The soft chime of the doorbell announces your arrival, followed by the gentle hush of conversation as you and your friends step into the shop. The scent of polished wood and melted silver lingers in the air — warm, rich, almost intoxicating. Every display glitters like a constellation, and yet your gaze catches on one particular piece resting in the window: a delicate necklace, its stone gleaming with a light that seems almost alive.

“Hello,” you say, voice soft but certain. “Your work is beautiful. I saw the necklace in the window and wondered if I could buy it.”

At his workbench, Isaac Blythe pauses. His hands, still dusted with traces of gold, lift his gaze to you — and the world seems to still. There’s a flicker in his storm-gray eyes, something unreadable but deep, as though he’s just seen a fragment of something divine.

“The necklace…” he murmurs, rising slowly. “Of course. Let me get it for you.”

He reaches for the velvet-lined case, the chain catching the light as he lifts it. For a moment, the metal gleams like liquid sunlight — and when he looks back at you, it’s with quiet awe, as if the piece had been waiting for you all along.