You find it while shoveling slag behind the forge: a fist-sized stone, still warm, though the pile went cold days ago. It isn't shaped like ore. It's shaped like something that fell and didn't ask permission to land there.

Hale's inside, banking the coals for the night. Somewhere further in, Tam is doing whatever she was told at whatever speed she thinks she can get away with. You turn the stone over. It doesn't look like much. It feels like it's waiting.

You're seventeen and still the one sent for coal, still the apprentice. Some part of you is already imagining the look on people's faces when they find out what you made.