The forge did not welcome you.
It took you in the way a river took in a stone: without noticing, and with no intention of being gentle.
On the first morning, the service lane was still dark. Lanterns burned low, their paper skins already filmed with soot. Li Shen's jeton sat against his ribs like a small accusation. He didn't touch it until the checkpoint demanded it.
A guard held out two fingers.
Li Shen placed the brass disc there.
The guard didn't look at Li Shen's face. He looked at the stamp. He looked at the notch cut into the edge. Then he gave it back with the same bored precision he'd use on a sack of grain.
"Circle One only," the guard said.
"Yes."
"Don't cross the seal line."
Li Shen nodded and stepped through, and the air changed.
Not warmer—hotter.
Not louder—denser.
He had expected noise. What he hadn't expected was the way sound occupied space. Hammers didn't ring here; they pressed. They filled the lungs. They made bones feel like they had their own echo.
Circle One began with the Circle of Fire.
It wasn't a room. It was a boundary drawn by heat.
Charcoal sat in waist-high bins bound with iron bands, and every time someone lifted a basket, fine black dust bloomed into the air like a curse. Bellows wheezed. Flames licked metal until it softened. Smoke rolled upward and stayed trapped under the rafters long enough to make every breath a decision.
The first day, Li Shen tried breathing like he always had.
He coughed until his eyes watered, and no one slowed down to acknowledge it.
That was his first useful lesson: the forge didn't punish you with anger. It punished you with continuation.
On the second day, he wrapped cloth across his mouth and nose, tied tight enough to leave lines in his cheeks. It helped, but not enough. The smoke still found gaps. It always did. The forge taught that lesson the way the Pavilion taught everything: by letting you keep working while it damaged you.
At the water trough, inside the permitted lane—where heat broke for one narrow minute and men drank like they were paying off a debt—Li Shen stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other marked volunteers.
No one here was "friend." Not yet.
Everyone here was competition wearing the same brassard.
A scarred boy from the notice line—burn marks on his forearms, eyes too alert—watched Li Shen's mask knot and said, quiet enough to be ignored if needed, "You tie it like you've done it before."
Li Shen drank. The water tasted faintly of ash and old wood.
"I learn fast," he replied.
The boy's gaze dropped to Li Shen's hands. To the cracked skin. To the way Li Shen didn't shake from the heat.
"Stage 1?" the boy asked.
"Stage 1," Li Shen said. Flat. Boring. Safe.
The boy nodded as if reassured by mediocrity.
"Lucky," he muttered.
Li Shen didn't correct him. He didn't have the energy to fight other people's fantasies.
"Probably blocked Stage 1 to 3," Li Shen said, the practiced lightning rod.
That line did what it was designed to do: it made him less interesting.
The bell cut the minute short. Bodies moved in sync. The trough became empty again.
Back to work.
His Stage 1 cultivation made him useful in small, unglamorous ways.
He could push back fatigue for an hour when others had to sit.
He could steady his hands after long carry runs.
He could keep heat from sinking too deep into his forearms if he remembered to circulate Qi the way the older boys did—tight, shallow, never flashy.
But it did not make him immune.
By the fourth day, his fingertips were cracked and blackened. Not burned clean—burned dirty.
By the sixth, his throat tasted like old coins.
By the eighth, there was a thin line of pain behind his eyes that never left, like the forge had moved in and decided to rent a room.
The Circle of Hammer was worse in a different way.
Not because it hurt more.
Because it demanded consistency.
The men at the anvils did not move like fighters. They moved like machines made of flesh: lift, strike, rotate, quench, lift again. Mist rose from troughs where hot iron met water, and it carried a sharp mineral smell that made Li Shen think of blood left too long on a blade.
He wasn't allowed to strike.
Not at first.
He carried. He fed. He held tongs while someone else's strength shaped the metal.
When they let him strike, it wasn't on anything that mattered.
Scraps. Rivets. Hooks. Ugly pieces that would disappear into crates and never be spoken of again.
He learned timing.
Not the hammer hitting metal—the hammer hitting rhythm.
Strike with the line so you didn't steal space.
Pause when the foreman's shadow crossed the floor because that meant something was about to be inspected.
Don't wipe sweat with the back of your hand unless you wanted soot in your eyes for the rest of the shift.
On the seventh day he missed a beat.
Just once.
The iron slipped a fraction under the tongs. It didn't fly. It didn't explode. It just shifted enough that the next strike landed wrong.
The man beside him didn't yell. He didn't need to.
He took the tongs out of Li Shen's hands, corrected the grip, and shoved them back without looking up.
"Again."
Li Shen's shoulders burned. He did it again.
And again.
By the end of that shift, he understood something the outside world never explained properly:
In the forge, mistakes didn't get punished with drama.
They got punished with repetition.
The Circle of Seal stayed distant.
A line of stone, slightly raised, ran across the floor. Past it, the air looked cleaner—still smoky, but controlled. Tables sat under racks of stamps and tags. Clerks moved between them with narrow brushes and narrow eyes. Iron pieces arrived on trays, got measured, got marked, got accepted or rejected without ceremony.
Li Shen never saw an elder.
He didn't need to.
Every rejection was an elder's hand, delivered through ink.
He watched whenever he could from the permitted side, because watching was cheaper than asking questions.
A stamp came down.
A tag got tied.
A crate got sealed.
A worker's week changed.
That was all the "high world" he needed.
The points came in the same way.
Not handed to him. Recorded.
A board near intake had rows of names and numbers that moved like weather. Li Shen learned to read it without staring—eyes sliding, memory catching. He learned that some numbers rose faster than they should have, and that the people attached to those numbers tended to walk with either confidence or fear.
His own line climbed slowly.
Not impressive.
But real.
On the third day, his name carried a new mark beside it: attendance verified.
On the fourth day, the first tranche posted.
Not as a coin. Not as a pouch.
As a number beside his name.
+60.
It sat there like permission and bait at the same time. Proof that the Pavilion paid. Proof that the Pavilion tracked.
Li Shen did not react.
He simply noted the timing: verification lag, posting delay, and therefore the window in which a clerk could "lose" something if it benefited them.
Ten days passed like that—compressed into the same sequence of heat, metal, and rules.
Wake before bell one.
Wash face fast, not to be clean—just to remove enough grit to see.
Jeton check.
Fire circle carry runs.
Hammer circle holds and timing.
One brief stop to drink water that tasted faintly of ash.
Then back into it until bell three made the air feel suddenly hollow.
On the sixth night, Li Shen came back to the dormitory with his throat raw and his fingers split in three places.
The room was dim. The air was stale with sweat and cheap soap.
Near the doorway, Yun Xue sat cross-legged with a needle and a torn strip of cloth. She stitched by lamplight like it was a private sin—small movements, careful, as if a louder gesture might get her noticed by the wrong eyes.
When Li Shen's shadow crossed the floor, she startled.
She shoved the cloth half under her knee, then realized that looked like hiding, and froze with both hands mid-motion.
"I—" she began, then swallowed. Her voice came out thin. "I'm sorry."
Li Shen stopped, confused for a heartbeat. "For what?"
Yun Xue's cheeks warmed. She shook her head too quickly, then bowed too fast, like apology was her default posture.
"Nothing," she whispered, which was obviously a lie, and she knew it.
She looked at his hands instead—at the cracks, the soot trapped in the lines. Her eyes widened a fraction, and she immediately tried to hide the reaction like caring was also a mistake.
"You're… breathing louder," she said, anxious, not accusing. "Is it… bad?"
"Smoke," Li Shen answered.
Yun Xue nodded like she had expected smoke and still hated that it was real. She fumbled the strip of cloth back into view, holding it with both hands the way she held anything that could be taken away.
"I found this," she said quickly. "It's— it's clean. From laundry. Someone left it. If it's not allowed, tell me and I'll put it back. I don't want… trouble."
She hesitated, then added, voice even smaller, "I thought… if you tie a second layer… it might slow it down."
Li Shen took the cloth.
It was folded and already knotted at both ends, but the knots were uneven—someone trying to be helpful while afraid of doing it wrong.
Yun Xue watched his fingers like she was waiting to be told she had wasted his time.
"It won't stop it," Li Shen said.
Her shoulders dipped, as if the sentence had confirmed a fear.
"But it will buy minutes," he finished.
Yun Xue exhaled too hard—relief visible—and then tried to erase it from her face as if relief was also a mistake.
"Good," she whispered. "Good."
Her gaze darted toward the far end of the dormitory where someone might overhear.
She lowered her voice further. "Bai Ren came back late," she said, then stopped herself. "I— I shouldn't… I just… he didn't talk. That usually means it hurt."
Li Shen nodded once.
Yun Xue's hands tightened in her lap. "He's… stubborn," she whispered, and the word sounded like admiration and fear tangled together.
Li Shen folded the cloth neatly and set it beside his pillow.
"Thank you," he said.
Yun Xue blinked at the thanks like she didn't know where to put it.
Then she bowed again, too fast.
"You're welcome," she whispered. "I… I'll try to find more if— if it's safe."
Li Shen didn't answer that. He let the silence do the work.
Yun Xue lowered her eyes and resumed stitching—small, careful, trying to make something in this place stay together without anyone noticing she had tried.
The next days tightened around that pattern.
The double layer helped. It didn't save him. It bought him minutes—enough to finish a carry run without coughing until his vision blurred, enough to keep his hands steady on tongs.
He learned how to tie it so it didn't slip when sweat soaked the knot.
He learned to breathe through his nose until the air got too thick, then switch to short mouth-breaths through cloth to stop his lungs from clawing.
He learned, most importantly, that endurance wasn't a heroic trait here.
It was a budget.
Spend too much of it on pride and you couldn't afford the next day.
By the ninth day, his cough had a rhythm.
Morning: shallow and dry.
Midday: harsh enough to scrape.
Night: quieter, but deeper—like his chest was storing ash.
He didn't complain about it.
He tracked it.
He tracked his hands too: where cracks opened, how long they took to seal, how the cheap salve disappeared into skin like water into dry earth.
He circulated Qi at night in controlled loops, not to "cultivate," but to keep blood flow stable and reduce swelling. Stage 1 wasn't power. It was maintenance.
On the tenth night, he opened his ledger.
Not the forge board. His.
He wrote in short lines, because long lines were for people with leisure.
Forge: 10 days.
Access: jeton honored. seal line enforced.
Points: steady climb. no spikes.
Prime tranche 1: posted day 4 (+60). delay noted.
Debt: throat raw. fingers split. cough tracked.
Qi: circulation reduces swelling. doesn't erase cost.
Rule: heat forgives nothing. paper forgives less.
He paused, pen hovering.
Across the dorm, someone laughed too loudly at a joke that wasn't funny. Someone else told him to shut up before the wrong ears heard.
Li Shen added one last line, careful with the wording like it mattered.
If it doesn't hurt, the Pavilion won't count it. If it hurts too much, the Pavilion will count you as replaceable.
He closed the ledger, wrapped it back into cloth, and lay down.
His hands throbbed in the dark, in time with the hammer he could still hear through walls.
Not because the work was calling him.
Because the work had gotten inside him, and it didn't leave just because bell three said the shift was over.
Tomorrow, he would go back—quiet, masked, stamped, and learning how to become useful without becoming profitable.