Kalen jerked awake, a silent scream locked in his throat. The three-spiral pattern still burned behind his eyelids, its blue-silver light searing into his consciousness like a brand. His heart hammered against his ribs as if trying to escape, and the thin cotton of his shirt clung to his sweat-slick skin. The patterns again—but this time, they weren't just images. They had reached for him, had tried to pull him through to somewhere else.
His hands trembled as he lit the small oil lamp, fingers fumbling with the flint. Water splashed over the basin's edge as he doused his face, desperate to wash away the lingering sensation of the dream. In the mirror, his dark hair fell across his forehead in unruly waves, framing eyes that made him flinch—startling Frost blue irises now ringed with silver, almost unnaturally vivid, like mountain ice under clear skies. This morning, they seemed to emit their own faint luminescence in the dim light. Not a trick of the lamp flame, he knew, though he'd been telling himself that lie for months. The same unnerving phenomenon had been happening with increasing frequency, a hereditary trait that had always marked the Frost family lineage, but never quite like this—never so intense.
He dressed quickly—sturdy canvas pants, linen shirt bearing countless small burns from forge sparks, leather apron. His hands, calloused and strong from years of apprenticeship, moved with efficient precision that masked his inner unease. The patterns were becoming clearer, more insistent, almost hungry—as if trying to convey a message he wasn't equipped to understand. As if they were running out of time.
Downstairs, he ate a simple breakfast while his thoughts circled back to the dreams. When he'd mentioned them to Gareth months ago, his master's face had drained of color before he'd abruptly changed the subject. That reaction alone confirmed what Kalen had long suspected—these weren't ordinary dreams. They were something Gareth recognized. Something that frightened him.
As he passed the village square, Kalen stopped short, ice flooding his veins. There on the side of the well—a boundary marker scratched into the stone, the lines cut deep and deliberate. Three interlocking circles with a line bisecting them, the edges still dust-fresh. The mark pulsed once in his vision, as if acknowledging his presence, then settled back into inert stone. It was unnervingly similar to the three-spiral pattern from his dream, though distinctly different in its rigid geometry. Kalen glanced around wildly, but villagers passed by without so much as a glance, as if the symbol were invisible to anyone but him.
His fingertips tingled with the urge to touch it. Would it feel cold? Would it recognize him somehow? He reached out—
"Morning, Kalen!" called Tomas, the baker's son, as he carried a tray of fresh loaves toward the market square. "Still beating the sun, I see!"
"Someone has to," Kalen replied with a small smile. Though close in age, he and Tomas had always lived in different worlds—Tomas with his easy charm and circle of friends, Kalen with his solitary focus on his craft. Still, there was a mutual respect between them, craftsman to craftsman.
"Will you join us for the Midsummer bonfire next week?" Tomas asked. "Mira was asking if you'd be there." He grinned suggestively.
Kalen felt a momentary pang. The village celebrations always made him acutely aware of the difference between himself and the others his age. While they paired off and planned their futures in Emberfall, he felt... elsewhere, as though his path would lead somewhere beyond these familiar mountains.
"Maybe," he answered noncommittally. "We have an order to complete for the garrison at Westwatch."
Tomas shook his head. "All work and no play, as always. The offer stands."
Kalen nodded his thanks and continued toward the smithy. Smoke already rose from its chimney, telling him Gareth was already at work. His master kept even earlier hours than he did.
The interior of the smithy was warm and familiar—the scent of coal and hot metal, the red glow of the forge, and the organized chaos of tools that Gareth insisted had "a proper place for proper work." The man himself stood at the forge, his massive form silhouetted against the fire. At forty-five, Gareth Steel was still imposingly strong, with a thick beard shot through with silver and forearms corded with muscle from decades at the anvil.
"You're late," Gareth said without turning, though his tone held no real reproach.
"Sun's barely up," Kalen replied, moving to his workbench. "Did you notice the mark on the village well? Three circles with a line through them?"
Gareth's shoulders stiffened. The hammer in his hand paused mid-swing, hovering for a heartbeat too long. When he resumed his work, his movements were too careful, too controlled.
"Probably children playing games," he said, his voice deliberately casual. "Nothing to concern yourself with."
"Sun makes no difference to the steel." It was one of Gareth's many aphorisms, repeated so often that Kalen could recite them in his sleep. "The dagger blanks are cooling. They'll need shaping today."
Kalen watched his master's face, noting the tightness around his eyes, the way his gaze never quite met Kalen's own. The dismissal was too quick, the change of subject too abrupt. He filed the reaction away but didn't press. "I had the dream again," he said instead. "The patterns were clearer this time. More... urgent."
Gareth's hands froze for a fraction of a second, knuckles whitening around his tongs. A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Dreams are dreams, boy," he said, voice dropping to a near-whisper. "The day's work is what matters."
Kalen recognized the deflection but pressed slightly further. "They remind me of the script in that old book you keep locked in your trunk—the one with the silver binding."
This time Gareth did turn, his weathered face unreadable, eyes narrowing slightly under bushy brows. "Some knowledge isn't meant for idle curiosity," he said finally. He gestured toward the cooling blanks. "Those won't shape themselves."
Taking the hint, Kalen moved to the quenching barrel where the rough dagger forms waited. He lifted one, and the sensation hit him like a physical blow—the metal sang against his palms, vibrations resonating through his bones and into his chest. The dagger blank wasn't just communicating; it was greeting him, recognizing something in his blood that even he didn't understand. Even in this unfinished state, he could feel its potential—where it yearned to be shaped, where it would resist, the ghost of what it could become already trapped inside the crude metal. It was something neither Gareth nor any other smith he'd met seemed to share—this almost intimate understanding of metal's nature. To Gareth, steel was a material to be mastered through force and fire. To Kalen, it was more like a conversation with a living thing—no, more than that. Like finding a piece of himself he never knew was missing.
He selected his tools and began the methodical work of shaping the first blade. The rhythmic ping of his hammer against the metal created a comfortable counterpoint to the deeper thuds of Gareth's work on a larger piece. As his hammer struck the steel, Kalen felt a strange resonance travel up his arm—not the normal vibration of metal striking metal, but something that seemed to connect directly with his blood, with his very being. The sensation left him momentarily disoriented, vision tunneling as if he'd glimpsed something just beyond normal perception. The metal beneath his hammer briefly shimmered with the same blue-silver light from his dreams, and for a heartbeat, patterns flickered across its surface, dancing and alive, before vanishing. For that suspended moment, he wasn't just shaping metal—he was speaking to it in a language older than words.
Kalen glanced up, certain Gareth must have seen it too. But his master was focused on his own work, unaware of what had just transpired. Or pretending to be.
For several hours, they worked in companionable silence, broken only by occasional instructions or requests for tools.
By midday, Kalen had rough-shaped four of the dagger blanks. They would form part of an order for the Imperial garrison at Westwatch, a day's ride to the west. The Empire maintained these frontier outposts along the edge of their territory, more as a show of authority than out of any real concern for the remote villages like Emberfall in the Northern Imperial Province.
As he was about to begin on the fifth blank, Kalen noticed something unexpected—a small flaw in the metal, a nearly invisible seam where the folding hadn't fully integrated. Most would miss it entirely, and even fully finished, it would likely never affect the dagger's performance. But he knew it was there.
"Gareth," he called, holding up the blank. "This one has a flaw in the folding."
Gareth approached, taking the metal and examining it closely. He turned it several times, squinting, before finally holding it up to catch the light from a particular angle. Only then did his eyebrows rise slightly.
"How did you see this?" he asked, his voice carefully neutral. "I can barely see it with thirty years more experience and knowing exactly where to look."
Kalen shrugged uncomfortably. "I just... felt it, I suppose. When I picked it up."
Gareth's expression darkened. "Felt it," he repeated. "Like your dreams?"
"I don't know. Maybe?" Kalen reached for the blank. "Should I set it aside and forge another?"
"No." Gareth handed it back. "Fix it. Reheat and refold at exactly the flaw point. Consider it a test."
The task was delicate, requiring precision and intuition beyond standard practice. Reheating only a section of a blank risked uneven tempering of the whole. But Kalen understood the challenge behind Gareth's eyes.
He returned to the forge, focused entirely on the task. The metal seemed to speak to him, guiding his hands as he carefully reheated just the flawed section, aligning the edges of the seam with expert movements of his tongs. When it reached the perfect glowing orange—not yellow-hot like full forging, but precisely the temperature where the metal would bond without losing its overall structure—he brought it to the anvil.
With three precise taps of his hammer, angled just so, he sealed the flaw. With each tap, the strange resonance grew stronger, almost like a pulse of energy flowing from his body into the metal, urging the separated seams to join. The sensation was exhilarating and terrifying—as if he were touching something fundamental about the world that humans weren't meant to access. To most smiths, such precise control would be impossible, but to Kalen, it felt as natural as breathing. He quenched the small section carefully, then examined his work.
The flaw had vanished completely, the metal now a perfect, continuous whole.
When he presented it to Gareth, the master smith took longer than necessary to examine it, turning it in the light, testing its balance.
"Acceptable," he finally said, though the intensity of his gaze told a different story. "Finish it with the others."
Kalen returned to his work, but he couldn't help noticing how Gareth watched him more closely for the remainder of the morning.
As they broke for the midday meal, the smithy door burst open with a bang that sent Kalen's heart racing. Old Willem, the village watchman, stood wheezing in the doorway.
"Trouble at the east bridge," he gasped. "Cart overturned. Wheel broke clean through and the merchant's leg is trapped. Need strong hands to lift it!"
Gareth was already reaching for his coat. "Calm yourself, Willem. We're coming." He turned to Kalen. "Bring the pry bar and splinting kit."
They followed Willem at a brisk pace through the village, drawing curious stares as they passed. The east bridge was the larger of Emberfall's two bridges, spanning the swift river that gave the village its name. As they approached, Kalen could see the overturned cart, its contents—bolts of cloth and sacks of spices—scattered across the bridge. A small crowd had gathered, and frightened horses stamped nervously nearby.
The merchant, a middle-aged man in travel-stained but quality clothing, lay half-beneath the heavy cart, his face pale with pain. His right leg was pinned beneath the vehicle's main body, blood darkening the dust beneath him.
"Stand back," Gareth ordered the onlookers, his voice cutting through the panic. "Kalen, assess."
Time seemed to slow as Kalen circled the wreckage, his senses unusually sharp. He could almost see the forces at work in the structure—the weight distribution, the pressure points, the path of least resistance. "The main weight is on the axle housing," he reported with calm certainty. "If we lift from the front edge and use the pry bar at this corner," he indicated the spot, "we should be able to raise it enough to pull him clear without shifting the weight onto his other leg."
Gareth's eyes narrowed slightly at Kalen's unusual precision, but he nodded. "Willem, get Healer Marta. And find two more strong backs."
As they waited for additional help, Kalen knelt beside the merchant. "We'll have you free soon," he assured the man. "Try to remain still."
The merchant nodded tightly, sweat beading on his forehead. "Appreciate it, lad. Was taking these goods to Northridge in Western Province when the wheel caught in that cursed rut."
Kalen registered both the provincial reference and the quality of the man's accent—not local, but educated Imperial speech. A legitimate merchant, then, not one of the suspicious traders that sometimes passed through remote villages like Emberfall.
When help arrived in the forms of the miller and his son, Gareth orchestrated the rescue with practiced efficiency. "On my count, we lift together. Kalen, you're on the pry bar. Steady pressure, not jerking. Ready? One, two, lift!"
The four men strained against the cart's weight while Kalen positioned the pry bar at the exact point he'd identified. As he leaned his weight into it, that same strange resonance exploded to life in his hands. The metal of the pry bar hummed against his palms, the vibration traveling up his arms and spreading through his chest like liquid fire. Everything else fell away—the shouting villagers, the groaning merchant, even Gareth's watchful eyes. There was only Kalen and the metal, suddenly connected in a circuit that felt ancient and familiar.
Without conscious thought, he reached into the pry bar with his mind, with his will, with something that had always been dormant inside him. The metal responded instantly, becoming not just an extension of his body but something more—an extension of his very essence. The cart lifted with shocking ease, as if it were made of feathers instead of solid oak and iron.
Time seemed to slow as he held it there, frozen in a moment of perfect connection. Power coursed through him, intoxicating and terrifying, a rush unlike anything he'd ever experienced. He could feel every nail, every iron fitting in the cart. Could feel how, with just a thought, he might twist them, reshape them, bend them to his will. The realization was dizzying.
A ragged cheer shattered his trance as another villager pulled the merchant clear. Kalen stared at the pry bar in his hands, still feeling phantom echoes of the connection. His body hummed with residual energy, leaving him both exhilarated and shaken. He glanced at Gareth and found his master watching him with an expression that made his blood run cold—not just pride and fear, but recognition, and beneath that, fear. As if Gareth had been waiting for this moment, dreading it.
"How did you—" he began, but another scream from the village interrupted him, closer now. They were being hunted.
"I don't know," Kalen answered the unfinished question, staring at his hands in wonder and terror. They looked the same—calloused, strong, smith's hands—but they felt different, as if they had been remade in the last thirty seconds. As if he had been remade. "It just... happened."
Gareth nodded grimly. "It's starting, then. Earlier than I feared." He gripped Kalen's arm. "Stay close to me. We need to reach my house. There are things there you'll need. Things I should have given you weeks ago, when the dreams started."
As they turned toward Gareth's home, more screams erupted from across the village, followed by the distinctive sound of metal warping, bending against its will—a sound Kalen recognized from the forge but magnified, distorted. The night had just begun, and Kalen knew with sudden certainty that by dawn, everything he thought he understood about his world would be changed forever.
The patterns from his dreams flashed before his eyes, and for the first time, he understood what they were trying to tell him. Not just symbols, not just script, but warnings. Boundaries. Maps to somewhere—or something—beyond. A key that had always been inside him, waiting to be turned.
The Boundary was breaking. And somehow, he was the key to either mending it—or shattering it completely.
By evening, both Kalen and Gareth were exhausted. The unexpected visit and the shortened deadline had driven them to work well past their usual stopping time. When they finally banked the forge fires, Kalen's arms ached and his eyes stung from the smoke and heat.
"Go clean up," Gareth said. "Then come to the house for dinner. We need to talk."
This was unusual. While they often shared meals, Gareth rarely made a formal invitation of it, and the gravity in his voice suggested this was no ordinary conversation.
After washing away the day's grime and changing into his cleaner set of clothes, Kalen made his way to Gareth's attached house. The building was sturdy and practical, like its owner, with few decorations save for the tools of their trade mounted on the walls with careful precision.
Gareth had prepared a simple but hearty stew, along with dark bread and a wedge of hard cheese. A pot of strong tea steamed on the table.
"Sit," he said, gesturing to the chair across from his. They ate in silence for several minutes before Gareth finally spoke again. "How long have you been having these dreams? The ones with the patterns."
Kalen considered the question. "Regularly? About three months. But I remember having similar dreams occasionally since I was fourteen or fifteen."
Gareth nodded as if confirming something to himself. "And the metal. When did you first notice you could... feel it differently than others?"
"I'm not sure." Kalen searched his memory. "I think I've always felt it, but I assumed everyone did. It wasn't until two years ago, when I was working with that shipment of southern iron, that I realized no one else could feel the sulfur impurities the way I could."
"And you can see flaws that are invisible to the eye." This wasn't a question.
"Sometimes," Kalen admitted. "Not always. It's stronger with some metals than others. Stronger when I'm fully focused."
Gareth pushed his bowl aside and leaned forward, his expression grave. "Kalen, what I'm about to tell you cannot leave this room. Do you understand? Not a word to anyone."
Kalen nodded, his pulse quickening.
"There are people in this world born with unusual... affinities. Some to elements, some to living things, some to other aspects of the world. The Empire calls them Astral practitioners, though that term obscures more than it reveals." Gareth's voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. "For centuries, the Empire has monitored such individuals—sometimes recruiting them, sometimes... eliminating them."
"And you think I'm one of these... Astral practitioners?" The term felt strange on Kalen's tongue.
"I know you are," Gareth said flatly. "Your affinity for metal is unmistakable to those who know what to look for. And these patterns in your dreams—they're not random. They're connected to something very old, something the Empire would rather remain forgotten."
Kalen struggled to process this. "How do you know all this?"
Gareth's expression closed slightly. "That's not important right now. What matters is that the Empire has somehow gotten wind of your abilities. That messenger today wasn't just about daggers."
"But I've never done anything with these... abilities. I've just made better knives and tools."
"It doesn't matter," Gareth said. "The mere potential is enough to draw their attention, especially now."
"What's special about now?"
Gareth hesitated, clearly weighing how much to say. "There are cycles to the world, Kalen. Patterns that repeat. We're entering a time when the Boundary between worlds grows thin. Those with affinities like yours become more pronounced, more visible."
"Worlds?" Kalen repeated, feeling increasingly lost. "What other worlds?"
Gareth waved the question away. "There's too much to explain in one night, and much of it I don't fully understand myself. What you need to know is that you must be careful. Control your abilities, don't draw attention, and for the gods' sake, tell no one about these dreams."
Kalen stared at his mentor, seeing him suddenly in a new light. "You're not just a blacksmith, are you?"
The corner of Gareth's mouth twitched in what might have been the ghost of a smile. "I am a blacksmith, Kalen. That much is true. The rest... doesn't matter anymore." He tapped the table decisively. "Tomorrow we work on those daggers. Ten in ten days is possible, but we'll need to be methodical."
It was a clear end to the conversation. Kalen recognized that pushing further would yield nothing tonight. He helped clear the dishes, his mind spinning with this new perspective on himself, on Gareth, on the very world he thought he knew.
That night, Kalen's dreams weren't dreams at all. The patterns engulfed him, no longer content to be observed but demanding to be experienced. They flowed around him, through him, not just visual but physical—a tangible current against his skin. He could reach out and trace them with his fingers, could feel them respond to his touch like living things. They pulsed with an inner light that beat in perfect synchronicity with his heart, as if they had always been part of him, waiting to be awakened.
The three-spiral symbol appeared before him, no longer a distant vision but an imminent reality. It grew with each heartbeat, burning brighter, its blue-silver light flooding his consciousness until it consumed his entire field of vision, until he was nothing but light and pattern.
When the light receded, he stood suspended in an impossible space—neither here nor there. The patterns continued to flow around him, but with purpose now, with direction. A figure coalesced within the swirling lights—a woman, her face obscured behind what looked like a shifting curtain of mist that never settled into fixed features. Her robes were white or perhaps silver, catching and amplifying the light of the patterns around her until she seemed to glow from within.
"At last," she said, her voice neither young nor old but layered with echoes, as if many voices spoke as one. "You've begun to see."
"Who are you?" Kalen asked, surprised to find he could speak in this dream.
"Someone who watches the boundaries." Her hands moved, tracing patterns in the air that matched those surrounding them. "Someone who has waited for you, Kalen Frost."
"How do you know my name?"
"Names are patterns too." Her hands never ceased their movement. "Just as the script of boundaries follows patterns. Just as your blood follows the pattern of those who came before."
"I don't understand," he said.
"No," she agreed. "Not yet. But time grows short. The Boundary weakens. They are beginning to sense it."
"Who is?"
"Those who broke it once before." The mist around her face swirled faster. "Listen carefully, Kalen. When they come—and they will come tonight—trust what the metal tells you. Trust what your blood knows."
"They? Who's coming?" Alarm rose in him. "What do you mean, tonight?"
"The boundary script is clear." Her form began to fade, the patterns around her growing chaotic, fragmenting. "They've found a way through sooner than I feared. Prepare yourself. I cannot hold them back much longer." Her voice turned urgent, almost desperate. "Remember—pattern answers to pattern. Trust what's in your blood."
"Wait!" Kalen lunged forward, trying to grasp her fading form. "I still don't understand!"
"Find the others like you," her voice came, now distant and fracturing. "The Boundary must be—"
The world shattered.
Kalen jerked awake with a gasp that tore at his throat. The room was pitch dark, but something was catastrophically wrong. The air vibrated with visible waves of pressure, heavy and electric, like the moment before lightning strikes. But the sensation wasn't coming from outside—it was emanating from within the village itself, a wrongness he felt in the marrow of his bones. His skin crawled with familiar energy—the same resonance he'd felt when working the metal, but amplified a hundredfold, twisted into something hungry and invasive.
He moved to the window just as a scream cut through the night—high and inhuman, abruptly silenced—followed by the unmistakable sound of breaking glass and splintering wood. Orange light flared in the distance—not the steady glow of lanterns, but the wild, leaping light of uncontrolled fire.
Without pausing to dress fully, Kalen pulled on his boots and rushed downstairs, grabbing an iron poker from beside the forge as he went. The instant his fingers closed around it, the metal awakened—unnaturally warm in his grip, almost alive, vibrating with a frequency that matched the energy coursing through his veins. It recognized him. It would obey him.
Outside, chaos had erupted. Villagers ran in blind panic, some toward the disturbance, others away, their screams creating a cacophony of terror. The orange glow came from the far side of the village square, where several buildings were now engulfed in unnatural flames that burned too blue, too bright.
And moving through the panicked villagers were things that should not exist—humanoid but wrong in ways that violated reality, their movements jerky and unnatural, like puppets controlled by unskilled hands. As one passed through the light of a fallen torch, Kalen caught a glimpse of its face—or rather, where a face should have been. Instead, there was only a twisted mass of what looked like tarnished metal, shaped vaguely like human features but warped and melted, with hollows where eyes should be that somehow still saw, still hunted.
"Kalen!"
He turned to see Gareth rushing toward him, a sword in one hand—not one of their crude crafting blades, but a finely made weapon that gleamed with its own internal blue-silver light, its surface etched with the same patterns from Kalen's dreams. The patterns recognized Kalen, resonating with something inside him, calling to his blood.
"Get inside!" Gareth shouted, his eyes wild with fear. "Barricade the door!"
"What are those things?" Kalen demanded, gesturing toward the nightmare figures that moved with increasing purpose toward them.
Gareth's expression was grim. "Boundary breaches. Just like before." He gripped Kalen's shoulder, his fingers digging in. "Listen to me. You need to—"
His words cut off as one of the twisted figures materialized behind him, moving with that same unnatural, jerking gait that somehow covered ground faster than physically possible. It lunged forward, arm extending toward Gareth's back, fingers elongating into metallic talons that glinted in the firelight.
"Gareth!" Kalen shouted, raising his iron poker.
The world fractured into crystal clarity as adrenaline flooded his system. In that stretched moment, Kalen felt something tear open inside him—a connection not just to the metal in his hand, but to the metal in the creature behind Gareth, to every nail in every building, to the coins in villagers' purses, to the plow blades and cooking pots and door hinges. The boundaries between himself and the material world dissolved completely, as if he were reaching through invisible barriers that had always separated him from his birthright.
Without thinking, without hesitation, he seized the creature with his will, with whatever this power was that sang in his blood. The connection was immediate and horrifying—like plunging his hands into something both dead and alive, cold and burning. But he held on, gripping the thing's metallic components in a mental fist and squeezing.
The creature froze mid-lunge, its form locked in perfect stillness, a scream of inhuman frustration emanating from where its mouth should be. Gareth, alerted by Kalen's shout, spun and drove his pattern-etched sword through the immobilized form. The blade sliced through with a sound like reality tearing, and the creature collapsed into pieces that disintegrated into swirling metallic dust before they hit the ground.
Gareth turned back to Kalen, his eyes wide with shock and something else—recognition, and beneath that, fear. Not fear of the creatures, but fear of what he had just witnessed.
"How did you—" he began, but another scream from the village interrupted him, closer now. They were being hunted.
"I don't know," Kalen answered the unfinished question, staring at his hands in wonder and terror. They looked the same—calloused, strong, smith's hands—but they felt different, as if they had been remade in the last thirty seconds. As if he had been remade. "It just... happened."
Gareth nodded grimly. "It's starting, then. Earlier than I feared." He gripped Kalen's arm. "Stay close to me. We need to reach my house. There are things there you'll need. Things I should have given you weeks ago, when the dreams started."
As they turned toward Gareth's home, more screams erupted from across the village, followed by the distinctive sound of metal warping, bending against its will—a sound Kalen recognized from the forge but magnified, distorted. The night had just begun, and Kalen knew with sudden certainty that by dawn, everything he thought he understood about his world would be changed forever.
The patterns from his dreams flashed before his eyes, and for the first time, he understood what they were trying to tell him. Not just symbols, not just script, but warnings. Boundaries. Maps to somewhere—or something—beyond. A key that had always been inside him, waiting to be turned.
The Boundary was breaking. And somehow, he was the key to either mending it—or shattering it completely.