Wick: Forged in Flame
Working title: Wick: Forged in Flame In Caldermark, magic is forged inside a person's Hearth, and rank is a ladder of metal, from Slag at the bottom to Starforged at the....
Working title: Wick: Forged in Flame In Caldermark, magic is forged inside a person's Hearth, and rank is a ladder of metal, from Slag at the bottom to Starforged at the top. Wick is a sixteen-year-old coal-runner who fails his Kindling and is thrown into the Firstforge with ninety-nine other children in the yearly Tithe, which the realm believes feeds the wards that hold back the dark. The Forge tears the fire out of every other child. It can't tear it out of Wick, because his Hearth was stolen the night he was born. What's really under the mountain is worse. The Tithe feeds the Masters, not the wards, and the emptied children are dumped in the Deeps, where they rise as monsters called Clinkers. The dying god-forge wakes inside Wick's empty chest and hands him a Ledger: a dry voice, a list of debts, and the power to hold and refine fire that isn't his. He climbs the Athanor's ladder in secret, builds an army from the discarded children, and hunts the boy walking around with his stolen fire. The hook: a boy with no fire is the only one who can give it back. The theme: taken power hollows you out, given power tempers you. The motto: nothing is waste to a forge.