You enter the chamber, and the air itself shudders. Not with fear— with expectation. The anvil waits. The hammer waits. But it is not iron they shape. It is you. Every vow you whispered in the dark becomes molten here, burning until only truth remains. "Strike," says the flame. Not to destroy. To engrave. The fracture you carried, the descent you endured— they are not ashes. They are ore. And fire remembers what stone forgets. When the hammer falls, you do not shatter. You resound.
