GODFORGED: TEN SCRAPS OF IRON

Episode 1

Three years, over a thousand nights at Hermon's Forge, and every blade Pyrrhos makes carries someone else's name. He's the hammer-hand they mock as Emberless, but the runeblades he forges kill monsters across the continent.

On Assessment Day, everything rides on one moment. His master promised to put his name forward. Instead, top honors go to Firstlight — a masterpiece Pyrrhos recognizes instantly as his own sword from Hermon's forge. Senior apprentice Deryk takes the glory while Pyrrhos stands in the crowd, watching three years of his life handed to someone else.

Episode 2

The guild calls Deryk a genius who forged Firstlight in a single night. Pyrrhos knows the truth: that was three years of his life. He confronts his master, insisting the sword and the designs are his, but Hermon refuses. Everything made in the forge belongs to the forge, and an apprentice holds no mark.

When Pyrrhos demands his wages and quits, Hermon upends a sack on the anvil — ten rusted scraps of iron. Finish Draco's order of thirty blades in a fortnight, and maybe mastery. Walk out, and no one in the city will hire him. Pyrrhos takes the scraps as his starting stake.

Episode 3

Word spreads that Hermon's forge has a rising star — Deryk, whose Firstlight will send blade prices soaring to five hundred. Meanwhile, the real craftsman is dismissed as nothing but a common hammer-hand, the same insult thrown at him three years ago.

Pyrrhos watches customers pay two hundred gold a blade for work he forged, remembering he was paid ten scraps. Standing outside the shop, he makes his decision: starting tonight, he's taking it all back, one blade at a time. He asks about the empty shop on Market Street — he's opening a forge of his own.

Episode 4

Pyrrhos returns home, and his father asks about the assessment. Instead of answers, there's medicine to take first. When the old man sees the ten scraps, he's ready to march down and confront Hermon himself, but Pyrrhos stops him — he's keeping the scraps as his foundation, not his payment.

A messenger arrives with Hermon's terms: thirty blades, inspected daily, each day's delay costing one scrap. Privately, an old servant watches over a hidden hammer, sworn to keep it from the people still hunting it. Pyrrhos repeats his vow: he's taking everything back, piece by piece.

Episode 5

Pyrrhos finds the perfect spot — the grand market, where every blade sold in the city passes by. The landlord wants fifteen gold a month, a year up front, cash only. Pyrrhos has nothing today, so he offers three months' credit, promising a full year's rent with interest, or the shop back plus his labor.

A rival bids sixteen gold on the spot, sneering at the "beggar." Then Pyrrhos notices the landlord's sealed reliquary — locked ten years, his late wife's. Every locksmith says forcing it open would destroy it. Pyrrhos asks a strange question, and the old man's eyes change. Three months, in writing. The shop is his.

Episode 6

For ten years, every bar of iron at Hermon's forge came through one supplier — a one-eyed giant. Now Hermon has signed a contract for cheaper starfall copper cut with nethersilver, metal that shatters at the first touch of monster blood. Thirty guardsmen's lives traded for a few coins.

Pyrrhos confronts the supplier, who sees through him instantly: he didn't come to run errands. Pyrrhos admits he's opening his own forge and asks for the finest starfall copper on credit, promising double. The old giant agrees — better to deal with him than with his master. Then he notices something impossible in Pyrrhos's fire.

Episode 7

Siren, of House Serena, brings her broken family sword to Deryk, begging him to examine it. The soul rune is shattered. He refuses — not even Hephaestus could mend it — and tells her to sell the fallen house's scrap while it still buys medicine.

Outside, Pyrrhos stops her. He says the sword can still be saved. She's wary: seventeen forges and three master smiths all said the rune stays broken. Pyrrhos explains the difference — the rune broke, but the soul didn't. It's still ringing. Bring it in ten days to the shop with the black door.

Episode 8

Hermon invites Pyrrhos to Deryk's celebration feast — before every guild dignitary. It's a trap, but Pyrrhos goes anyway, needing to see what they're playing at and how badly Draco's order has been compromised.

Humiliated as a serving boy, mocked over his ten scraps, Pyrrhos studies Deryk's new design and spots the flaw: the third tempering rune is drawn backwards. Forged this way, it will shatter the day it leaves the anvil. He says so aloud. The room calls it a madman's babble. But later, Draco will personally inspect his work.

Episode 9

Three days pass, and Pyrrhos hasn't answered the crystal. Hermon's circle isn't worried — his sick father's medicine can't skip a day, and hunger will drive him crawling back by month's end. They're busy admiring a goldsmith's pure cast-gold hour mark, worth 280,000 gold, a whole season of the forge's earnings.

The plan is simple: work the grunt two more months, learn every trick he knows, then throw him out. Meanwhile, Pyrrhos's license is approved — under city statute he may establish a forge, take apprentices, and strike his own maker's mark. At the guild licensing stones, they sneer: what will he make, nails?

Episode 10

Siren arrives at the roofless workshop. She's brought thirty silver — all she could raise — and offers goods from her family's shop, which supplies quenching oils and herbs to every forge in the city. She tells him the sword's story: Dawnkeeper, her grandfather's night-soul runeblade, carried twenty years on the northern war.

When the war horn sounded, Dawnkeeper was always the first light to rise. Then her grandfather fell, and the house fell with him. As she speaks, the blade glows — it never slept, only the rune broke. Pyrrhos studies the rune running too deep to see. Then he's called home: there's something he needs to have.

If you've been waiting for a hero who earns every inch of his rise, this one's worth your night.