Lucas sat on the floor, materials spread before him in careful piles. There were the flameback wolf teeth, finger-length and white with some yellowing. Small folds of wolf hide, the red fur still remarkably coarse under his fingertips, not having rotted in the slightest. And finally, a long tusk, its white surface had a yellow tinge to it and curved like a scythe.
The blueprint rested in the middle of this hodgepodge of material, its laminate-like surface catching the light from the window.
On the bed—his mother’s bed—Roland kicked his short legs, heels thumping against the bed frame in an absent rhythm. He’d been watching for the past few minutes, boredom radiating off him in waves.
It was fair enough. The kid had been stuck in this room most of the day, organising. A task their mother had probably given him no choice in, though it wasn’t like he could have done anything else.
Lucas’s gaze flickered to the work his brother and Sasha had put in, which sat there just beneath the window. Stacked piles of canned goods lined the wall, labels facing outward. Evenly folded stacks of clothes sat beside them in neat columns. The presentation was slightly shoddy; a few of the clothes probably could have used tighter folds. But his brother and Sasha had done well enough.
“What are those things?” Roland asked, resting his elbow on his leg and propping up his chin with his hand.
Lucas looked over. “Nothing. Just a few things I want to combine to make some armour.”
“Oh, you’re making something?” Roland’s face lit up. “Is it like Minecraft?”
“No.” Lucas sighed, hoping his exasperation wasn’t too clear.
But what was he to do? His little brother seemed to equate anything involving outdoor work or, to be honest, using one’s hands in general, with Minecraft. Probably a fair comparison, in a sense. After all, the aim of the game was to dig holes and put blocks together to make equipment. And Lucas supposed he was doing just that—well, at least the latter.
“It’s not like anything you’ve ever seen, Roland. Do you remember before you started secondary school? You saw the science demonstrations and the bubbles the teacher made, which caused you to have an obsession with the kitchen soap for a week?”
“Yes.” The little scamp blushed, embarrassment running up his neck, as he mumbled something to himself.
“It’s like that. Something new. Something magical.” Lucas emphasised the word and got the desired effect.
Roland’s eyes practically sparkled, redness gone. He leaned forward, taking in the materials, his face scrunching as he tried to figure out what they’d make. Then he hopped off the bed and dropped to his knees, scooting closer.
Lucas raised a hand. “Just wait right there. I’m going to do something with them, and then I’ll let you try out what I make. Deal?”
Roland tilted his head. Pouted. And then leaned back against the bed. “All right.”
The boy said words he didn’t mean with such ease. Lucas could see mischief brewing beneath that agreement. He probably had only a few moments before Roland leapt forward and tried to grab something. Preferring to wait until Lucas was at his most distracted before causing chaos.
Perhaps he should have insisted that Isabelle wait in the room with them to prevent his brother from doing anything stupid. But the girl had already told Lucas she needed to go talk to Sasha. Something about discussing their father’s death.
In Lucas’s opinion, though, the little girl was smart. Sasha was taking in the world for what it was, seeing the horror unfolding. She’d probably be scarred by all this. What child wouldn’t be? Though if she hid it from her sister well enough, it might not even register as a problem to Isabelle. She’d just carry on thinking she was a good older sister, protecting the younger one.
In the end, they’d see who was protecting whom.
Lucas took a breath and focused. His gaze moved to the blueprint; the flame helm, the piece he’d received from the first wolf he’d killed. It sat there, surface sparkling blue in the sunlight streaming through the window.
He focused on it. Words bubbled up from somewhere deep. One brought by the system, yet somehow instinctual.
“Ignite the Forge.”
The world warped.
And to the dismay of his stomach, not gradually. With absolutely no warning, reality bent like fabric pulled taut, then twisted, colours bleeding into white. Lucas blinked—
—and he was back in the white expanse.
The black steps he’d been on nearly an hour ago hung far off in the distance; they seemed so far, and yet somehow visible. He could make out the black platform and its connecting steps from where he sat, a dark shape against infinite nothing.
Around him, the materials he’d had splayed about moments ago littered the floor in a strange formation. Wolf teeth formed one point. Hide folded into another. The tusk lay perpendicular to both, creating angles that seemed deliberate. The blueprint sat just in front of him, its edges glowing faintly.
Had the system taken them to this space from the real world, or was this just a reflection?
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Lucas scooched forward a little, leaning over and examining the arrangement. Was this some sort of array, like in those cultivation novels he’d read online? Formations, that had been their name. Something that used up materials to enact a magical effect.
Cool concept. At least he’d always thought it was cool—being able to perform a ritual and suddenly gain a boost in strength or defend a castle.
He took another breath, calming himself. Something pulled at him, asking him to search; the system was guiding him again, but this time not through words.
A moment later, he found it. Pulling and tugging, like an incessant itch that needed his attention, demanding he scratch it.
Lucas followed the sensation. Followed the flow.
Then his eyes closed.
The ground beneath him shifted. His body lifted, levitating off the ground. The sensation sent his stomach into freefall, but he forced himself to stay calm, to keep following that pull.
With his eyes closed, he sensed the materials beginning to move. They rose around him, circling in slow orbits. Wolf teeth spun in tight arcs while hide unfolded and refolded as it passed. And the tusk rotated end over end, carving through the white void.
In his mind’s eye, he saw them clearly, materials reacting to the bit of willpower he was putting forth.
The blueprint floated in front of him, hovering at eye level. Then it began dissipating. Fading away in magical lights, which moved off like tiny fireflies. Each of the particles that broke free joined the orbit, weaving between the wolf and boar materials in patterns Lucas couldn’t quite track.
What was this?
The question came from the immense curiosity bubbling up within him. This felt almost like wielding reality itself. But filtered through some mechanism he didn’t understand. And probably wouldn’t understand without going crazy. Perhaps if he were drunk, he might glimpse the true meaning of these sequences.
After all, his thoughts became both foggier in some aspects and clearer in others when he’d had a drink or two. But anything that came from the system was bound to be something beyond normal conceptual understanding anyway.
The sensation was so foreign that the only comparison Lucas could make was bending water. Like being a magician who could actually control the flow and direction of the substance itself. Completely impossible, yet not at the same time.
How was the system doing this? How had it made him essentially a wizard?
The energy grew tighter. Compressed. The orbiting rhythm around him slowed, but the materials didn’t separate—they blended. Wolf teeth dissolved into streams of light. Hide unravelled into threads of luminescence. The tusk fragmented into particles that joined the swirling mass. Everything merged into one thin stream, circling faster and faster until—
White light exploded.
Lucas opened his eyes.
And floating there, suspended in the void directly in front of him, was a red helmet with a blue streak running down its centre like lightning frozen mid-strike. Eyeholes cut across it in the shape of a T—much like the masks he’d seen on TV before, though he couldn’t quite place where.
A moment later, his shoes tapped down onto the ground as the void settled. The floor felt solid, real—or at least as real as anything in this place could be.
Lucas reached out and grabbed the helm, bringing it close. The weight settled in his hands, heavier than he’d expected. He’d thought it would be light, perhaps as heavy as a plastic bike helmet, but it had substantial heft.
Then a system message materialised.
══════════◆◇◆══════════
SYSTEM MESSAGE
══════════◆◇◆══════════
| Flame Helm (Common) - Harmonisation: 0.1%
══════════◆◇◆══════════
He blinked. So this was the Flame Helm. But what did harmonisation mean? Was it some form of check to see how well he’d bonded with the equipment? The number struck a strange chord. Did he have to care for the helm? Feed it? It was also marked at the common rank as well. This implied that there were ranks above it, but what did it mean for the equipment, and how would a higher rank be any better?
He chuckled to himself as his mind latched back onto the harmonisation concept; the white expanse swallowed the sound. Feeding a helmet. He could see his mom slapping him across the back of the head as he tried to spoon porridge into the eyeholes.
With a sigh, his fingers traced the smooth surface. Metal? But he was pretty sure there’d been none of that in the actual crafting process. Where had it come from? The system’s doing, probably. The thing could shift an entire planet around and merge it with five others, according to it at least.
The shifting part was true though; the bank crushing those buildings on the high street, and the tree now sitting where his neighbour’s house had been was proof enough. So, performing a bit of light alchemy was probably a walk in the park.
His hand moved to the blue streak running down the centre. That part was fur. No doubt from the hide he’d used. The texture felt familiar under his fingertips—coarse, slightly warm.
Overall, the helmet was strange. Beautiful in its own way, but strange. Almost as if it had come from an actual video game and not some monster parts he’d harvested using magic. As if that made any more sense.
He continued to rotate it, examining every angle, feeling its weight distribute across his palms. Then his mind settled, and he rested the helm on the white ground. There was something else he needed to do before heading out with Isabelle for a resource run, and if possible, to find those siblings.
There was that word he’d received from the system. Control, was it?
As he thought about it, the memory of the prompt surfaced. Then a message manifested again before him, text hovering in the air like smoke given form.
══════════◆◇◆══════════
SYSTEM MESSAGE
══════════◆◇◆══════════
[Word Forge Unlocked. Would you like to begin Word Pairing?]
══════════◆◇◆══════════
Lucas tasted the name. “Word Forge,” and then pressed yes.
The scenery shifted. Warped. Reality bent again, colours bleeding into white, then sharpening into black. Stone materialised beneath his feet—obsidian, smooth and cold. He realised with a jolt that he was standing far into the sky now, the white void expanding around him in all directions. And the stone of the black stage where he’d defeated the trial puppet earlier was where he found himself.
Lucas almost staggered. The realisation of the shift settled over him like a weight. On one hand, this was all in his mind, so it made sense that he could practically teleport around on a whim. Yet there was still a jarringness to it. Something mimicked only by riding a roller coaster—reaching extreme height, then dropping, and having his guts nearly spilling out.
He was extremely thankful he couldn’t throw up in this ascendant realm. Didn’t stop the disturbing feeling of the entire process, though.
Breathing. He focused on that. Calm. Measured. His hand rested on his knee as he bent forward slightly, steadying himself.
Then he looked up.
And there, a crafting bench rose from the black stone directly ahead, emerging from the surface like a stone flowering upward. It was a complete black stone construction, edges sharp and geometric. Just above the bench’s surface, a large white crystal floated without support, rotating slowly in place. The crystal pulsed with subtle light—rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat.
Feeling the energy it gave off, Lucas stepped closer, curiosity overriding the lingering disorientation.
As he approached, warmth radiated from the white orb. A deeper sensation came from it. Something that settled in his chest and spread outward through his limbs. Understanding moved within him, uncalled for yet welcome.
The Word Forge. A device used to bridge two or more words and allow the wielder to make something new. Something more powerful. Something beyond what a single word could achieve alone.
