"We were lucky," said the woman supporting him—his daughter, Thalia guessed."Father had already cast off.We took on as many as we could before—" Her voice broke.“Before Duskharbor fell.”
The fisherman cleared his throat."Our journey up the coast took us past Verdant Port."
Thalia’s breath caught in her throat, and for a moment, the pier, the soldiers, the refugees—all of it disappeared, leaving only that name echoing in her mind.Verdant Port.Home.
"What did you see?"The words scraped past her lips, raw and desperate."Is it—is it gone?"
The fisherman studied her face, recognition dawning in his tired eyes.Southern features.The accent she'd never quite managed to shed."You're from there," he said.Not a question.
Thalia could only nod, not trusting her voice.
"It still stands," he said, and relief crashed through her like a wave—only to recede just as quickly at his next words."But black-helmed Wardens patrol its streets now.They've raised their banners over the harbor, fortifying positions within the city walls."His voice dropped lower."This isn't a raid.They're digging in.Occupation, not mere destruction."
The words should have been a comfort—houses still standing meant people might still be alive—but they landed like stones in Thalia's stomach.Occupation meant something new, something worse than the hit-and-run tactics the Wardens had employed for generations.It meant they were changing their strategy.It meant they were planning to stay.
"When did this happen?"she demanded, aware that her voice had risen, that the other soldiers were watching her now.
"Ten days passed," said the man."Maybe twelve.The days blur when you're running."
Thalia turned away from the murmuring crowd, her hands curling into fists so tight her nails bit into her palms.The pain was distant, secondary to the storm raging in her chest.The questions circled like vultures: Were her family still in Verdant Port, besieged by the Wardens' occupation?Did they manage to escape?Were they even alive?
And beneath those questions, a deeper, darker one formed: What did the Wardens want with her home?
Behind her, the refugees continued to disembark, each carrying their own version of the same story, each bearing witness to the changing tide of a war that had just become something far more terrible.
***
Heat embraced Thalia like an old friend as she hunched over her workbench in the Howling Forge, the familiar weight of her hammer balanced in her palm.Around her, the forge breathed in its ancient rhythm—bellows sighing, coals glowing ember-red in the dim light, the perpetual hiss of steam rising where cooling buckets waited.
Her attention, however, remained fixed on the small ingot before her—a blend of glacenite and tungsten that still glimmered with otherworldly blue-silver light.If she reduced the glacenite concentration and introduced a stabilizing element, perhaps the weapons would remain effective without turning the wielder's mind against them.
After the disastrous sparring session with Brynn, she knew the formula needed adjustment.The hallucinations couldn't happen again—not if she hoped to arm Frostforge against the Wardens.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she worked, memories of the training ground flashing unbidden behind her eyes.The blade had performed beautifully at first—meeting the black Warden metal without disintegrating, the two edges kissing with a shower of sparks rather than dissolving into useless fragments.But then the whispers had started, growing to screams that only she could hear—her mother and Mari begging for help, their voices so real, so present that she'd dropped to her knees on the frost-hardened ground, covering her ears against sounds that existed only in her mind.
A weapon that incapacitated its wielder was worse than no weapon at all.
Thalia adjusted the flame beneath her crucible, watching as the metals liquefied and mingled.She stirred the molten mixture with a ceramic rod, feeling the subtle vibrations through the material—the unique hum of glacenite, now tempered by the tungsten's stolid presence.The silver-blue glow dimmed slightly, but didn't vanish completely.A good sign.
With practiced movements, she poured the molten alloy into a blade mold—a short dagger rather than a full sword.No sense wasting precious materials on a test piece.As the metal cooled, she prepared the hilt, wrapping the tang with leather strips worn soft by her hands.
Across the forge, mounted on the wall, gleamed her target—a section of Warden shield captured during the recent attack, its surface inlaid with the same black metal that had rendered their ice-steel useless.The metal seemed to absorb the forge's light rather than reflect it, a void in physical form.
Thalia lifted the finished dagger, testing its weight.The blade caught the forge light differently than pure ice-metal—less brilliant, more subdued, but with depth that suggested hidden strength.She approached the shield section, weapon raised.
"Let's see if you still work," she murmured to the blade, and struck.
The impact rang through the forge—metal on metal, a clean, clear note that held in the air.The blade met the black metal and skipped off it, leaving both intact.No disintegration.No warping.Thalia struck again, and again, each blow landing with satisfying solidity.
And in the stillness between strikes, she listened.
Nothing.No whispers.No screams.Only the familiar sounds of the forge and her own measured breathing.
Relief loosened the knot in her chest.The reduced concentration had worked.The weapon maintained its effectiveness against the Warden metal without turning her own mind into a battlefield.
The heavy door to the forge swung open with a groan of ancient hinges, admitting a gust of colder air that momentarily disrupted the forge's heat.Thalia turned, expecting to see Kaine—foolishly, as he was still away on the reconnaissance mission with Roran—or perhaps Ashe coming to check on her progress.
Instead, Senna stood in the doorway, her tall frame silhouetted against the corridor beyond.Her black hair was pulled back in a severe braid, her silver-gray eyes narrowed slightly against the forge's heat.Without a word to Thalia, she strode in, already rolling up her sleeves and reaching for a leather apron hanging on a peg near the door.
