Reincarnated as an SSS-Ranked Blacksmith Who Refuses to Forge Weapons-Chapter 231. The Hearthstone

As promised, the First Forgemaster came to visit from time to time. Most of the time, he came without warning and stayed for two or three days before leaving again.

They still taught the same way: sitting with the most stuck person for an hour and asking questions until they figured it out.

They never gave answers directly. They said this was a philosophical issue.

Greg believed that their reluctance to provide direct answers was partly due to their perception that it was more enjoyable to approach the issue in this manner, and he had been in the workshop since before dawn on the day the Hearthstone was completed.

This was not an uncommon occurrence. When Marina woke up and saw that his side of the bed was empty and the workshop light was already on, she noticed how quiet it was around her.

She had stood in the doorway for a few minutes watching him work without saying anything, and then she went to find Lylia because some mornings needed that kind of talk.

It took three years to think of Hearthstone and two more to make it. The materials had slowly built up, with each piece needing something from a different part of Greg's life.

For example, pieces of the Frying Pan of Eternal Flame were carefully taken out without hurting Marina's weapon, which she had agreed to with a lot of ceremony. A piece of the Ladle of Magical Dispersion.

Greg had kept a piece of Bork's headphones wrapped in cloth in the bottom of his toolbox for fifteen years and hadn't told anyone about it until the morning he asked Dorin if he could use it.

Ash from the fire they lit in memory of Bork in the first year they were on the island. The crystallized mana from the time Seraphine broke through to the Fifth Circle, which she had kept in a sealed jar on her desk and given away without thinking twice.

Elwen had given him threads from the melted-down remains of the Moonwood family's weapons. These weapons had been sitting in a sealed box in her studio for fifteen years, waiting for the right thing to be made from them.

Original Mira and New Mira had offered something that was harder to put into words. One afternoon, she sat with Greg in the workshop and held her hands over the forming Hearthstone.

An intangible essence, not fully visible yet distinctly clear, flowed from her into the forming Hearthstone.

She called it "the memory of what I was," the best way either could describe it.

...

Each of his wives had given a drop of blood, and all four of them had done so with different levels of emotional control. Marina was very businesslike and efficient, while Seraphine wrote detailed notes on the magical implications in her research journal immediately after her turn, explaining to Greg that just because something was emotionally important didn't mean it shouldn't be recorded.

The kids had given Greg's youngest daughter Lyssa tears of joy, which made things a lot easier than expected because she was Lyssa. This meant that every family dinner had at least two moments of pure, helpless laughter for everyone at the table. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

He had given the last strike five percent of the time he had left to live because the Hearthstone needed conviction at a cost, and there was no conviction without a consequence.

The workshop was very quiet when the hammer hit the last time.

The sphere was on the anvil and glowed with the warmth of a fire that had been burning for a long time.

The light was steady and certain, evoking memories for Greg of the First Forge on its final night. It was not dead; it was simply fulfilling its purpose at long last.

The answer he got was not the system he had known for fifteen years. The exile of the three gods had cut off that system, and in its place grew something older and quieter: the voice of creation itself, not the voice of any divine authority.

The notifications were in gold light instead of the blue-white he was used to, and they didn't sound like system alerts. They sounded like something that had been watching for a long time, longer than gods.

[ITEM FORGED: HEARTHSTONE OF HOME]

[RANK: BEYOND CLASSIFICATION]

[This is not an item. This is HOME given form. This is the peace you built made permanent. This is love given weight.]

[GREGORY GREYSON, PEACEFORGER: You have achieved what gods cannot. You have forged peace itself.]

[The forge honors you.]

Greg read it twice. Then he picked up the Hearthstone with both hands, the fake one and the real one, and held it while everyone he loved hummed along.

He stayed that way for a while.

Seraphine had calculated that sunset on the fifteenth anniversary of Home's founding was the most symbolically coherent time for the ceremony. Greg had discovered fifteen years ago that arguing with Seraphine about symbolically coherent timing was a futile endeavor.

Everyone in the town—1,247 people gathered in the central plaza, which wasn't really big enough for that many people, but everyone made it work because they really wanted to be there.

Thomas had been cooking since noon. Amara Songweaver, who had never left Home since arriving as one of the eighty from the arena, had written four pieces for the ceremony and was performing them all in order with a small group of students.

People who knew how to stand together without having to coordinate did so easily around Greg.

Marina was to his left, and her arms were crossed in a way that looked defensive until you saw her face, which was the same one she wore when she was trying to hide something too big to show in public.

She had taken the Frying Pan of Eternal Flame down from the Academy museum for the day and was carrying it on her back. She claimed it was only for practical reasons, but everyone knew that wasn't the case.

Lylia was to his right, still and steady like she always were. Without looking, her hand found his.

She had cooked the food for the party herself, turning down Thomas's offers of help with the polite firmness of someone who needed to do this specific thing herself. He found her in the kitchen before the workshop light was even on that morning.

She had been awake since before dawn, and she was working with the focused quietness she used when she was feeling something too big to put into words.

Seraphine stood a little behind his right shoulder because she had been doing that for fifteen years during important moments and didn't see any reason to change.

She was holding her research journal, which had fallen open to a page from the third year of Home. It had notes on the thermal properties of a teacup that kept its temperature, as well as dense margins full of observations that had nothing to do with thermal properties.

She didn't mean to bring it. She had it in her hands without realizing she had picked it up.

Elwen was drawing on his left shoulder. Greg thought she had been sketching since about the time she sat down in the morning.

She had thousands of drawings now, fifteen years of daily records of every important event in Home's life.

Her unique clean style was able to capture not only what things looked like but also how they felt. She was now drawing the crowd, how the light was hitting the plaza, and the kids who were sitting at the family's feet.