The air hung heavy with the scent of scorched coal and something more ancient still—an essence sacred, as if the breath of forgotten gods clung to the stone. Daméas moved like a priest of flame, each rise and fall of his arm a sacred gesture, hammering not just metal, but meaning. Sparks burst with the brilliance of dying stars, painting his face in constellations of fire and shadow—half man, half myth. He did not shape the blade; he summoned it. And the metal, groaning under the weight of purpose, seemed to remember what it was meant to become. Not a weapon—but a warning. Not steel—but fate. It was not a man who wielded the hammer, but something more—a figure carved by heat and time, half-myth, half-memory. The metal beneath his hands did not resist; it wept, it yielded, it sang. And in its song lived the sorrow of creation, the pain of shaping destiny with iron and fire. Daméas stood in that sacred blaze, a silhouette etched in smoke and light, crafting not merely a weapon—but a legend yet unnamed.

  Daméas stood alone in the sacred furnace, his skin glowing beneath the furious light. The fire licked his face, casting it in shifting planes of gold and shadow. Where others would choke on the heat, he seemed to draw strength from it. It wrapped around him—not to burn, but to welcome. The forge knew him.

  He was not forging a mere sword. He was shaping a weapon that history itself awaited. A blade wrought to shoulder the burden of fate—to cleave through time itself with unflinching resolve. Commissioned by the King of the Gods, it was to be the Olympians’ will made steel, destined for the war that loomed against the Titans. They said it bore the mark of lightning, was tempered in immortal blood, and that no weapon forged before or after would ever equal its power.

  And who, if not Daméas — master blacksmith, born of flames, blessed by Hephaestus — could have been entrusted with such a task?

  Sweat trickled down his temples, but he was unaware of it, paying it no mind. He forged in a state of trance, his precise movements dictated by an ancient rhythm only he could hear. Every strike of his hammer was a prayer, every spark an offering of steel. The gods were watching him, he was certain of it. From the moment, as a child, he had plunged his bare hands into the embers to save a sacred blade, he knew he belonged to them. He no longer felt like a man, but rather something forged by the gods themselves — an instrument shaped for a divine purpose.

  And yet... something was wrong.

  When he plunged the reddened sword into the basin, the water did not crackle. It whispered. A faint hiss rose, almost a whisper, as if the blade refused to cool. A mist rose, denser than usual, thickening and floating slowly around him, wrapping around his arms, caressing his skin. The metal no longer sang. Silence fell, deep, oppressive.

  Daméas shivered. This was not a physical reaction but an inner alarm, an instinct he had never felt in the forge. His hand, though accustomed to flames and iron, hesitated for a fraction of a second. A tiny, imperceptible movement. But enough to sow doubt. A doubt as fleeting as a spark, but one that left an indelible mark on his mind.

  He placed the sword on the anvil and allowed himself a moment to contemplate it.

  It was perfect. Just like him.

  A blade of perfect equilibrium—flawless, serene, as if forged from stillness itself. It breathed beneath the light, not like metal, but like something alive. The runes etched into its hilt shimmered faintly, pulsing with a quiet rhythm, as though dreaming, as though listening. In its silence, it carried the hush of destiny, the weightless poise of a question not yet asked, but already answered.

  And yet, deep within, an invisible crack had just appeared. An intuition. An unease.

  A sigh escaped him. Abandoning the sacred weapon, he wiped his hands on his leather apron, weathered by years, and slowly walked to the wide stone window. He cherished this moment, just before nightfall, when the sky’s fire yielded to that of men. Outside, the day was dying in a magnificent agony. The sky blazed in purples and golds. Torches lit one by one in the city, like fallen stars scattered on the earth.

  In the distance, the mountains etched a black line, eternal sentinels indifferent to the clamor of human wars.

  In the courtyard, a figure caught his eye.

  Erissa.

  His wife. Draped in a white gown, she moved slowly, as though carried by the wind. The folds of the fabric glided against her hips with an almost unreal grace. Her gold and jade jewelry glimmered faintly, and her black hair caught the last glimmers of the day. She moved as if weightless, detached, like she belonged to a world that wasn’t quite the same as his.

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  Erissa.

  She is beautiful, he thought. Majestic. Unattainable.

  But there was something… off. A distance in her eyes, in her movements.

  He remembered their early years, when she would join him in the forge, sitting by the fire, her eyes shining with admiration. She would laugh, a clear laugh, each time sparks rose like golden fireflies. Back then, she would touch his calloused hands without fear, finding them beautiful. Today, she no longer looked at him the same way.

  Had she ever loved him, or just the legend of him—the man forged by the gods? Had she found another gaze? Another warmth? He watched her, noting the distance in her gaze, the air of aloofness.

  Why did she always smile when he wasn’t looking? Why did the words whispered to the servants vanish the moment he entered the room?

  Erissa.

  Her beauty, which once inspired him, now seemed foreign. Like a perfect mask… behind which something was hidden.

  Daméas furrowed his brow. She had been distant for some time now. She was absent, in her movements, in her silences. She smiled at him gently, but it was no longer the same smile. He had seen a strange light in her eyes, a reflection he couldn’t understand. He had heard her whispering softly, for no reason, to the walls or to shadows. He had caught exchanged glances with her maids, stifled bursts of laughter that stopped when he entered. He had seen her whispering into the ear of a servant, laughing quietly at words he didn’t understand, as though they were spoken in a language Daméas couldn’t comprehend.

  He tried to dismiss the thought.

  But it insisted.

  Erissa.

  She is hiding something from me.

  She is betraying me.

  It’s her fault.

  And in that internal silence, in that suffocating heat that followed him even outside the forge, another fire ignited. More intense. More painful.

  Jealousy.

  It began like a spark lost in the ashes, and spread quickly.

  Daméas had never been a weak man.

  The gods themselves recognized his worth.

  How could Erissa, mortal above all, have… dared?

  He mistrusted her silences, her absences. He sensed stolen letters, promises whispered in the dark. And the more he doubted, the more the doubt grew.

  Erissa.

  She looks at me as though I’ve become invisible.

  Perhaps she loved someone else. A noble. A god.

  Perhaps she had been approached.

  Perhaps even… she had never stopped playing a role, and he had never truly known her..

  And in this theater of shadows, Daméas, hero and blacksmith of fate, felt nothing more than a mere extra.

  He closed his eyes. For a long time.

  What he felt couldn’t be spoken. It was a slow poison. A trickle of anxiety flowing drop by drop in his chest. He didn’t want to believe her guilty. He didn’t want to doubt her. But he was no longer a young man, blinded by promises. He had seen empires fall for less than a glance, divine oaths broken for a caress.

  Erissa.

  She was everything to me.

  It wasn’t just jealousy. It was fear. The fear of being nothing but a tool in the grand celestial machine. A puppet crafted to perform a task, then discarded once the work was done.

  Erissa.

  What if she…

  Had she ever truly loved him, or had it always been the myth he had become?

  What if what she had desired was the brilliance of his name, the flame of his forge, the proximity to the gods?

  He hated himself for thinking about it. Every thought was a betrayal, every doubt a blade struck against himself. But the thoughts came nonetheless, inexorable, like a storm above the mountains.

  He wanted to go down, take her in his arms, kiss her until all the suspicions faded. He wanted to feel the truth beneath his fingers, the warmth of their shared past. But he did nothing.

  He stood there, frozen. A spectator of his own life.

  The flames behind him flickered, as though he himself had faltered.

  The gods made me forge a weapon for their war…

  …but they gave me nothing to defend my heart.

  A sudden, sharp crack pulled him from his thoughts.

  He turned.

  The air seemed to freeze.

  In the doorway, a figure stood.

  Small. Bent. Draped in a linen cloak faded by time, patched in a thousand places. A hood swallowed its features, revealing only a parchment-dry chin, withered like a root. It leaned on a gnarled staff carved with symbols worn by age, which seemed to move under the light like sleeping serpents.

  A bone mask covered its face. An animal jaw, split at the brow, adorned with tarnished feathers and tiny teeth. It seemed carved from the remains of a forgotten predator, something so ancient it no longer had a name. Shreds of leather hung from its sleeves, stained by ash and dried blood.

  But it was its eyes that suspended time.

  Two gleaming shards of pure silver. Still. Piercing. As if they had seen the beginning of the world… and patiently awaited its end. They shone behind the mask, unblinking, piercing Daméas without violence, but without turning away. No breath escaped the figure. Even the fire behind him seemed silent. The entire forge held its breath.

  Daméas felt his heart contract. A pressure, dull, familiar, and sacred. An ancient vertigo, the one felt before an augury, before a presence that does not look at you as a man, but as a fragment of prophecy.

  The Oracle.

  Not a woman. Not a mortal. A voice.

  An instrument of the gods, older than the throne of Olympus.

  Her arrival was never trivial. She came in uncertain hours, where the shadow of choices became heavier than their consequences. And she rarely came alone. She brought words… and what followed the words.

  Daméas felt his hands grow damp, something that hadn’t happened since childhood.

  The blade was still warm on the anvil.

  And suddenly, he understood.

  She wasn’t here for the war.

  She was here for him.