Dripside was the sort of street that breathed even when no lungs did. The old forge-lanes—twisting behind the Blacklake warehouses like molten veins—kept their own quiet watch over Neverwinter, remembering every hammerstrike since before most adventurers were born. Thaldryn Emberbrace knew those rhythms by heart, which is why he froze when he realized the forgehum was missing. No clatter. No hiss. A forge-lane with no noise was a forge with no heartbeat. Qelqiroth stepped from a shadow, eyes keen. "You feel it too?" "Aye. The fire's holdin' its breath," Thaldryn said. Whisper’ess arrived with a knowing smirk. "Your forge-lane has a visitor. A tall one. Broad. Moves like an anvil taught him how to walk. No face." They followed her to an abandoned smithy where slow, hollow hammer-blows rang wrong against the anvil. Inside stood a figure with forge-leathers older than the street itself—and no face at all. Blank. Smooth. Watching them without eyes. On the anvil lay a half-forged blade glowing with pale starlight. As the faceless smith struck, images flared across the metal: towers collapsing inward, rivers running ink-black, runes beneath the docks pulsing like heartbeats, frozen fountains full of eyes. With one final blow, the starlight died. The smith stepped into the backroom and vanished without a trace. Thaldryn lifted the blade. It weighed nothing. Reflected nothing. Held nothing—yet showed everything. "He wasn't forging a weapon," Whisper’ess murmured. "He was forging a warning." In the Ledger, the Soul Bearer inked: > The smith with no face forged more than metal. > He shaped a truth the city has not yet learned to speak.