Pyrrhos is the hammer-hand at Hermon's Forge — a nobody they call Emberless, because he can't feel forge fire the way a real smith should. He's spent a thousand nights making the runeblades that kill dragons and hydras across the continent. On Assessment Day, he watches the guild crown his senior brother Deryk for a masterpiece called Firstlight: Pyrrhos's design, his three years of work, his signature scraped off the plans. When he demands his wages and walks, his master upends a sack on the anvil — ten rusted scraps. Then, in the dying furnace behind him, a thread of pure gold flame rises on its own.
Ten scraps is his starting stake. With a girl carrying a broken family sword, a landlord's back room, and a wartime order no one else will fill, he builds a forge out of nothing and starts scraping the paint off the guild's fake runes one blade at a time. But the fire in his hands isn't luck. It answers to a bloodline that traces back to Hephaestus himself, to a father who burned with his workshop rather than surrender the plans for the Godslayer, and to an order of ashes still hunting the seven fragments he scattered. Delphi has a name waiting for him. He'd rather earn one.
