strips of dried monster meat that Mark kept in a jar by the door. She would set the plate on the workbench, kiss him on the cheek, and leave.
Most nights, she came back in the morning to find the plate untouched.
However, the monster meat was always gone. So she had her father create more of the dried meat for Mark and started giving him a double portion of the jerky.
At the forge, Mark stood at the anvil, hammer in hand, eyes locked on the midnight blade. He heated it in the coals until the forge glowed hot enough to make the air ripple.
The elder wood walls around him absorbed the heat, drinking it in, holding it close. Sweat rolled down his back and soaked his shirt before it dripped onto the stone floor.
He did not notice.
Strike.
The blade rang under the hammer. He added a sliver of alloy, working it into a groove he had carved along the spine. The metal should have folded in and merged. It should have become part of the whole.
It cracked instead.
Mark set down the hammer and reached for the carving tool. He worked the failed alloy out, piece by piece, then spent the next three hours hammering the blade back into shape with the third and fourth steps.
When he was done, it was dawn.
Annabel came by with fresh bread and monster meat.
He was already heating the blade again.
She just left the food and said nothing.
By the end of the month, the guards at the gates who could hear the constant ringing of the anvil had started taking bets on how long it would be before Mark collapsed.
No one bet on him lasting past winter.
Up in the elder tree, the young man watched. His eyes lingered on the forge, on the glow spilling out through the cracks in the door, on the heat that pooled in the elder wood walls and radiated back in waves of energy that no one else could see.
He smiled, and the weird elder bird cooed.
The blacksmith was feeding the fire with more than charcoal. And Mark was absorbing more than just heat. That strange core-like spot in his solar plexus glowed in resonance with that energy.
And then the eighth month of silence upon the mountain was causing the villagers to become more and more nervous. The caravans stopped showing up since trade was difficult with the superstitious villagers. They preferred to stay inside when they could.
Mark did not remember eating, but the jar of dried meat by the forge kept emptying.
He would reach for it between heats, chewing without tasting, swallowing without thought. The meat was dense and heavy with something his body craved. It settled in his stomach like fuel in a furnace, burning slowly to give him the strength to lift the hammer one more time.
The heat in the forge climbed.
He didn't open the door as often anymore. The air inside thickened, pressed down on him, but his lungs kept pulling it in. His skin, which used to redden and blister after long hours near the coals, had toughened. The burns from last month had healed without scars. The new ones didn't even rise as blisters anymore.
He did not think about it.
He thought about the blade.
The sword sat on the black iron anvil, waiting. Every time he struck it, every time he tried to fold the alloy in, the anvil beneath it seemed to hum.
It was something he felt in his bones rather than a sound in his ears. A low, steady pulse that matched the rhythm of his hammer.
Strike.
The alloy resisted.
Strike.
The crack spread.
He carved it out, then hammered it smooth and started again.
Annabel came less often now. When she did, she stood in the doorway and watched him work. She did not ask him to stop or come home.
She just looked at him with something that might have been sadness or worry. She might have even had a shadow of resignation in her eyes.
Then she left.
One evening, Phill stopped by. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching Mark heat the blade for what must have been the hundredth time that week.
"You know the village is talking, right?" Phill said.
Mark didn't look up; he just kept working the forge as he replied absent-mindedly. "About what?"
"About you. About how the spooky blacksmith hasn't left this place in weeks. About how you look, you haven't slept in just as long. And, I would mention a bath, but this place just smells like a forge should, so I guess you've been bathing at least."
"I sleep," Mark said.
"When?"
Mark paused, hammer halfway to the anvil. He tried to remember the last time he had lain down, closed his eyes, and drifted off.
He couldn't remember.
"I sleep," he said again with less conviction.
Phill shook his head. "You are scaring people, Mark. And she won't admit to it but my sister is freaked out as well. She paces at the bakery and visits less and less as she manages the work orders for you more and more."
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine, Mark. You look like a man who's forgotten what fine is. Don't let this single-minded obsession completely take over. What happens if a growth finally hits the village and we need your help again?"
Mark set the blade down and finally turned to face his brother-in-law. Phill took a step back. His brother-in-law wasn't trying to intimidate him, but his haggard, emotionless stare was a bit much to look up at when Mark stood straight up.
Mark did not understand why until he saw his own reflection in the water barrel next to his work station.
His eyes were different. They looked brighter, and the colors were sharper for some reason. The whites had taken on a faint, almost imperceptible glow, like embers buried under ash. They seemed to give off a sort of pressure which must have been intimidating to Phill.
He looked back at the blade.
It didn't matter.
Phill left without another word.
Up in the elder tree, the young man leaned forward, studying the forge with interest. The heat radiating from the structure had changed. It no longer spilled outward. It circled back, drawn in by the elder wood, further refined, and pushed toward the center.
Toward the anvil.
Toward the man who stood there, hammering away, unaware that he was drinking in something far more potent than heat.
The young man's smile widened.
The blacksmith was close.
And, soon, the ninth month of silence from the mountain was upon the village.
Mark stopped pretending to sleep.
There was no point. Every time he tried to lie down, his body refused. His mind stayed sharp, his muscles tight and ready. The exhaustion that should have crushed him after sixteen-hour days at the forge simply did not come.
He seemed to gain more energy from forging than he did from sleeping.
So, he worked through the night instead.
The forge became his world. The walls, blackened and slick with condensation, held the heat in a way that should not have been possible. The air inside pressed against him, thick and alive, but he moved through it without strain. His lungs pulled it in, and something in his chest turned it into fuel.
He did not eat the bread anymore. Just the meat. That's all he needed anymore.
Strips of dried Warg. Chunks of smoked Unikuma. Tough, chewy jerky from the chimeric panthers and boars. He tore into it with his teeth, chewed it down, and felt the strength settle into his muscles like molten iron poured into a mold.
His body was changing. He could see now that he was gaining more from the monster meat than from regular food ever had provided. Just like the forge and the anvil.
His arms, already thick from years of forge work, grew harder. The veins stood out in sharp relief, pulsing with each swing of the hammer. His hands, calloused and scarred, no longer blistered even when he gripped red-hot tongs for too long.
His shoulders widened even further than his blacksmith physique had been, while his chest deepened with sinewy muscles that rippled along his apron.
He was becoming something else.
But he did not notice.
All he saw was the blade.
The midnight sword lay on the black iron anvil, glowing faintly even when it was not in the coals. He heated it again, prepared the alloy again, and carved the groove again.
Strike.
The crack came slower this time. Three strikes instead of one. Progress.
He carved it out and started over.
Strike.
Five strikes.
Again.
Strike.
Eight.
The blade was learning. Or he was. He could not tell which.
The rhythm of his work became everything. Lift the hammer. Bring it down. Feel the impact travel up his arm, through his shoulder, into his spine, down into the stone floor and the anvil beneath.
The anvil answered.
It was subtle at first. A faint vibration with a warmth that had nothing to do with the forge. But as the days bled into each other, and Mark stopped counting hours and started counting strikes, the connection deepened.
The black iron drank in the heat from the elder wood walls. It drank in the force of his hammer. It drank in something else, something Mark couldn't name, and fed it into the blade.
The sword was still rejecting the Fifth Step.
But it was rejecting it less.
Annabel came to the forge one last time that month.
She stood in the doorway, arms wrapped around herself, and watched him work. He didn't look up. The hammer rose and fell. The blade glowed. The air shimmered.
"Mark."
He didn't answer.
"Mark, please."
Strike.
"I don't know what you are doing," she said quietly. "I don't know what this sword is, or why it matters so much, or what you think it is going to do. But I know you're losing yourself to it."
Strike.
"I love you. I need you to know that. I love you, and I'm terrified that when this is over, there will not be anything left of you to love."
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Mark's hand hesitated, just for a moment, the hammer hovering above the blade.
Then he brought it down.
Annabel turned and walked away.
He did not call after her.
The hammer rose and fell.
By the end of the month, Mark had not left the forge in three weeks. His shirt was stiff with dried sweat and ash. His hair hung loose and unkempt, and his beard had grown out.
His eyes burned.
He stood at the anvil, the blade glowing on the black iron, and felt something shift.
Not in the blade.
In him.
His breath came in deep streams, each inhale pulling in the thick, heated air. But it was not just air anymore. It was something denser, richer, alive with an energy he could not name but his body recognized.
It pooled in his chest, just below his ribs, in a place he had never thought about before. A knot of warmth that pulsed in time with his hammer.
He did not stop to think about it.
He struck the blade.
The alloy slid in. One strike. Two. Three.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty strikes, and the crack didn't come.
Mark stopped, breathing hard, staring at the blade.
It had held.
Not perfectly. The alloy had not fully merged. But it hadn't shattered. It hadn't warped.
It had held.
He set the hammer down and gripped the edge of the anvil.
His hands were shaking.
Not from exhaustion.
From something else.
Outside, the village prepared for the worst. Guards drilled at the gates. Families stockpiled food. Hunters brought in the last of the game before the freeze set in.
Inside the forge, Mark lifted the blade and stared at it.
He was close.
So close.
Up in the elder tree, the young man stood and stretched. His eyes never left the forge.
The blacksmith had stopped sleeping three nights ago.
He had not noticed.
He would not notice for weeks.
By then, it wouldn't matter.
The young man turned his gaze toward the valley beyond the village, toward the distant mountain that loomed in the dark.
It was waking up.
And so was the blacksmith.