The Arcane Forge was never meant to be touched by mortal hands.
But then again, I wasn't mortal anymore.
We arrived cloaked in void-mist and memory wards, slipping between dimensional seals like shadow through lace. The Forge pulsed at the center of a shattered ring-world, suspended in a crater carved from the bones of a dead moon. It was alive—the Forge itself, not the Guild that squatted on top of it. You could feel its breath in the metal. Its heartbeat in the hammers.
And buried deep in its throat… was the god-fragment we came to steal.
The Celestial Key.
"It will sing to you," Eirin warned, voice hushed through the soul-comms. "Whatever you do, don't listen."
Too late.
I'd been hearing it for days.
Even now, standing on the outer gantries disguised as an ember-smith, I could feel the Key like a splinter in my soul. Not painful—intimate. Curious. Hungry.
Like it knew me.
The Arcane Forge Guild ran this place with the paranoia of prophets. Wards layered like scales. Elemental guards bred from starfire and iron. Every corridor rune-bound to snitch on intruders. But none of it mattered.
We had Lyra.
And Lyra had stolen the Forge's original map from a Vault-Scribe who mistook flirting for secrecy.
She unspooled it before us now, a breathing chart of molten veins and hidden passages. "The Core-lock opens for exactly twenty-four seconds every six cycles," she murmured. "That's when we move."
Kael adjusted the burn-seals on his gauntlet. "And what happens if we're still in there on the twenty-fifth second?"
"You dissolve," she said. "Spectacularly."
The plan was suicidal.
Which meant it was perfect.
The deeper we moved, the hotter the walls became—not with heat, but remembrance. The Forge remembered every weapon ever born within it. Every betrayal. Every flame-kissed vow.
I saw one of my own blades etched faintly into the wall.
One I forged in a different life.
A life that ended with fire in my lungs and iron through my ribs.
The Key knew.
It remembered me.
We reached the Core-lock on the sixth cycle.
Lyra chanted the override, Kael twisted the rune-hatch, and Eirin unbound a lunar veil to mask our presence. For twenty-four seconds, the mouth of the Forge opened like a divine wound.
We stepped through.
The Vault.
And at its center—levitating above a well of inverted starlight—the Celestial Key.
It wasn't a key in any literal sense. More like a shard of presence, shaped from condensed divinity. It thrummed with authority, forged from the marrow of a fallen star-deity who once ruled over gateways between fates. This wasn't just a relic.
It was a sovereign artifact.
With it, I could open doors not only across space—but through identity.
Through selves.
"Don't touch it," Eirin warned. "Let the containment field do the work."
I nodded.
And then touched it anyway.
The world didn't explode.
It breathed.
And for a single heartbeat, I wasn't just Aetherion.
I was every version of myself that had ever lived.
A scholar kneeling before a comet.
A tyrant wrapped in golden bone.
A child whispering to a dying star.
A lover.
A killer.
A god.
They all screamed.
And then went silent.
I gripped the Key.
Its light poured through me—not burning, but reforging.
And then the alarms began.
Eirin cursed in three dialects. "You overloaded the null-channel!"
"Sorry," I gasped. "I was curious."
Kael already had his sword drawn. "They're coming."
He didn't mean guards.
He meant the Custodians.
Six of them.
Forged from fused armor and runic willpower, animated by the breath of the Forge itself. They stepped through melted stone, eyes molten with star-script.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
The challenge was written in the air:
Return what was never yours.
We didn't.
The fight was a blur of light, metal, and impossible movement.
Eirin tore the gravity from one of them.
Lyra turned another to dust with her lunar scream.
Kael held two back with a void-etched spear.
And me?
I held the Key.
And the Key… held back.
It whispered through me.
Not words.
Commands.
I felt the laws of the Forge unfurl like a sacred text. I saw how each Custodian had been bound, their souls hammered into armor, their names stripped to fuel the machine. And with a breath, I spoke the Unmaking Word.
One Custodian froze mid-strike.
Cracked.
Shattered.
But speaking that word cost me.
The Forge bled into my veins.
Divinity is not meant to be wielded raw.
I staggered.
Kael caught me. "We're leaving. Now."
Lyra triggered the Rift-anchor.
The escape gate flared.
We ran.
The last thing I saw before the vault collapsed was a carving in the wall behind where the Key had floated.
An image.
Not of the Key.
Of me.
Holding it.
I didn't tell the others.
But the Forge had known I was coming.
Long before I knew to come.
Back at the safe zone, I studied the Key beneath starlight. Its glow had dimmed, but its pull hadn't.
Then, as I stared…
It opened.
Just a crack.
Enough to reveal an eye within.
It blinked.
And a voice filled my skull:
"You've stolen a god's heart, Sovereign. Now run."