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“Osric,” she said after a while, with a soft, warm breath. “Will you tell me a story? A story from your past.”
Osric frowned, tongue worrying at his teeth. He wasn’t used to anyone showing an interest in him, in who he was and where he came from. His whole life, he had been trained to keep to the shadows, to remain unseen. Even with the other Emberforged, his relationships had always been strictly professional, his interactions limited to the mission at hand.
But Hali . . . Hali was different. With her, he felt like he could be himself, not the cold, detached agent of the Forge, but the person he had once been, long ago. And he wanted to share that with her, even if it meant risking his carefully guarded secrets.
“I . . . I don’t know if I have any stories worth telling,” he said at last.
“Everyone has a story,” Hali said, her gaze tracing the runic patterns on his arm. “I want to know yours.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide and earnest, and something in Osric’s chest cracked open. He couldn’t bear to see that light in her eyes dim, and so he relented, with a sigh.
“I suppose there is one story I could tell you,” he said. “It’s from when I was very young, before . . . before everything changed.”
Hali made a soft, encouraging noise, and Osric closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts. “I was born in one of the most prestigious clanholds among my people, the Emberforged. We lived in the heart of the volcano, and the air was always thick with smoke and ash, and the ground glowed red beneath our feet. My parents were both highly regarded in the clan—my father was a general in our military, and my mother was a high priestess of the fire goddess, one of the most powerful mages in our land.”
He paused, the memories a bittersweet taste on his tongue. “I was the youngest of three, and the only one to show any real aptitude for magic. My elder siblings went on to excel in other areas, but I was my mother’s apprentice, and I was determined to make her proud.”
Osric’s voice faltered, and he opened his eyes to see Hali watching him, her expression soft and open. It was a look he wasn’t sure he deserved, but he was powerless to turn away from it.
“We were a happy family, once,” he said, and the words felt like a confession. “I miss them terribly.”
He fell silent. It was a struggle to keep his composure, to keep the pain and anger from his voice. There was so much more to the story, so much he was leaving out, but for now, it was all he could bring himself to say.
Osric’s voice was a whisper, but it filled the space between them, heavy with sorrow and regret. “My family . . . we were happy, once. But then . . . something terrible happened.”
He didn’t need to say what. Hali knew the story all too well, from the hints he had dropped in their conversations, to the way he sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, his face streaked with tears and his fists clenched in the sheets. She knew about the attack, the fire, the loss that had shaped him into the man he was today.
“I’m so sorry, Osric,” she said, her voice soft. She reached for his hand, lacing her fingers through his, and he let her, his calloused skin a rough, comforting contrast to her own. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through.”
Osric turned his hand over, twining their fingers together, and brought it to his lips. “You don’t have to imagine,” he said. “You’ve faced your own share of hardships, and yet you . . . you still manage to see the beauty in the world. You still have hope.”
Hali’s heart ached at the raw vulnerability in his voice. She knew how hard it had been for him to let his guard down, to share this part of himself with her. And she felt a strange, fierce rush of affection for him, knowing that he trusted her that much.
“I wasn’t always like this,” she said. “I used to be so angry, so bitter. I wanted to burn the world down, just to make it pay for my pain.”
Osric’s thumb traced over the back of her hand, a gentle, soothing caress. “What changed?”
Hali smiled, a little sadly. “I suppose I realized that I didn’t want my life to be defined by what I had lost. I wanted to find joy, and beauty, and love, wherever I could. And so I made a choice to see the world that way, even when it’s hard.”
She turned her hand in his, linking their fingers together once more. “And then you came along, and suddenly, it’s so much easier to see the good.”
Osric caught himself smiling. “I haven’t given you much reason to trust me,” he said. “But I want to. I want to be the person you see in me.”
“Nonsense. One of the things I admire most about you is your unwavering sense of purpose. Your dedication to your metalworking, your research . . . it’s truly remarkable.”
Osric’s throat went dry. How could he tell her that his loyalty to the Forge of Vulkan was the very thing that kept him up at night, that haunted his every step with her? How could he explain that he was trained from a young age to put his duty above all else, even his own happiness? But as he looked into Hali’s eyes, he felt a strange, reckless urge to try.
“There is a . . . a story, I suppose,” he said slowly, each word a struggle. “One that my people tell, of the First Forging. It is said that in the early days of our kind, when the world was still young, the Emberforged were given a great gift by the fire primordial—what most people would call a goddess, I suppose—a gift that would allow us to shape the very bones of the world, to bring her vision to life.”
He paused, weighing his words carefully. “It is only a story, of course. But it is a story that has guided my people for generations. And it is a story that I . . . that I have sworn to see through.”
“The goddess came to our people in a vision, a pillar of flame that lit up the night sky. She spoke to our first artisans, and she entrusted them with a sacred quest. He was to journey to the heart of the world, to the great volcano that raged at the center of our land, and there he would find the tools he needed to shape our destiny.”
As he spoke, Osric’s whole demeanor changed. His voice took on a rhythmic, almost hypnotic cadence, and his eyes glowed with an inner light. Hali seemed to lean in, caught in the pull of his words, of the raw power and magic that crackled around him. Osric’s hands moved as he spoke, tracing sigils in the air that matched the ones along his arms.
“The journey was long and perilous, but the artisans were undaunted. They faced down great beasts and treacherous foes, but the fire goddess walked with him, and he was not afraid. At last, they reached the volcano’s summit, and there he found the Forge, a mighty cauldron of molten metal, and the Anvil, where they would shape the goddess’s gift.”
“The goddess’s gift,” Hali repeated, her voice a hushed whisper.
