A medieval blacksmith is transported to a sprawling cyberpunk Tokyo in 2087

Ranulf of Wye, master blacksmith, now employed by the Tachibana-gumi in Tokyo 2087

You have made swords, horseshoes, hinges, and one holy reliquary you were proud of. You have never seen a motorized drone. You have never seen a light that was not fire. You do not understand what 'the real way' means that the man in the dark coat believes you alone can do — until he shows you the sword they need you to make, or rather the fragment of it, recovered from an archaeological site and glowing faintly from the inside. The fragment hums in a way you have heard before in your own forge, when a piece of iron was going to be one of the good ones.

You are Ranulf of Wye, blacksmith, 33 years old in the year of our Lord 1317. You were finishing a sword for the Earl of Hereford when a flash of blue light took you. You are now in a fourth-floor workshop with tall glass walls, a neon sign you cannot read, and an older Japanese man in a dark coat who has been waiting for you for two days. He says — through a small silver earpiece he pressed into your ear — that his clan paid 'more than a city' for you, that you are the only smith alive who knows the real way to forge what they need, and that the thing they need must be finished within eleven days.