Selene had been to Ironvale before, though not recently enough that she trusted every memory attached to the place.
Her first visits had come four or five years earlier, when Velara had begun allowing her to accompany Bellhaven’s diplomats on journeys around the basin. At the time, Selene had been expected to listen more than speak, learn names she would someday need to remember, and avoid wandering into whatever machinery looked most interesting while the adults argued about freight, contracts, and regional obligations.
Ironvale had left a stronger impression than most settlements - part of that was the mountain itself. Bellhaven spread comfortably beside the lake, while Ironvale seemed determined to occupy every piece of land gravity had discouraged anyone from using. The greater part of the memory, however, was noise.
Forge Row had been deafening. Hammering had rolled across the terraces almost continuously, joined by grinding wheels, trip hammers, bellows, carts, and the roar of furnaces built close enough together that their heat seemed to merge into the air itself. Selene remembered one of Bellhaven’s merchants leaning close enough to nearly shout into her ear because ordinary conversation had become impossible.
The Forge Row Maera Ferren led her through now was still impressive. Water rushed through stone channels cut along the upper retaining walls and turned several wheels positioned beside the larger workshops. One powered a grinding assembly where an apprentice carefully sharpened a row of tools, while another drove a heavy trip hammer whose repeated impacts traveled through the stone beneath Selene’s boots.
Apprentices moved quickly between workshops carrying coal, bars of metal, unfinished fittings, and trays of smaller components. Ore arrived from higher terraces in carts, then continued through smelting, shaping, and finishing before completed goods moved farther down the mountain toward warehouses and freight depots.
The Forgewarden stopped beside a workshop where nearly identical iron fittings rested on a rack beside the doorway.
“Drakehaven asked for iron.”
Selene looked toward the pieces. “We may need quite a lot of it.”
“No,” Maera’s correction came without irritation. “You need things made from iron.”
Selene glanced toward her. Maera lifted one of the fittings with her prosthetic hand and turned it slowly between the articulated fingers. The mechanism moved so smoothly that Selene still found herself occasionally forgetting the hand was artificial until the light caught one of the overlapping plates.
“You could purchase bars,” Maera continued. “That would technically satisfy the request, but then someone in Drakehaven would need to turn those bars into everything you actually wanted.”
Selene folded her hands behind her back as they resumed walking.
“Nails. Hinges. Braces, tools, weapons,” Maera continued. “Most permanent construction becomes dependent upon metal long before anyone thinks of the building as metalwork.”
Selene thought about Drakehaven and all its ongoing construction. Even simple homes required hinges, brackets, nails, and dozens of pieces most people ignored once a building was finished.
“You think selling us raw metal means Ironvale gives up its advantage too early.”
Maera nodded. “That is the beginning of the problem.”
They passed a workshop devoted almost entirely to chains. Several lengths hung from hooks along the wall, each marked with different tags, while a smith examined individual links beneath a lens before placing them into separate piles.
“If Ironvale sends Drakehaven raw iron, Ysara’s miners are paid for removing it from the mountain,” Maera then swept her metal hand across Forge Row. “If the metal remains here longer, the same material supports the smiths too. The value of a bar of iron is not particularly interesting. The value of what Ironvale knows how to do with it is.”
That argument was difficult to dispute. Drakehaven may have possessed abilities Ironvale could not reproduce, but none of those things gave Drakehaven generations of smithing experience. Maera stopped near another workshop where an apprentice was fitting hinges against a metal template before placing them into a crate.
Selene watched three pass inspection in succession. Roy could likely made them - and even do so quickly - but he’d be spending his whole life doing menial tasks if they set up a system like that. Ironvale could remove that while still creating pieces that were identical, just like the ones
Ironvale knew how to make hundreds of the same useful things without requiring anyone exceptional. Maera let Selene consider that for several moments before continuing.
“I do not want Ironvale to become Drakehaven’s mine. I want Ironvale to become one of Drakehaven’s principal manufacturers.”
The statement was more ambitious than anything Maera had said during the Triumvirate meeting, though it also made considerably more sense now. Selene had approached Ironvale imagining a fixed exchange, but Maera was describing a relationship that could eventually touch nearly every part of Drakehaven’s growth.
Standing orders. Preferred purchasing. Commissioned tools. Perhaps reduced rates in exchange for predictable orders or access to things Drakehaven could provide in return.
Selene deliberately stopped herself there; she was beginning to negotiate in her own head before seeing enough of Ironvale to know what any of those promises would actually cost. Maera had brought her here specifically because the original proposal had been made too quickly, and Selene had no intention of repeating the mistake before lunch.
They continued deeper into the district. The busiest part of Forge Row remained impressive enough that Selene might have accepted the tour at face value if this were her first visit… Yet something about the district felt different from what Selene remembered. Memory from childhood was unreliable in strange ways, so Selene ignored the feeling until they passed beneath a stone arch where three heavy hammer strikes sounded from a terrace above.
Then nothing answered beyond quiet. For several seconds, she could actually hear the running water. Forge Row had once seemed loud enough that the idea of hearing water beneath the work would have been absurd. The noise returned moments later when a trip hammer began farther down the ridge, followed by another smith working somewhere behind them, but Selene said nothing.
They entered a broad repair shop where workers had arranged damaged equipment across several tables. Maera stopped beside a complicated hinge assembly that had been taken apart completely, with undamaged pieces separated neatly from those requiring replacement.
“This is another reason raw metal is a poor measure of what Ironvale produces. Good metal does not become worthless because one component fails. You replace what failed, repair what remains useful, and put it back into service.”
Selene examined the work. “Ironvale has always repaired this heavily?”
Maera looked mildly surprised by the question. “Of course. We are a mining settlement. Throwing away good metal because something became inconvenient would be absurd.”
Selene nodded. The workmanship was meticulous and there was nothing desperate about the repair operation. Several pieces on the tables looked better maintained than equipment Bellhaven would have discarded years earlier. She respected that philosophy, but another memory tugged at her.
More new goods. More racks cooling outside workshops. More pieces waiting to be shipped rather than repaired. Perhaps she was remembering a particularly productive season - but enough uncertainty had accumulated that pretending not to notice became less useful than asking.
“Ironvale is producing less than it used to.”
Maera stopped, though she did not look surprised.
“Yes.”
“How much less?”
Maera turned toward her. “That is where my willingness to educate a visiting diplomat ends.”
Selene smiled. “Fair.”
“Ironvale intends to negotiate with Drakehaven,” Maera resumed walking. “I am not going to do calculations in the middle of all of that.”
Selene followed. “At least you admit you want one.”
Maera glanced toward her. “You are annoyingly attentive for someone your age.”
“Velara has said similar things.”
“I suspect she uses less flattering language in private.”
“Almost certainly.”
Maera’s mouth moved faintly, though it was not quite a smile. She continued toward the next terrace.
“Production changes for many reasons. Ore allocations tighten. Demand shifts. Workshops combine workloads when heating multiple furnaces becomes wasteful. Repair becomes preferable to replacement when the repaired object remains perfectly adequate.”
Selene knew nothing Maera said was false. But it was possible the Forgewarden simply refused to turn ordinary contraction into a confession of weakness while Drakehaven still sat on the opposite side of a negotiation.
“What matters to your proposal,” Maera continued, “is that I have no intention of cheaply exporting raw metal while my smiths can multiply its value several times before it leaves Ironvale.”
Selene nodded. “You do not want Drakehaven buying your future at ore prices.”
Maera looked toward her for a moment. “That is closer.”
The answer lingered with Selene as they climbed toward one of Forge Row’s higher loading terraces. She had already suspected Ironvale’s bargaining position was weaker than the Triumvirate wanted to reveal. None of them had shown any real interest in pushing Drakehaven away, despite the original offer benefiting Bram more clearly than the others. That did not mean Ironvale was desperate yet, but the settlement Selene remembered had been larger.
They finally came to a stop near the top of this particular terrace. Selene rested both hands against the iron railing as she looked farther down, and the Black Hills stretched beneath them. Selene had seen the formations on previous visits and understood what they were in the abstract. Slag heaps. Tailings. Waste discarded by centuries of mining and smithing.
From this height, calling them piles felt ridiculous. Enormous black slopes spread below, their surfaces layered with darker and lighter deposits from different periods of Ironvale’s history. Some sections had settled smooth enough to resemble natural hills, while others broke into jagged shelves where newer refuse had been dumped over older material.
Selene stared for several seconds. “I never appreciated the scale.”
Maera rested her hand against the railing. “Most visitors don’t.”
“All of that is discarded material?”
“Most of what you can see.”
Selene looked farther across the ridges. “How long?”
“Centuries,” Maera gestured toward the nearest slope. “Slag. Tailings. Failed smelts. Ore that was not worth processing further. Material that behaved badly enough that someone decided the fuel required to keep working was more valuable than whatever might come out.”
“Does anyone search through it?”
“Occasionally,” Maera sounded noticeably less interested. “There are always people convinced someone three hundred years ago threw away something valuable.”
“Were they right?”
“Doubtful.”
Selene waited for more, but Maera did not provide it. Assigning useful labor to comb through centuries of waste in the hope that someone long dead had misjudged a rock probably did sound absurd.
Movement caught Selene’s attention along one distant slope. She assumed it was an animal at first, but then the figure straightened. An older man stood beside a small cart, far enough away that Selene could barely make out more than gray hair and a stooped posture. He crouched again, picked something from the black slope, examined it closely, then either discarded it or placed it into the cart.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Selene pointed. “Who is that?”
Maera followed her gesture. Something changed in the Forgewarden’s expression.
“Hadric.”
“What is he doing?”
Maera looked toward the distant man for another moment. “Whatever Hadric believes is important.”
That was the most dismissive answer Maera had offered during the entire tour, which meant Selene found it immediately interesting.
“He does this often?”
“Yes.”
“What is he looking for?”
“You would need to ask Hadric.”
Before Selene could push further into the conversation, Maera pushed away from the railing.
“I have inspections waiting below, and you already know the route back to the inn.”
The transition was abrupt, but not rude. Both women were practical, and she had given Selene quite a bit of her morning for the tour.
Selene nodded. “Thank you. I have considerably more to think about than I did when we entered Forge Row.”
“That was the intention,” Maera gathered the small stack of notes she had carried throughout the tour. “I look forward to hearing what Drakehaven proposes once you decide what you actually want from Ironvale.”
Selene gave a slight smile. “I suspect the next proposal will be more complicated.”
“Good,” Maera turned toward the stairs. “Simple arrangements are usually simple because someone has ignored the expensive part.”
Neither woman felt any particular need to stretch the farewell further. Selene watched Maera disappear down the terrace, then returned her attention to the Black Hills. Hadric was still there; one old man pulling a cart through centuries of waste while Ironvale’s real work happened above him. That alone would not have been enough to hold Selene’s attention.
The Weave, however, was.
She focused properly as the familiar information resolved.
[[Hadric]]
[[First Seal — Alloyist]]
Selene stared at the distant figure. Ironvale had no known Awakened population - certainly not an old man digging through slag at the bottom of the mountain - and Maera had mentioned nothing about it.
Selene remained at the railing for only another few seconds before making a decision.
─── 🐲🐲🐲 ───
The path toward the Black Hills was considerably worse than the roads through Forge Row.
Ironvale had invested generations into moving ore and finished goods efficiently through the useful parts of the settlement. The discarded parts received less attention. Stone stairs eventually gave way to packed dirt, then narrow trails worn between old slag deposits where jagged fragments crunched beneath Selene’s boots.
Hadric had disappeared from sight while Selene descended. She eventually found his cart first, which sat outside a small shack built directly against the base of one of the Black Hills. Calling the structure a home or a workshop felt generous. One half consisted of dark timber patched with mismatched boards, while the other leaned into an older stone retaining wall as though the hill itself had become part of the structure. A narrow chimney rose from the roof, and several tables had been positioned outside beneath a rough awning.
Those tables changed Selene’s impression immediately. Hundreds of pieces of slag, ore, metal, and blackened stone covered nearly every surface, but then Selene noticed the labels. Small wooden markers divided the samples into groups. Some had been arranged by color, and others by fracture pattern. Several shelves held pieces separated by density, while another table contained dozens of nearly identical black fragments with tiny differences marked in chalk.
Hadric sat near the far table holding a dark piece of slag close enough to his face that he did not seem to notice Selene approaching. He was older than Maera by several decades, with thinning gray hair falling untidily around his ears and a beard that appeared to have been trimmed only because it occasionally became inconvenient. His clothes were patched repeatedly, and dark mineral stains covered both hands almost to the wrists.
Selene stopped several feet away. “Hadric?”
The old man continued examining the sample. Several seconds passed, but there wasn’t a response.
“Hadric.”
He finally looked up. Tthe first thing Selene noticed was that his eyes were clear - not confused or distant.
“You’re standing in my light.”
Selene shifted half a step, then Hadric looked back toward the slag.
“Thank you.”
She waited again, but nothing came. Apparently introductions were going to require effort.
“My name is Selene Dault.”
Hadric turned the piece between his fingers. “That should mean something to me?”
“Probably not.”
“Good,” his attention returned to the sample. “I dislike conversations where I am expected to recognize people.”
Selene almost smiled. “I’m from Bellhaven.”
“That explains the clothes.”
“I’m here with representatives from Drakehaven.”
Hadric frowned. This time, not at her.
“Where?”
“Drakehaven.”
“Never heard of it.”
Selene believed him. The settlement had become one of the most discussed subjects in Bellhaven over the last several months, and Hadric had apparently missed the entire development.
“It is a new settlement south of here.”
“Most settlements are south of here,” Hadric placed the slag on a marked section of the table. “What do you want?”
Selene glanced toward the organized samples. “To know why Ironvale’s only Awakened person is digging through centuries of discarded material.”
Hadric stopped. “How did you know that?”
“I can see your Status.”
That earned his full attention. For the first time since Selene arrived, Hadric looked at her rather than through whatever interruption she represented.
“What Class?”
“Alloyist.”
He grunted. “Annoying.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
Hadric stood with more difficulty than Selene expected from the clarity of his gaze. One knee stiffened halfway through the motion, forcing him to brace against the table before straightening fully.
Hadric gestured toward a stool. “If you have questions, sit. I dislike looking upward.”
Selene accepted. Hadric chose another stool and lowered himself opposite her.
“You said Alloyist.”
Selene nodded toward his Status. “First Seal.”
“That happened a long time ago.”
“What does an Alloyist do?”
Hadric looked toward the samples. “Mostly disappoint people… An Alloyist sees possibilities in material. Composition. Interactions. Things that might combine or separate. Most times, it’s things that ought to exist but do not yet.”
Selene looked toward the shelves. “And the Black Hills contain possibilities.”
Hadric’s expression changed. “Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“My Class… though it is not particularly interested in explaining itself. The first time it happened, I thought I had gone mad. I had worked iron my entire life. Smelted it. Forged it. Ruined more of it than most smiths ever touch… Then I awakened and discovered that half the things I thought were waste were not as simple as I believed.”
Selene glanced across the workspace again. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Longer than you’ve been alive, I’d bet.”
Selene looked toward him more carefully. “You were a smith.”
“One of Ironvale’s better ones,” Hadric scratched his beard. “I was the Forgewarden, after all.”
Selene stared - that changed considerably more than she expected.
“You were Forgewarden?”
“Yes.”
Selene allowed the correction. “And you stepped down?”
Hadric looked toward the Black Hills. “Yes… Because I made a gamble. Ironvale was already changing; richer veins became harder to reach. Fuel costs rose. Old workings produced less. It wasn't anything dramatic at the time, but it’s the sort of decline everyone can explain for another year. Then when I Awakened, I began seeing things in the waste.”
He gestured toward the enormous ridge outside.
“Questions, mostly. Compositions that should not have behaved the way they did. Trace materials our normal processes left behind. Old slag that differed from newer slag in ways nobody could explain.”
Selene looked toward the labelled samples. “So you stepped down as a Forgewarden to study it.”
“I closed my forge too,” Hadric rubbed one stained thumb across the edge of the sample. “I believed that if Ironvale’s future was hiding anywhere, it was more important than another decade of me making tools everyone already knew how to make.”
Selene looked around. “And did you find it?”
Hadric laughed once. “No.”
The answer held no bitterness, which somehow made it harsher.
“I found decades of evidence. There’s enough information to prove I was not imagining the problem… but I have never produced anything commercially useful.”
Selene understood Maera’s tone better. “How many people still believe you?”
“Very few.”
“And Maera?”
The old man’s attention sharpened slightly. Her gaze shifted toward a small mechanical assembly on Hadric’s workbench. The joint structure looked familiar to something she’s seen in Maera’s arm. The articulation had looked unlike ordinary Ironvale equipment. Not magical, but intricate enough that Selene had wondered who possessed the skill to build something that precise.
“You made Maera’s arm.”
Hadric became very still. “Yes.”
Selene smiled slightly. “That is an extraordinary gift to make for a Forgewarden.”
Hadric’s expression hardened. “I did not make it for the Forgewarden… I made it for my daughter.”
The relationship settled into place so abruptly that Selene’s expression almost shifted. Maera’s dismissive tone and the refusal to explain him suddenly made far more sense.
“She lost her arm young in a forge accident,” Hadric flexed his own fingers unconsciously. “She was already better than most smiths twice her age… and she adapted faster than anyone expected.”
“And you built the prosthetic.”
“Several. That one was not the first.”
“Does she still come here?”
Hadric looked at her. “You have met Maera.”
“Yes.”
“Then you already know the answer.”
Selene almost smiled, but the humor disappeared when Hadric continued.
“She believes I abandoned the Forge,” he looked toward the Black Hills. “She is not entirely wrong, though.”
A pause followed.
Then he added, “She also believes I abandoned her… She is probably not wrong about that either.”
The admission sat strangely with Selene. Not because she understood the exact relationship, but because she knew what it meant for the person raising you to become something more complicated than the title itself.
Velara had been her aunt before becoming her mother in everything that mattered. Aurelia had recently begun attempting something similar in her own way, pushing past the careful boundaries Selene usually maintained and treating affection as though it were a problem persistence could solve.
Selene found herself looking toward Forge Row. “Do you regret it?”
Hadric stared at the same distant terraces. “Frequently.”
“That was straightforward.”
“I am too old to make my mistakes sound noble. That does not mean I believe the work was meaningless.”
Regret without surrender, something Selene could understand. She returned her attention toward the samples.
“You said Ironvale was already declining when you stepped down.”
“Yes.”
“How bad is it now?”
Hadric laughed quietly. “You really are a diplomat.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Maera refused to answer?”
“She answered carefully.”
“That means yes.”
Selene smiled. Hadric leaned forward and rested both forearms on his knees.
“Production has been declining for years. Richer ore is harder to find. Lower-quality veins require more fuel and labor for less usable metal. Workshops consolidate because there is less reason to keep every furnace burning. The town still works, and there are still excellent people here, but Ironvale is shrinking.”
“How far?”
Hadric shrugged. “Far enough that eventually someone will still call the place Ironvale while meaning something very different.”
That was more direct than anything Maera had offered.
Selene studied him. “You are remarkably undiplomatic for someone who once held one third of Ironvale’s government.”
Hadric snorted. “If diplomacy was going to save Ironvale, it would have done so before I became old.”
“That seems unfair to diplomacy.”
“It has survived worse insults.”
Selene smiled despite herself. “What does Maera think the answer is?”
Hadric’s expression flattened. “You should ask Maera.”
“I did. She thinks Ironvale needs to sell knowledge and manufactured goods rather than raw iron.”
Hadric nodded immediately. “She is correct. Selling raw iron while output tightens would accelerate the decline.”
“So even if Drakehaven becomes a major customer, that only slows the issue.”
“Probably. It would help, but it is not an answer to the underlying problem.”
The artificial slopes looked different now. Hadric stood and walked toward one of the tables. He selected two pieces of slag and placed them in Selene’s hands.
“They look similar.”
“They are not.”
Selene turned them over.
“What is different?”
“Age, for one,” Hadric tapped the darker piece. “That came from one of the oldest accessible deposits. The other is comparatively recent.”
Selene examined them again. “Composition?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“That is where the irritating part begins,” Hadric took both pieces back. “Modern slag is predictable. We know what went into the furnace, what we extracted, and what remained.”
He held up the older piece.
“This is not always predictable. There are trace combinations in some older slag that should not be there if the metal was processed using the techniques Ironvale later standardized.”
“What does that mean?”
“I do not know,” Hadric smiled without humor. “That is what I have spent several decades failing to answer.”
Selene looked toward the shelves. “You think early Ironvale knew something later generations forgot.”
“Maybe. That is a larger question than I am trying to answer.”
Selene noticed the hesitation but did not press. Hadric carried the old slag toward another tray.
“What I know is simple - Ironvale has been discarding material it does not fully understand.”
Selene remained quiet. Before her stood a former Forgewarden who had abandoned one form of usefulness because his Class convinced him there might be another. The gamble had cost him his forge, his office, and perhaps his daughter - yet he still could not prove it had been worth making.
Selene looked once more toward the Black Hills. Ironvale’s future might be waiting in better trade. Drakehaven could help with some of those things, but beneath all of that lay centuries of material Ironvale had already decided was worthless.
Hadric had no solution - only proof that perhaps they had been asking the wrong question.