When they entered the bowels of the forge, the heat of the geothermal springs enveloped them like a damp blanket. The air here vibrated not only with the heat from the smoldering furnace but also with something else—a low, steady humming of the earth. They found Master Hlyn sitting on a low stool by a massive anvil, clutching a heavy forged wrench in his hand. There wasn't a trace of panic on his face; rather, a deep, weary peace was inscribed there. He only gave a slight shake of his head when he saw the newcomers.
"That old grit again," Hlyn muttered in a hoarse voice that resembled the rubbing of two rocks together. "In recent months, more and more of them have been wandering here. They come from the south, they feel the geothermal heat, and they think it's their lost home. Poor souls... searching for relief where they'll find only another fire."
Pollux walked up to him and placed a leather pouch containing the components from Kyrios onto the workbench, which was buried under sketches and metal filings. The clinking of precious metals momentarily cut through the humming of the forge.
"Something extra as well, Master. And your entrance is going to need a proper repair," Pollux noted, wiping the remnants of black liquid from his sleeve. "That mutant had a strength it could no longer carry."
Hlyn took off his thick glasses and fixed his single, piercing eye on Pollux. His other eye was covered by a leather patch, from beneath which fine, silver scars extended. "You have no malice in you, boy. That is good. If you ever want to truly master that thing on your side, you must not carry anger within you. Anger is like low-quality fuel. You need only cold, geometric precision. And you have more of it in you than is natural for your age."
The old armorer reached out and, with unexpected gentleness, took Pollux's pistol into his hands. He felt it. Pollux saw it in his fingers—they didn't just stroke the metal, they searched for its internal tension. Hlyn touched the weapon with such deep reverence, as if he were holding a fragile living being made of glass in his hands.
"This thing has a voice," Hlyn said quietly, almost in a whisper, and pressed the weapon to his ear as if listening to its internal ticking. "It's not the thunder of today's weapons. It's the voice of a lost era. A voice calling for its true master."
At that moment, a memory of a woman with red hair flashed through Pollux's mind. "And if you listen to it patiently enough, you will begin to understand it. Not with your ears, Pollux, but with that rhythm you have in your bones."
Hlyn looked at the pensive Pollux and suddenly smiled, revealing a missing tooth, and his face lit up with a strange spark. "Alright, lads. Sit down; there's still the rest of the tea over there by the hearth. Orion, tell me about those letters from the valley—are the paths still passable, or has the world outside gone completely mad? And you, Pollux... you will help me. We'll have to breathe a soul into these bullets. It requires a precise touch that your fingers know."
Master Hlyn's forge was a different world at night. The heat from the geothermal shafts, which Hlyn used for melting and powering his machines, mixed with the heavy scent of burnt oil and fine metal dust from the grinding wheels. Orion fell asleep on a pile of old, worn furs in the corner of the workshop, completely exhausted after the fight with the mutant. His well-built body, wrapped in furs on that pile, looked like a large sack with black horns. In the room, only the regular breathing of the two men and the fine, rhythmic clinking of tools remained.
"Sit down," Hlyn gestured to a low stool by a massive workbench where a single oil lamp flickered. Its flame cast long, dancing shadows against the cave walls. "That thing of yours... the creators of the old times didn't make it to be taken apart in a cave in the middle of the mountains. It's precision work. Every spring, every notch has a purpose that today's steel has long since forgotten."
Pollux carefully placed his black pistol on the table. Beside it, he emptied the leather pouch of components he had brought from Kyrios. Small brass cylinders, bits of pure copper, and several grams of the highest quality gunpowder rolled onto the wood, its grains glinting like black sand in the lamplight.
"Hlyn," Pollux began quietly, watching the old man lean over the weapon, "why are you doing this? Why help someone who brought death to your home and a weapon that others fear so much?"
The old armorer put on his thick-lensed glasses and carefully took one of the copper plates into his wrinkled hands. "Because metal doesn't lie, boy. People do. But metal... it tells you exactly what state it's in, if you know how to listen. And your hand, Pollux... you touch it as if you're asking it for forgiveness. I haven't seen that in anyone else. You have a relationship with it that transcends the craft."
The following hours turned into a lesson in perception and infinite patience. Hlyn did not work fast. He used an old, precise reloading press connected via a system of belts to the quiet, steady hissing of a geothermal piston deep in the floor. Pollux didn't just sit as an observer; his task was to "hear" the metal before it yielded to the pressure.
"Close your eyes," Hlyn commanded, his hand in a thick leather glove pausing on the lever of the press. "Don't look at what the machine looks like. Feel what it's doing to that brass. Become the die."
Pollux obeyed. He placed his fingertips on the cold steel base of the press, right next to the die into which a new casing was being pressed under immense pressure.
"Now," Hlyn muttered and slowly, with feeling, pushed down on the lever.
Pollux's mechanical empathy reacted instantly. In his dark mind, an image of the metal's structure lit up. He felt the brass molecules shifting under the pressure, the material stretching and conforming to the calibrated mold. It wasn't just movement; it was pure tension, perceived in his fingertips like an electric current. He saw the walls of the casing thinning and its base forming into a precise groove.
"Stop!" Pollux cried out suddenly.
Hlyn froze immediately and halted the movement. The piston hissed, and the pressure in the press ceased.
"What did you feel?" the armorer asked, the tension in his voice almost tangible.
"There's a micro-crack in the material," Pollux whispered and slowly opened his eyes. He took the casing in his hand, though it was still hot from the friction and almost burned his skin. "About two-thirds of the way up. The brass is too brittle there; the structure is tearing. If we filled it with powder, the chamber would burst right in your hands during a shot."
Hlyn took a magnifying glass, examined the casing for a long time under the direct light of the lamp, and finally grunted appreciatively. "That strange perception of yours gives you a sense that presses don't have. You feel the fatigue of the metal before the eye sees it. Set that piece aside. We'll try another. This time, you will dose the powder. I need you to feel with your hand when there are exactly enough grains so that the pressure in the chamber remains safe."
Pollux concentrated again. Now it was no longer just work; it was a communication with a thing that would soon speak with his voice.
As Pollux filed the metal of the casings, the rhythmic, metallic sound of the file suddenly triggered a sharp flash in his head. It wasn't Alina. It was another memory, buried deep under layers of snow and trauma.
He saw the color red. Not blood, but wild, fiery hair. A woman leaning her face toward him, yet her features remained blurred, as if seen through thick glass. He smelled something burning—ozone and hot steel. He felt the touch of cold metal on his skin—the exact same metal he was holding in his hand now.
"It is your wing," the voice whispered in his mind, deep and sad. "Your last chance to be free."
His hand jerked violently. The file slipped across the table with a sharp, unpleasant screeching sound that cut through the silence of the forge.
"Are you alright?" Hlyn fixed his single eye on him, full of unspoken questions.
Pollux quickly wiped cold sweat from his forehead and tried to calm his racing heart. "Just... just fatigue, Master. Nothing the frost won't fix. Let's continue."
The return to the Kyrios clan's estate was not a victory march. Pollux walked mechanically, his feet sinking into the deep snow, and every step hurt. His body was exhausted by the energy discharge that had surged through his nervous system like lightning during that single shot. In his head, the resonance still echoed, causing a sharp pain that showed no sign of leaving. Orion wasn't joking this time. He walked right beside him, alert and quiet, ready to catch him if his knees buckled. He constantly scanned the surrounding mountain ridges, as if expecting that the shot, which had vibrated the very bones of the valley, would call forth shadows from Pollux's past.
When they finally passed through the gate and entered the main hall, the silence that greeted them was different from the morning. The air was charged with unspoken questions. Kyrios stood by a large window, hands behind his back, watching the thickening snow, while Filopsis sat at the long table, intently leafing through an old, worn manuscript.
Pollux lowered himself onto a bench. He sat hunched over, hands resting on the thick, cold wood of the table. His palms trembled slightly, and the amber light in his eyes, though fading, still pulsed in the rhythm of the dying discharge from the weapon.
Kyrios walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. It was a firm grip that momentarily anchored Pollux in reality.
"It changed you," Kyrios noted quietly, observing the boy's face. "That sound... it wasn't just a shot. It was as if something that doesn't belong in this world woke up in the forest. Something that was placed here by force."
Pollux raised his head. In his eyes were still those fragments of a white corridor and the figure with red hair, but they were blurred, elusive as smoke in a draft.
"It brought images, sir. But I don't understand them. They are like an image engraved into my head that I cannot remember."
He reached into the inner pocket of his coat. There was a small, oxidized piece of metal on a broken chain, which he had with him even back when Alina found him in the snow. He had never attached importance to it; he considered it a piece of junk, another broken component of his lost existence. Until now.
He placed it on the table. It was scorched, the letters on it almost illegible, covered with a layer of old dirt and dried blood. Filopsis leaned closer but did not touch it.
"These are tags. They aren't just military markings. It's industrial stamping. This isn't Skeldar; this is from the South, it's human. I've seen similar ones on men who carry weapons. But different from yours."
Pollux tried to clean the surface of the metal with his finger. Beneath his skin, his mechanical empathy began to map out the shapes of the engraved letters that the eye could not yet see. He felt the cuts of the machine that had stamped that name into the cold steel.
"A... E... T..." Pollux whispered until the first words connected in his head. "Aethel Biotech. That's what's written there. And underneath..."
He stopped. He felt the grooves that formed the name. A name that, despite the fact that he knew it, triggered a strange, metallic cold inside him.
"Pollux," he read aloud. "Is it my name? Or the name of someone I killed to get this weapon?"
Kyrios looked at the tags and then at the boy holding them. "I cannot answer you, boy. When Alina brought you, you had nothing with you that made sense. You were just a living wreck. If this is your name, then your past comes from a place where steel is valued more than life."
"Aethel Biotech," repeated Orion, who stood a short distance away and for the first time looked truly concerned. "I've heard of them from traders at the borders. They are mercenaries. Hunters. If you belong to them, Pollux... why did you end up half-dead in our snow?"
"That is what I must find out," Pollux said, his voice now firmer. "Those tags, that weapon... When I fired, something echoed in my head that sounded like a warning. I don't know if I'm safe here."
Kyrios nodded. "Filopsis will help you analyze those tags. Perhaps we can read more from them about which division used them. But you won't find answers as to why you are here in Skeldar. Here, you will only find time to prepare."
Filopsis took the dog tag in tweezers and observed it over the flame of an oil lamp. He watched as the heat pulled shadows from the stamped letters.
"Aethel Biotech," Filopsis read, and in his voice was not admiration, but rather academic interest. "I've heard the name, but this..." he pointed to the bottom line, "...this makes no sense to me."
Pollux leaned closer. 00001.
"In Skeldar, we give names according to lineages, according to mountains, or according to merits," Filopsis continued and placed the tag on the table. The sound of metal on wood was short and dull. "In the South, humans supposedly number everything. Sacks of grain, machines in factories. The fact that someone stamped a number onto a piece of sheet metal and hung it around your neck means only one thing. You were an inventory item to them. And this number... is too low for you to be just a rank-and-file soldier."
Kyrios, who stood by the window with his hands behind his back, slowly turned. In his face was no calculation, but deep contempt. "They branded you like a head of cattle, Pollux, even though you were just a child. That is the way humans look at the world. Everything can be quantified, everything can be owned. To them, you were a 'unit'. Maybe the first in some warehouse, maybe the first they entered into the book that day."
"Humans? Who is that? What if I am one of them? We all know I don't belong here. I am not Banshee. I am different from you!" Pollux raised his voice. The air in the hall moved. A wind that shouldn't have been present lifted small particles of dust from the floor and swirled them in a vortex around the boy. The fire in the hearth remained restless, as did the eyes of the figures watching what was happening in the room.
"You are not Banshee, boy, but you are not human either. If you were, none of us would have accepted you. You are someone who might not fit into Skeldar, but you belong on Velthar more than the humans who came here to plunder," Kyrios replied without turning around. In the hall, silence remained for a moment, letting the crackling of the fire fill the entire space.
Pollux took the tag back. He felt its edges. "Aethel Biotech," Pollux repeated after a while. The word tasted like cold iron in his mouth. "If I was their property, then I escaped them. And that number... maybe that's why those dreams hurt."
"Maybe," Kyrios admitted. "But here in Skeldar, no one cares about your number. To Fenryr, you are a student; to Orion, a brother. And to me... you are someone who proved that even the strongest chain of a corporation is not firm enough if someone has the will to break it. Throw it away. That metal defines what you were, not what you are now."
Pollux gripped the tags firmly in his palm. The sharp edges of the metal dug into his skin and triggered a pain that, at least for a moment, freed him from the humming in his head.
In the evening, when the hall grew quiet, Pollux did not sleep. He sat by the small window in his room and, using a fine cloth and oil, cleaned those dog tags. He did it with the same precision with which Hlyn made bullets.
AETHEL BIOTECH. P.O.L.L.U.X. 00001.
These words became his new world. He realized that his life in Skeldar was just a breath before a long leap into the darkness. He looked at the snowy peaks of the mountains and for the first time felt that the home he had found here, he would soon have to protect from himself.