where the graveyard blooms - carl grimes

PROLOGUE.

They call him Hephaestus.

It isn't that the name doesn't fit, in its own twisted way—there is an ironic poetry in the comparison.

Hephaestus. The blacksmith of Olympus, the god who forges weapons of war, who toils in flame, whose visage is marred by imperfection.

And Carl. With his shattered face and the empty eye socket, is no stranger to the fires of this new, ruined world. Burns mark his hands, smoke has made a home in his lungs.

He had never wanted to take up blacksmithing. The thought of it had never even crossed his mind in those early days, when survival was measured by how quietly you could move, how well you could hide, and how swiftly you could kill. In Alexandria, behind the fragile veil of its walls, there were now other ways to be useful, to prove oneself. But the world has a way of twisting paths, forcing choices that no one would ever willingly make. And when Earl Sutton, Hilltop's venerable blacksmith, had quietly mentioned that he was looking for an apprentice, the decision had seemed less like a choice and more like a verdict.

"It'll be good for you. Think to it like going away for college." Michonne said from where she had leaned in the doorway watching him pack his duffle. "Alexandria has been needing someone in blacksmithing for awhile."

Blacksmithing. The word had tasted foreign in Carl's mouth, like ash. It was a craft for builders, for creators, and Carl had known only destruction.

In this rotting world, you are useless without a trade. Survival isn't just about the moment-to-moment struggle anymore; it's about building something, anything, that can last beyond the next horde of walkers, the next winter, the next inevitable death.

So, he left Alexandria, left the place where the last memories of his father and the way things used to be are embedded in every stone, every street. Left behind the comfort of familiarity for Hilltop, where everything is different.

The children in Alexandria had never once questioned his face. Perhaps he had his younger sister, Judith, to thank for that. She had never truly known his countenance any other way.

But the children of Hilltop have a sharpness to them, a curiosity that isn't entirely well-meaning.

They stare at him as he works beside Earl, hands raw from the heat of the forge, the muscles in his arms screaming from the repetitive hammering of steel. They see the webbing of improperly healed tissue across his cheekbone, the eye patch that marks him as different, as broken.

They are old enough to know better, yet still too young to see past the damage that cleaves his face, too naive to recognize how an injury like this could have happened to them all the same.

And so they call him Hephaestus, in mocking whispers just barely out of ear shot.

But Carl doesn't let it bother him—not outwardly, at least. He buries the sting of it deep, lets it melt away in the heat of the forge, just another scar to settle into his flesh.

It crackles around him with the hymn of fire, the air thick with the scent of molten iron and sweat. Carl's hands move with the practiced rhythm Earl has taught him, each strike of the hammer sending sparks like fireflies in the dim space, a steady, percussive beat that drowns out the rest of the world. It is a living thing, breathing out waves of warmth that wrap around Carl like a second skin. Sweat beads on his brow, mixing with the grime that clings to him, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of soot across his forehead.

He picks up the piece of metal he's been working on, barely noticing how it's begun to cool, the once-bright glow dimming. The edge is uneven, the shape all wrong. Carl knows he'll have to reheat it, start over again. Everything he does feels like this—half-finished, flawed, never quite enough.