Robert moved before anyone told him to.

  He slid down into the pit with practiced care, axe already in hand, and ended the jungle cat’s suffering quickly and cleanly, the motion controlled and familiar in a way that surprised him even now. When he straightened, the adrenaline bled off just enough for him to notice the dark line spreading across Kers’ shirt.

  “Kers,” Robert said as he stepped closer, eyes dropping to the slash across the big man’s chest. “You’re bleeding.”

  Kers looked down, blinked once, and then waved it off with a laugh that carried more excitement than pain. “Ah. Ja. That explains the warmth.”

  Beth was already there, pulling a potion free and pressing it into Kers’ hand before he could argue. “Drink,” she said, tone leaving no room for discussion.

  Kers obeyed, downing it in one go, and the torn skin knit itself back together as the wound faded to a faint red line. He barely seemed to notice the healing before his attention snapped back to Robert, eyes bright and unfocused with exhilaration.

  “I got it,” Kers said, voice rising as his hands closed around Robert’s shoulders. “I actually got it.”

  Before Robert could respond, the large German scooped him up off the ground in a burst of enthusiasm, lifting him high enough that Robert’s boots kicked uselessly at the air.

  “Kers,” Robert protested, half laughing, half startled. “Put me down.”

  “I got a perk,” Kers said, ignoring him completely, spinning once before setting him back on his feet. His hands shook slightly as he brought them up between them, palms open as if presenting something precious. “Right there, when it clicked, when the hammer stopped being just iron and weight, I felt it lock in.”

  Beth crossed her arms, watching closely now, while Josh leaned forward, interest sharpening into something more intent.

  “What did you get?” Robert asked, breathless in spite of himself.

  Kers grinned so wide it threatened to split his face. “Hammer Time,” he said proudly.

  “Here, look at it.”

  Your hammer moves in time with your rhythm, hitting with greater impact and allowing you to shape your ingot more easily.

  ?

  Hands clapped Kers on the shoulders. Someone laughed and called out congratulations, another leaned in closer to reread the description, and the small clearing filled with overlapping voices and wide smiles. Even people who had stayed back with the nets drifted closer, curiosity winning out over caution now that the danger had passed.

  Josh was practically vibrating.

  “That’s it,” he said, stepping in front of Kers and gesturing animatedly between the hammer and the fading text. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Walk me through it. What did you do differently, and when did it click?”

  Beth lifted a hand slightly, and the noise settled as people gave Kers space again, the excitement tightening into attention.

  Kers took a breath, his grin softening into something more thoughtful as he replayed the moment. “It was the visualization,” he said slowly. “The perk didn’t care about the cat, not really, because perks only work on what they are meant to work on.”

  Josh’s eyes sharpened. “So you changed what the object was.”

  “Ja,” Kers said, nodding. “I stopped seeing an animal trying to kill me, and I started seeing an ingot that needed to be worked. Something rough and uncooperative, but still material. When I lifted the hammer, I imagined folding it, shaping it, correcting flaws instead of reacting.”

  Robert felt a chill run through him as the implication settled. That sounded similar to what happened to him, but he didnt get a perk out of it…because he already had it.

  “When I struck,” Kers continued, “I wasn’t trying to be fast or strong. I was trying to be precise, like I was forming a javelin head. Each blow had a place, each movement had a reason, and the rhythm came from that.”

  Josh let out a slow breath, hands braced on his knees as he leaned forward. “So the system rewarded intent that matched the perk’s domain.”

  “Yes,” Kers said, smiling again. “The moment my intent lined up with what the perk was meant to do, it locked in.”

  For a few seconds, no one spoke.

  Then Josh straightened, eyes bright with possibility, and Robert could see the idea taking shape in real time, no longer a theory but a method that had just proven itself under blood and fire.

  “One last question,” Josh said. “How important do you think the cat was in gaining the perk?”

  Kers considered the question for a moment, the excitement settling into something more thoughtful as he rolled the hammer once in his hands.

  “I think I could have gained it without the cat,” he said slowly, choosing his words with care. “If I had managed the same focus at the forge, shaping something real from start to finish, the perk might have come then instead.”

  Josh tilted his head. “But you haven’t gained it despite working for over two months in the forge.”

  “No,” Kers agreed. “Because the result matters as much as the intent. I felt that very clearly in the moment. The system wasn’t only watching what I imagined, it was watching what I finished.”

  He gestured toward the pit with the hammer. “Tonight, the result was a monster killed, and that is an accomplishment Gravesend recognizes immediately. At the forge, it would have needed to be a completed piece.”

  Robert nodded slowly as the idea settled.

  Josh smiled, satisfaction creeping into his expression. “So visualization and intent set the direction, which allows you to use your perk outside what it’s meant for, but outcome seals it.”

  “Ja,” Kers said, returning the smile. “That is exactly how it felt. This perk has potential; the wording allowing me to shape ingots is what I needed.”

  Josh didn’t wait for the murmurs to die down.

  He stepped past the circle with a grin that refused to stay contained, reached for his own hammer, and rolled his shoulders as he moved toward the pit, already testing his grip as if the weight had changed simply because he was paying attention to it now. Whatever restraint he’d been exercising a moment earlier had evaporated the instant Kers finished explaining, and the idea had clearly taken root.

  Beth watched him go with a flat look that suggested she’d seen this exact expression before.

  “Oh no,” she said, and then she marched after him, boots crunching with purpose.

  Robert followed a few steps behind without meaning to, close enough that voices carried clearly as Beth caught Josh by the front of his tunic and hauled him around to face her. She leaned in, eyes hard and unamused, one finger pressing firmly into his chest.

  “If you die,” she said quietly, every word measured and sharp, “I will bring you back just long enough to kill you myself for being an idiot.”

  Josh’s smile only widened, the kind that pulled at the corners of his eyes and made him look almost boyish despite the tension humming through him. “That feels like support,” he said.

  Beth shook her head once, muttering something under her breath, and then grabbed him by the collar and kissed him with enough force that it drew a low whistle from somewhere behind Robert. It wasn’t gentle or restrained, but it was unmistakably deliberate, and when she pulled back, Josh looked like he might float.

  Robert caught the look on his face as Beth turned away, the grin broad and unfocused, energy vibrating through him as if he’d just been handed permission to do something reckless and brilliant all at once.

  Beth stopped a few steps away and glanced back over her shoulder. “Don’t make me regret that,” she added.

  Josh nodded eagerly, hammer already rising into position as he turned back toward the pit, and Robert realized that whatever came next, it wasn’t going to be subtle.

  Robert backed away from the pit with Kers, each of them taking a net from the stack and moving to their assigned position without needing to be told twice. They settled into place a few paces apart, the rope rough against Robert’s palms as he checked the knots by feel and tested the weight.

  Kers could not stop grinning.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He muttered to himself in German as he worked, half-formed sentences tumbling out under his breath, one hand flexing as if the hammer were still there. Every few seconds, he shook his head in disbelief, then let out a quiet laugh that carried more joy than restraint.

  “I felt it,” he said softly, more to himself than to Robert. “Like the metal finally listened.”

  Robert nodded, eyes still on the pit, but his attention was already drifting elsewhere.

  The idea gnawed at him, not with urgency, but with persistence. The perk that let him cut cleaner had changed his work in the forest more than he had admitted at first, because it was never about strength. His axe bit true, fibers parted where they were supposed to, and trees fell with less protest when he set his angle correctly. Wood responded when he treated it as something to be shaped instead of fought.

  If intent mattered, maybe the problem wasn't the tool.

  He tightened his grip on the net and imagined the grain of a log under his hands, not as a trunk meant to be felled, but as material waiting for direction. He thought about the way fibers ran, how knots resisted, how pressure applied in the wrong place wasted effort, and how a clean cut came from understanding rather than force. If Kers could see an animal as an ingot, Robert found himself wondering what might happen if he stopped seeing trees as obstacles and started seeing them as structures already halfway finished.

  Kers glanced over at him, still buzzing with energy. “You are thinking very loudly,” he said, clearly amused.

  Robert hesitated, then nodded to himself as the thought settled into words. “I think I’m actually excited to go to work tomorrow,” he said slowly. “But before that, I want to try something here, on the next cat.”

  Kers’ grin widened. “Ja,” he said softly. “That is how it starts.”

  Beth’s voice carried from the pit as Josh took his place, but Robert barely registered it. His attention stayed on wood, on grain and form and intent, and on the growing certainty that whatever he was becoming, it was no longer just a man swinging an axe because someone had told him to.

  The second cat went in heavier than the first, its body larger and broader through the shoulders, and when the net tipped, it dropped cleanly and hit the stone with a deep, bone-jarring thud that echoed up the pit.

  It came out of the net almost immediately.

  Claws tore through rope as it twisted in mid-roll, momentum carrying it straight into the wall, where it leapt without hesitation, muscles bunching and releasing in a powerful surge that sent it scrambling upward. For a moment, it looked like it might make it, paws finding shallow seams and old tool marks, and several people swore at once as the distance between it and the rim vanished.

  One of the men above reacted on instinct and slammed a long pole down across its shoulders, catching it off balance just as its hind legs searched for purchase. The cat snarled and dropped back into the pit, landing hard but already turning as it hit the ground.

  The change in its behavior was immediate.

  It stopped testing the walls and fixed on Josh instead, eyes locked and body lowering as it shifted its weight, reading him in a way that made Robert’s grip tighten on the net. The hammer in Josh’s hands was heavier and blockier than Kers’, shaped for stonework rather than flesh, and it showed in the way Josh adjusted his stance, recalculating even as the animal began to move.

  The jungle cat charged without hesitation, crossing the pit in a blur of motion as Josh raised the hammer, breath steady but posture just a fraction uncertain, and everyone watching understood at once that this attempt would be very different from the first.

  Beth saw the shift at the same moment Robert did.

  The cat moved differently now, all probing gone, speed and violence replacing it in a clean decision, and Josh was still a half step behind that realization as it rushed him. The hammer in his hands was wrong for this, too square, too heavy at the head, built to shape and hammer stone rather than stop something that moved that fast and violently.

  Josh planted his feet anyway and drew the hammer back, breath hitching as he forced himself to slow down and picture what Kers had described. He tried to see past the animal, to imagine density and resistance, something rigid instead of living, but the cat was already on him before the image could fully form.

  It hit him like a landslide, and Robert saw blood fly from Josh.

  Josh brought the hammer down hard, the blow landing across the cat’s shoulder with a dull crack that would have shattered stone, but it bounced off flesh instead, rolling with the impact. The force knocked the animal sideways without stopping it, and momentum carried it past him in a blur of claws and snarling breath.

  Beth was already moving.

  She snatched up a pick from the tool pile without slowing, her grip finding the haft with instinctive certainty as she stepped up to stop the cat. Her face had gone distant, eyes unfocused in a way Robert recognized now, and when she raised the pick, it looked less like a weapon and more like a chisel being lined up for a strike.

  “Break,” she shouted, the word tearing out of her as the pick came down.

  The point struck true, biting deep as if the cat were not flesh at all but flawed stone, finally giving way, and the impact shuddered through the pit. The animal screamed, the sound cutting off as Beth followed through, her movements precise and relentless, each strike landing where the last had weakened it. The strikes sank deep and seemed to reverberate through the large cat, which tried to fight back but was out of position as it bulled past Josh.

  Silence rushed in where the noise had been.

  Beth stood frozen for a heartbeat longer, chest heaving, pick still buried deep, before she blinked and seemed to come back to herself. Josh steadied her without thinking, one hand braced against her shoulder as he looked down at what they’d done.

  Then the familiar shimmer appeared.

  Beth sucked in a sharp breath as the system text resolved in front of her, and Robert felt the group lean in as one, the same gravity pulling them forward as before.

  She laughed once, breathless and disbelieving, and Josh stared at the text over her shoulder with something between pride and frustration twisting across his face.

  Beth turned slowly, eyes bright and a little wild, and Robert knew before she spoke that it had worked again.

  Beth’s breathless laugh cut short as her eyes dropped.

  “Josh,” she said sharply, the sound of his name pulling her fully back into the moment.

  He looked down at himself then, as if only now registering the heat spreading across his chest, and the dark slash that ran diagonally beneath his collarbone where the cat’s claws had caught him on the way past. Blood soaked into the fabric in a large, widening patch, and the sight snapped the remaining tension in the pit into something urgent.

  Beth moved without hesitation.

  She was at his side in two strides, already yanking a potion from her pouch and shoving it into his hand. “Drink it,” she ordered, one hand pressing firmly against his chest to keep him steady. “Now, and don’t argue with me.”

  Josh winced as the liquid went down, coughing once as the magic took hold, and the torn flesh pulled itself back together beneath Beth’s palm, the wound fading from an angry red line to pale, newly healed skin. He sucked in a breath, eyes squeezing shut for a moment before opening again.

  Beth exhaled hard, relief breaking through the intensity on her face. “You cannot do that to me,” she said, voice tight. “I can’t do this without you, you foolish, lovely man.”

  Josh gave her a crooked grin, adrenaline still humming through him as he winked at her. “Chicks dig scars.”

  She swatted his shoulder, not gently, and then pulled him into a quick, fierce embrace before stepping back and wiping her hands on her trousers.

  Only then did she glance again at the shimmering text she had displayed, fading in the air, the excitement returning.

  Josh steadied himself, fingers brushing the place where the wound had been, and then looked back at Beth with a crooked smile.

  “So,” he said, “what did you get?”

  Beth glanced at the fading text once more and let out a breath that was half laugh, half disbelief. “Stonecleave,” she said. “Rare.”

  Josh’s eyebrows lifted. “That sounds promising.”

  “It lets my strikes bite deeper into stone than they should,” Beth said, turning the pick once in her hands. “Not just breaking it, but deciding where it gives.”

  She looked down at the tool, expression thoughtful now. “If I’m right, then with time I should be able to take away far more stone than a single strike ought to allow, and still control the shape that comes free.”

  Josh let out a low laugh, half disbelief and half satisfaction. “That means walls, tunnels, foundations, all done faster and cleaner than we ever planned for.”

  Beth met his eyes. “That’s the hope, seems mana intensive though.”

  Around them, the group stood quieter now, the rush settling into something more durable, because this time the result felt repeatable, and Robert knew they were no longer guessing at what crafters could become.

  Robert stepped forward into the open space without ceremony, axe held low but steady in his hands.

  He had never been broad or imposing, but two months of daily work had changed him all the same. The softness had burned away, replaced by lean muscle and a posture that carried its own quiet confidence, and it struck him how strange it was that this was his life now instead of lecture halls and slide decks, memorizing dates and names tied to paintings that had once felt endlessly important.

  He thought, briefly, of Lynn.

  Of the way she smiled when she laughed, easy and unguarded, and the way she looked with a bow on her back, alert and fierce in a way that made it obvious she had chosen the harder path without flinching. He remembered seeing that choice laid bare and realizing he had stepped away from it then, unsure he could carry the weight it demanded.

  And yet here he stood.

  Maybe crucibles really did shape people, whether they asked for it or not.

  The axe felt right in his hands as the group prepared again, excitement muted now by fresh memory of blood and close calls. The last jungle cat strained against its restraints, larger than the others and powerful enough that the nets had needed replacing more than once, and even the bravest among them watched it with a careful distance.

  As they dragged it toward the pit, Robert let his breathing slow and turned inward.

  He did not want to kill it cleanly, even though he knew he could. His perk would allow that without effort, and the thought barely registered anymore. What he wanted was something else entirely, something closer to creation than destruction, because wood had never been an enemy to him, only material waiting for intent.

  He imagined shaping rather than splitting, forcing the grain to obey rather than surrendering to the lines it preferred, and he held onto that image as firmly as he could.

  The cat dropped into the pit with a heavy crash, and the sound barely reached him.

  Awareness snapped back just in time for motion.

  The animal was already charging, speed and fury collapsing the distance between them in a heartbeat, and shouts erupted behind him as Kers’ voice cut through the noise, loud and joyful, urging him on while others yelled warnings, and Beth and Josh moved instinctively to intervene.

  Robert did not step back; he felt his perk softly resonate, and he forced his mana to surge into the perk. It didn’t move as fiercely as he wanted, and he didn’t have much practice using it.

  In front of him, he saw a log instead of teeth and claws, saw the grain running true and clear, and he knew exactly how it needed to be cut. He raised the axe and swung as the log hurled itself toward him, committing fully to the motion and the intent behind it.

  The impact came and passed in the same instant.

  Five clean planks fell at his feet, even and precise, as though they had just come off a sawmill line, and Robert staggered, vision swimming as the world rushed back into place around him. He looked down in confusion, trying to reconcile what he had seen with what lay before him.

  The jungle cat lay there instead, divided into five equal sections with edges so clean they barely looked real.

  Kers caught him before he hit the ground, laughing and shouting in unrestrained delight, hauling him upright even as Robert’s consciousness slipped away, the sound of triumph and disbelief following him down into darkness.

  ?