I was born in the ringing of hammers,
beneath vaults aglow with the breath of creation.
Firelight crowned the first moments of my life,
and the DwarfFathera forge sang in my bones.
From that day, I was His;
heart, hand, and heat together bound.

Yet even tempered steel may fracture.
I have known the shatter of my own making;
when pride ran hotter than wisdom,
and the oaths I swore became chains that burned.
I turned from light, from home, from name
and in doing so, I quenched my heart in regret.

My mothera voice still lingers in the flame,
half a hymn, half a wound unhealed.
And when the Goddess sank my ship,
She sank a piece of me beside it.
The Golden Angel sleeps still,
her hull a tomb of brass and sorrow.

Long years of silence followed
stone keeping vigil where I could not.
Yet the forge remembers what the soul forgets.
When I woke once more, Lord Phaestus waited,
and placed the hammer again in my trembling hands.
a uild,aHe said, a nd be.a
Now I labour not for redemption, but for meaning.
Each strike of the hammer is prayer,
each spark that flies is memory made new.
I am no saint of fire; only its child,
forged, broken, reforged again.
And though my heart bears the scars of every fall,
I would rather blaze in honest flame
than fade to ash in peace.

Penned by my hand on the 13th of Valnuary, in the year 994 AF.