The dwarf stood before the forge he had been tending for seventy-three years and selected the iron for the day's work with the same care he had learned from his father, who had learned it from his father, in a chain of knowledge unbroken for more generations than he could count. His hands moved through the ritual of heating and shaping with no wasted motion. Other smiths worked faster. Some produced more in a single year. But his weapons held edges for generations. His armor had saved lives that depended on the integrity of a single joint. His grandson watched from the corner of the workshop, and the dwarf knew without looking that the boy was observing the way the hammer met the metal, the timing of the strikes, the exact moment when heat had softened the material enough to work and the moment before it would weaken the structure. This was how Moradin's faith was transmitted. Not in words. In watching. In the transfer of knowledge from hand to hand, the way a master taught an apprentice that excellence was not inspiration but discipline. When the blade was finished, the dwarf quenched it and listened to the sound it made as the metal sang in cooling water. The quality of that sound told him everything. The blade would hold. The blade would serve. The blade would outlive the hand that forged it. He set it aside and returned to the fire, and the work continued, and Moradin, watching from the deep places beneath the mountains, was satisfied...