Eight more winters melted into the deep roots of the forest. I was twenty years old now.
My body had long since ceased to belong to the standard mold of a man. I stood over seven feet tall, a mountain of sleek, dense muscle and hard bone that didn't know the meaning of fatigue. My mind operated in a state of quiet, perpetual synchronization, and the golden pool of magic in my chest was warm, stable, and ready to be summoned once more.
But the true victory of the last eight years lay resting in the corners of my cabin. I had spent nearly a decade discovering the maddening, miraculous reality of working with a ton of the newly named metal I created, Mythril.
Normal forge fires couldn't touch it. It wasn't a dead alloy to be melted and poured; it was a living metal, deeply bound to the raw fertility and vitality magic of this pristine era. To shape it, I had to use willpower. I couldn't just swing a hammer blindly. Every single strike required me to stand perfectly still for a full minute, gathering the 'shaping intent' within my mind, projecting the exact blueprint into the metal, and then striking. A single chest piece took months of rhythmic, exhausting focus.
Furthermore, because it was alive, it grew. It didn't just sit static; over the years, the forged items absorbed the ambient currents of the earth, slowly evolving and sprouting their own unique, instinctual magic properties. Because they possessed a pulse of their own, I couldn't treat them like tools. I had to name them, just as I would name a living creature of the wild.
Looking around the cabin, the fruits of my decade of labor shivered with a faint shine:
The Forge Tools (Verdelon): Before I could shape anything else, I had to shape the tools to do it. Verdelon was a matched set of a heavy forging hammer, tongs, and an anvil cap. Because they were the first to be born from my focused intent, they possessed a unique evolutionary trait: they never suffered from structural fatigue, and any raw metal struck by Verdelon became slightly more compliant to my mind-sight, easing the agonizing minute of focus required for subsequent shapes.
The Scale mail (Nolor): A full suit of overlapping micro-scales stitched carefully onto a heavy elk-hide under-armor. I named it Nolor. Over the years, the armor had grown a layer of moss-like silver filaments that vibrated softly against my skin. It didn't just protect me; it created a kind of comfort that one might find similar to soft silk. It was incredibly comfortable.
The Large Axe (Shatol): My primary weapon and tool, a massive, long-hafted battleaxe with a heavy, crescent blade on one side and a reinforced pick on the back for splitting ancient timbers or piercing the skulls of armored threats. I named it Shatol. The blade seemed to have 'liked' my intent on being sharp a bit too much and it seemed to have developed a bit of abnormal sharpness and durability even beyond the normal range.
The Tower Shield (Woln): A massive, rectangular shield of solid, silver-white Mythril. Across its face, I had spent a year hand-carving an intricate, mathematical pattern of a crescent moon cradling a howling wolf. I named it Woln. Its magic trait seems to be immobility or at least I seem to be anchored in place when full focused on using it.
I strapped Shatol, my axe, to my back while slinging a large leather bag over my shoulder.
*Whine* *Whine*
The sounds of wolves whining came from the pack behind me. Some of the original wolves had already passed away from the long years and it was time for me to leave here.
"I still need to figure out what's happening outside."
The wooden archway of my cabin fell behind me, and with it, twenty years of isolation.
The morning air down by the upper banks of the Mander tasted fresh and heavy, thick with a primitive, unblemished potency. A low, white fog clung to the river's surface, swirling around the roots of ancient, uncarved oaks that stood like silent guardians in the mist. My mind-sight continuously mapped the thrum of the earth.
I moved through the dense brush like a ghost. Despite my staggering seven-foot frame and the hidden weight of my hard bones, I was entirely weightless. My dense muscles glided with a sleek, effortless geometry, weaving through thorns and snapping twigs without making a single sound. I was one of the few apex predators who navigate this world like a playground.
As I traveled further south down the valley, the primeval wilderness began to show signs of a new scar: humanity.
I paused on a high, mossy ridge, my mind-sight picking up a small, crude cluster of hide tents and low, unshaped dirt mounds. A small column of grey smoke drifted from a central fire pit. It was a primitive First Men camp. Slipping down a muddy slope to get a closer look, I stepped out from behind a massive sentinel tree, only to freeze.
A lone hunter was standing near the brush, sharpening a crude flint knife.
The moment his eyes locked onto me, his breath caught in his throat. I wasn't wearing raw animal skins like him; I was clad in the shimmering, silver scales of Nolor, with the massive crescent blade Shatol resting over my shoulder. My height and broad frame made me look less like a man and more like a half-breed giant born from the mountain peaks.
His face drained of all color. He dropped his flint blade into the mud, his chest heaving as a strangled, superstitious scream ripped from his lungs. He stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet, and scrambled toward his tents, shrieking a barrage of harsh, guttural noises I couldn't yet understand.
A cold, familiar sting of disappointment washed over me. I didn't linger. I turned on my heel and burst into a full sprint, leaving the camp far behind in a blur of green. I couldn't fit in with the men of this era. To them, I would never be a brother or a chieftain. I was an outcast.
I slowed my pace back to a steady, rhythmic jog, intentionally focusing my mind on the landscape to distract myself from the isolation. Occasionally, I would stop by the exposed rock faces of the deep gorges, running my fingers over the stone. Using my past-life memories of mineralogy and my sensitivity to magic, I tested the surface lines, looking for untapped veins of tin, copper, or rare crystalline deposits that I could remember for later.
But my quiet survey was violently cut short.
A sudden, deafening roar tore through the canopy, a sound so raw and guttural it vibrated right through the heavy plates of Nolor and rattled my chest. The birds exploded from the branches above in a panicked black cloud. Following the sound was a massive, splintering commotion—the unmistakable, earth-shaking crash of ancient trees being snapped like twigs.
I gripped the leather-wrapped haft of Shatol, my double-heartbeat remaining perfectly steady as I bounded toward the edge of a massive, rocky clearing.
Through the dust and shattered wood, a fourteen-foot-tall, fur-covered giant was stumbling backward, bleeding profusely. And leaping straight toward it was a prehistoric sovereign of a shadowcat, its saber-teeth bared for the kill.