The forge hall was not a place of glory. It was a place of smoke, heat, and endless repetition. Apprentices hammered nails, shaped fittings, repaired tools. Payment was small, but real. The sect did not teach forging as art. It taught forging as labor. The air was thick with coal dust, sweat, and the sharp tang of iron. Heat pressed outward, heavy and constant, clinging to skin until breath itself felt weighted.
Kael stepped inside. His axe remained at his side, but today the hammer was his burden. Iron lay stacked, dark and waiting. Sparks scattered as disciples struck, rhythm steady, power drawn from repetition more than skill. He lifted the hammer. The weight pressed downward, familiar, constant. His grip tightened. His breath slowed. He struck. The iron rang. Sparks scattered. His arm trembled. His chest burned. His breath collapsed. He struck again. The iron bent. He struck again. The shape formed.
Then memory surged. Not memory of Earth. Not memory of hunger. Transmission. Ten years ago, Old Master Ren had pressed knowledge into his mind. Not explained. Not taught. Imprinted. A universal being compressing infinite law into fragments a child could survive. Kael had lived with those fragments buried, dormant, waiting. Now, as the hammer struck, they surfaced. Heat was not fire. Heat was resistance. Metal was not matter. Metal was memory. Every strike was not impact. Every strike was negotiation.
The imprint was not gentle. It arrived as diagrams without labels, equations without numbers, sensations without context. He saw vectors, load paths, failure modes. He felt cracks before they formed. He understood forging not as craft, but as system. Ren's voice echoed faintly, not as sound, but as imprint: "Metal remembers pressure. If you strike without balance, it remembers failure. If you strike with balance, it remembers endurance."
Kael staggered. His chest burned. His breath collapsed. He struck again. The iron bent. The shape formed. The tool emerged. Payment would come. Coins would sustain. Hunger would be answered. But Kael's body remembered more than the sect expected. His stance aligned instinctively. His grip corrected without thought. His strikes carried weight not from muscle, but from balance. The overseer glanced at him, eyes dismissive, then paused. The tool was crude, but flawless in structure.
Noise before silence. Silence before endurance. Endurance before survival. Strike after strike, breath after collapse, endurance after pain. The repetition loop pressed inward.
The forge hall did not care. The sect did not notice. The coins would come. The meals would sustain. The hunger would press inward again. But Kael had begun to recall. Not fully. Not clearly. Not explained. But enough. Forging was not labor. Forging was law.
Verdict: The sect paid him in coins, but the iron paid him in scars. Both were debts.