Gray Chronicle

Chapter 5 The Sound of Forging

Lynn woke up to the dwarf's snoring.

He wasn't awakened by the pain. His left hand fingers curled up on their own—the wound was healing, and the itching during healing was harder to ignore than the pain. He stared at the ceiling for a while. The bluish-black moss on the brick arch, in the dim light of the gray mist, resembled a faded map, marking centuries of dampness and drought.

He tried moving his left arm. The abrasive powder Old Tok had applied last night was working. The redness and swelling around the wound had subsided by half a circle, and the exudate had formed a thin scab. The "risk of infection" on the crystal slide jumped from "low" to "none".

He sat up.

Ellie was gone. The tattered blanket was neatly folded and placed in the corner of the waterway, with a fist-sized rock on top—not to prevent the blanket from being blown away, but a habit ingrained in the bones of the lower city: things must be weighed down with heavy objects, otherwise they might be gone when you come back.

Old Tok was still sitting by the fire pit. His posture was exactly the same as last night, his back straight and his shoulders relaxed, as if he hadn't moved at all. But the firewood in the pit was fresh, and the water in the iron pot was steaming.

"When did she leave?"

"When the bell struck five," old Tok said without opening his eyes, "he went to the bakery to return the money. Four copper coins."

Lynn touched the pouch at his waist. Four copper coins were indeed missing—not by him, but by Ellie herself. He remembered old Tok saying last night, "Return them tomorrow," so it seemed the dwarf had counted the coins and placed them where Ellie could reach them while he slept.

"She said she would come back," old Tok added.

Lynn didn't ask, "Do you believe me?" In the Lower City, a person in debt has the opportunity to pay it off; whether she comes back or not is her own choice. But he remembered Ellie's tone last night when she said, "Four copper coins are enough for you to eat for two days"—it sounded like she was discouraging him from accepting someone else's sacrifice. That person will probably come back.

Old Tok finally opened his eyes. In the firelight, his eyes looked like two freshly forged iron ingots—cold, but heavy.

"hammer."

Lynn picked up the rune hammer from beside him.

Looking at it again during the day, the wear marks on the hammerhead were even clearer than the night before. It wasn't rust, nor was it from impact; it was the kind of uniform, almost deliberate curvature formed by decades of repeated striking at the same angle. The sheen on the hammer handle wasn't paint; it was the result of sweat and time seeping in layer by layer—the wood fibers had been soaked in for decades, changing in color from light brown to a dark brown that was almost black, and it felt warm and smooth like old bone.

The runestone at the end of the hammer handle appeared even dimmer in the daytime.

"See that groove?" Old Tok pointed to the connection between the hammerhead and the handle.

Lynn leaned closer to examine it. There was indeed a groove around the joint, inlaid with fine, hair-like gray-green patterns—not carved decorations, but more like traces left by something repeatedly flowing here. Traces of gray erosion and crystallization.

"This spot is called the 'calling slot.'" Old Tok's voice was slow, each word sounding as if it had been forged before he spoke. "Ordinary hammers don't have this. Rune blacksmiths' hammers have a runestone embedded in the handle, and a calling slot at the connection between the hammerhead and the hammer. When you're hammering—not with every strike, but when you hit a certain point and the etched crystals in the iron start to 'respond' to you—the runestone is activated, and the etched patterns flow down the handle into the calling slot, then are transmitted into the iron through the force of the hammerhead."

He paused.

"This is rune forging. It's not about smearing ash powder on the surface of iron; it's about making every hammer blow carry the 'pulse' of ash. The ash crystals in the iron aren't dead impurities; they're alive. They're just asleep."

Lynn gripped the hammer handle tightly. His weapon-holding proficiency had jumped to 1.3% after holding the hammer handle all night, but what he felt now was no longer muscle memory of "how to hold it more steadily," but something else—this hammer was not a tool. It was an eighty-year-old dwarf's craftsmanship, shame, and resentment, all compressed into the joint between this piece of wood and iron ingot.

"Knock." Old Tok picked up a bent iron nail, about the thickness of a finger, from the pile of scrap metal, placed it on the flat stone that served as an anvil, and said, "Straighten it."

Lynn raised the hammer.

The first blow. The hammerhead landed at the highest point of the nail's bend, but the force was off—he was using a knife-grip technique, his thumb and forefinger were too tight, and the hammerhead struck at an angle that was half an inch off. The nail didn't straighten; instead, it left a shallow dent at the bend.

"Let's start over."

The second strike. He relaxed his grip, allowing the hammer handle a slight amount of room to slide in his palm. As the hammer fell, the rebound force traveled back to his hand along the handle—the force was right, but the placement was off. The bent part of the nail was flattened by the hammer, while the other half remained completely still.

"Let's start over."

The third blow. The strike was precise, the force just right. The bent part of the nail was completely straightened—but as it was straightened, the other end warped. Old Tok didn't say stop. Lynn continued. The fourth blow corrected the warping. The fifth blow revealed that this blow had caused a new, slight bend. The sixth blow corrected the slight bend. The seventh blow revealed that a piece of rust had been knocked off the nail's surface, revealing grayish-green crystalline patterns underneath.

He suddenly understood something.

It's not as simple as just hammering a nail straight. Every hammer blow creates a new deviation during the straightening process—some deviations are visible to the naked eye, while others are so subtle that only the iron itself can feel them. And the iron will "speak": through the force of the rebound, through the sound, through the subtle differences in the contact surface of the hammerhead with the next blow.

On the crystal slice, weapon grip jumped to 1.4%.

No. It's not just holding that's rising.

He glanced at it as he tapped—the metal material identification score jumped to 0.5%. The waste sorting score jumped to 0.5%.

These two progress bars started accumulating last night when he was sorting scrap metal. But they are continuing to rise now, not because he is doing sorting work, but because with each hammer blow, he is getting a more precise sense of the "personality" of this piece of iron: its hardness, brittleness, degree of rust, and density of crystal distribution—these are not things he sees with his eyes, but things the hammer tells him.

Eleventh hammer blow. The nail finally straightened.

It's not perfectly straight—the curvature has disappeared, but the nail's surface bears a dozen hammer marks of varying depths, with a tiny crack at the end. At first glance, it appears straight, but closer inspection reveals the traces of these corrections.

"Alright," said old Tok.

The dwarf picked up the iron nail and examined it slowly in the firelight. He wasn't checking for bends, but rather reading the hammer marks. Each mark told him how Lynn had gripped the hammer, the tightness of his grip, and whether he had hesitated when applying force.

Silent for a long time.

"Did you used to be a blacksmith?"

"no."

"Then how did you know whether to loosen or tighten your grip when you first started using a hammer?"

Lynn couldn't answer. He couldn't very well say, "There was a mirror in my field of vision that just told me I was holding it wrong." But old Tok didn't press the matter. The dwarf simply set the nail aside and picked up another bent nail from the scrap heap.

"Knock it again. This one's even more rusty."

The second nail was indeed worse. The corrosion penetrated deep into the iron, and the bent section not only showed bending deformation but also contained a brittle layer formed by excessive growth of ash crystals. The first hammer blow—with a little too much force—and the nail broke right at the bend.

Lynn stared at the broken edge.

The fracture surface displayed three distinct color layers: the outermost layer was a dark brown rust layer, the middle layer was a grayish-green area rich in etched crystals, and the core was the grayish-white metal itself—only the size of a little fingernail, encased in layers. He recalled what old Tok had said last night: "Runesmiths can bring to life the etched crystals hidden within iron." Did that mean that the goal of forging wasn't to remove the crystals, but rather to make them flow?

"You saw it?" Old Tok's voice came from behind him.

"I can see three floors."

“Most people can only see two layers. Rust and iron.” The dwarf pointed to the grayish-green layer at the break in the metal with his short, stubby fingers. “The rust crystals grow between the rust and the iron. Ordinary blacksmiths remove it as an impurity. Rune blacksmiths—let it flow again within the iron.”

He picked up the broken nail and twirled it in the firelight: "The ash layer on this nail is too thick; it's become fused with the rust. You can't hammer it directly; you have to—"

Old Tok stopped. He looked at Lynn.

Where are your eyes looking?

Lynn was indeed looking elsewhere. Not at the broken edge of the nail—but at a slice of crystal.

In the proficiency tracking section, below the fixed text on basic throwing, two new entries quietly appeared. They weren't proficiency percentages, but rather grayed-out, unactivated, unlockable terms. These weren't records of what he had "done." They were the mirror telling him: his body had reached the threshold for these skills, but he hadn't actually mastered them yet. He tried to focus his attention on those two gray lines of text.

There was no response. Only the cool, crystalline touch and a brief message appeared: "[This action was not completed. Unable to be logged.]"

Incomplete. It's not that he can't do it, it's that he hasn't done it yet.

He looked away.

"It's nothing. I'm looking at the three-layer structure of the fracture."

Old Tok stared at him for two seconds. He didn't ask any further questions.

"Straighten the other one."

Over the next two hours, Lynn straightened seven nails. Two broke.

When the seventh nail hit the ground, the sound was different.

The iron beneath his hammer emitted a low, resonant sound—not the crisp clang of metal striking metal, but a deeper resonance that lasted about half a beat. Lynn could feel the runestone at the end of the hammer handle tremble slightly. It wasn't glowing, nor was it heating up; it just trembled. Like something that had been asleep for decades turning over in a dream, then falling back into a deep sleep.

Old Tok suddenly looked up.

"Strike again. Same spot. Same force."

Lynn aimed at the spot where the nail had just made a low hum, controlled the tension in his hand, and brought it down.

There was no low hum.

"It was off by half a degree." Old Tok's voice deepened. "That hammer blow just now hit the 'vein' of the iron—the ash crystals aren't evenly distributed in the iron; they have their own channels. If you hit a channel, the crystals will respond. If you hit off, it's just a normal hammer blow."

He stood up—at 1.4 meters tall, he looked like a moving anvil when he walked up to Lynn—and took the hammer from Lynn's hand, placing it in his own palm.

"The first lesson in rune forging isn't how to hammer. It's learning to 'listen'—when iron is struck, different locations, depths, and crystal densities produce different sounds. A crisp sound comes from the pure iron zone. A dull sound comes from the rusted zone. A low hum comes from the ash-corroded channels."

He tapped the end of the nail lightly with a hammer.

"listen."

Then hammer it into the middle of the nail.

"listen."

Finally, knock on the base of the nail where it bends.

"listen."

Three strikes, three different sounds. The end is a crisp tinkling, the middle a dull thud, and the root—a brief low hum that dissipates in less than half a beat.

Lynn closed his eyes. The sound of the three taps still echoed in his mind. It wasn't a coincidence—three locations, three sounds, three different internal structures of the iron material, all transmitting information through vibration. He wasn't aware of what he was doing; he was simply instinctively comparing the numbers on the crystal slice with the sound waves his ears received. His proficiency in identifying metal materials was increasing, but not by "+0.1," but by jumping from 0.5 to 0.8, then to 1.2—each accurate identification was accumulating at an accelerated pace.

"Can you hear me?" came old Tok's voice.

Lynn opened his eyes.

"The end is a pure iron zone. The rust layer in the middle is too thick, so the sound is muffled. There are gray erosion channels at the root—the low rumble lasts for about a quarter of a beat."

Old Tok's eyes narrowed. In the firelight, those eyes suddenly took on a different temperature—not the cold scrutiny of the previous night, but more like iron being heated to a critical point in the furnace, its surface beginning to glow a dark red. He didn't speak, but simply returned the hammer to Lynn and pulled another piece of iron from the scrap heap—this time not a nail, but a piece of scrap iron about the thickness of a thumb and about twenty centimeters long.

"Strike. Use the same technique as before, strike from one end to the other. Spacing each strike about half a finger's width apart. Don't look, just listen."

Lynn wasn't sure if this was a "first lesson" or a "test." It could be both. He raised the hammer.

The first hammer blow. Clang, crisp. Pure iron. The second hammer blow, half a finger's width away. Clang, still crisp. The third hammer blow. Clang—no, the sound trails off a bit. The fourth hammer blow—

Half an hour later, he finished hammering the entire iron bar. He didn't open his eyes during the process. Two hammer blows produced brief, low hums, and he remembered those locations. The next blow sounded wrong—not crisp, not dull, not a low hum, but a cracking sound like stepping on rotten wood. He used less force and struck that spot again, this time producing a deep hum—a thin, eroded channel.

When the hammer was put down, the metal material recognition jumped to 2.1%.

Old Tok took the iron bar and examined it. Then he put it aside.

"That piece that made a cracking sound—it's not that you hit it too hard, it's that the iron piece is rotten. The ash and crystals have eaten away at the iron, leaving only a layer of rust holding it together. If you hit it any harder, it will break."

The dwarf sat back down by the fire and sprinkled some ash powder into the hot water in the iron pot. Steam rose, carrying with it a strange, fresh aroma.

“I’ve taught apprentices in the Hephaestus Federation for forty-three years. About one or two a year can distinguish between pure iron and rusted iron on their first day. But someone who can hear the difference in gray erosion channels on their first day—” He looked at Lynn, “you’re not gifted. Your ears are no different from an ordinary person’s. But you have something—I don’t know what it is—that allows you to perceive very subtle differences.”

Lynn did not answer. The crystal slice floated silently in the corner of her field of vision.

Old Tok didn't ask any further questions. The dwarf simply poured the hot water from the iron pot into a chipped earthenware cup and handed it to him.

"We'll continue this afternoon. Straightening the nail is only the first step. The next step is to flatten the iron sheet. The veins on the iron sheet are denser than those on the nail, making it easier to hear a low hum. But it's also easier to crush the ash crystals—if you apply too much force, the crystals will shatter inside the iron."

He paused, and something in those iron-like eyes—not expectation, but something more solid than expectation.

"Then I'll teach you how to quench it. Not with ordinary water—it's with sulfur-containing water from deep underground rivers, mixed with three parts ash-etching powder. When you quench it, the ash-etching patterns in the iron will be 'fixed,' like the scars that form after blood has dried."

Lynn held the ceramic cup. The hot water seeped through the ceramic walls, scalding his fingers.

"Forging blacksmithing is 20% technique and 80% feel; feel is 70% practice and 30% perception—you've maxed out your perception."

But before quenching, the iron sheet needs to be hammered. Before hammering the iron sheet, the iron nails need to be hammered in.

He finished his water and picked up the hammer again. Old Tok watched his movements—the instantaneous adjustment of his grip, the angle between his wrist and the hammer handle, the distribution of force on the iron as it fell—without saying a word. He simply let out a heavy sigh.

It wasn't a sigh. Lynn called it "rectification"—when he wanted to say something but wouldn't, he used this sound to express it for him.

On the crystal slice, weapon grip jumped to 1.6%. Scrap sorting jumped to 0.8%. Metal material recognition remained steadily at 2.1%.

The firewood crackled in the hearth. The dwarf leaned against the brick wall with his eyes closed, his left hand, missing half a little finger, resting on his knee, while the burn scars on his right hand gleamed dark red in the firelight. For a fleeting moment, old Tok's lips twitched.

It's not a laugh. It's the first layer of dark red luster that appears on the surface of iron when it's heated in a furnace to the perfect temperature for quenching.

The afternoon's metal-hammering lesson was interrupted by footsteps in the alleyway.

Lynn heard the sound first. Not footsteps—the brick arch structure of the old canal had a unique way of transmitting sound; most of the high frequencies of sound transmitted from the ground were filtered out by the brick walls, leaving only low-frequency vibrations. He could sense five or six people approaching the mill entrance. It wasn't the rhythm of ordinary passing footsteps. It was the rhythm of searching—stopping, moving, and stopping again.

Ellie squeezed through the crack in the waterway entrance. The bakery IOU had been paid off, and she had an old scar on her wrist, but the bruise from the rope was still there. She was out of breath, and the agility of her halfling blood couldn't mask her nervousness.

"Rice has brought five men. One of them isn't from the downtown area—he's wearing boots."

People in the lower town don't wear boots. They go barefoot or in straw sandals. Leather boots are a symbol of adventurers, guards, and gang thugs. Kirk's orc blood gave him strength far beyond his years. And the one wearing boots—Lynn knew—Rice had found an adult ally.

"How far?"

"Two alleys. They checked the cooper's workshop and found you weren't there—they're asking house to house now."

Lynn looked at old Tork. The dwarf didn't get up. He picked up a hammer from the fire pit—not the runic hammer, but another one tucked away in the corner. The hammerhead was twice the size of the runic hammer, rusty and, in the dwarf's short, stocky hand, it looked like a brick casually picked up.

"There's an underground tributary behind the waterway. Going deeper in, you can circle around to the abandoned mill on the west side of the lower town," Old Tok said in the same tone. "But the entrance to the underground tributary is narrow; a halfling can squeeze through. You'll have to squeeze sideways."

"I am not a halfling."

"Didn't you notice?" Old Tok glanced at Ellie. "From last night until just now, I only told you that two people could come in—just a crack and you could squeeze in. You were just squeezing sideways."

"There are five of them. You—"

“I’ve been sitting here for a long time,” Old Tok said. “The guards, gangs, and debt collectors in the lower city of Graymist all know that a dwarf who was driven out of the Commonwealth lives in this waterway. They don’t come to me, not because I’m being polite—it’s because last time someone came to collect protection money, I smashed his kneecap with a hammer.”

He said "break your knee" in the exact same tone as he said "use this to straighten the nail."

"Go now. Take the hammer with you. Return it to me when you return it."

Lynn glanced at the runic hammer—the grooves on the head, the runic stones on the handle, all dimmed from eighty years of neglect. The dwarf's instruction to take the hammer spoke volumes.

He tucked the hammer into the cloth bag at his waist. The bag became heavier. Ellie had already disappeared into the depths of the waterway, with Lynn following behind.

The sound of bricks shifting came from behind. Old Tok was striking the brick wall beside the hearth with his hammer—three strikes, a pause, two strikes. The same signal as the night watchman's patrol signal from the previous night, but the rhythm was reversed. In the lower town, this reversed signal had only one purpose: to inform his colleagues in the alleyways that someone was approaching and to prepare for action.