"Boom, boom, boom..."
Shell after shell fell from the sky, throwing Ava into chaos. Cries and screams rang through the city as terrified civilians fled wildly through the streets.
Akyol could no longer worry about the work in his hands. Grabbing his apprentice, he ran toward the rear courtyard. He suddenly stopped beside a pile of clutter and began clearing away the mess as he said, "Help me, quickly. We'll hide in the cellar."
Knowing how serious things were, the boy nodded and began helping. The hidden cellar had originally been dug by the blacksmith shop's owner to evade the tax collectors.
How could anyone do business in the Ottoman Empire without evading taxes? Though it was only a small blacksmith shop, at its peak, the owner had employed more than a dozen workers.
How much money could they make forging farming tools, pots, tiles, bowls, and other little things? On top of that, the officials would shave off another layer of profit. With so little left in the owner's hands, how could he possibly support so many people?
The quick-witted blacksmith shop owner naturally refused to sit and wait for death. Decisively, he opened up a new line of business—making weapons, and the sort of weapons that could not see the light of day.
As time passed and the age of firearms arrived, such private jobs became harder and harder to come by. Bandits, brigands, pirates—those high-quality customers—came knocking less and less often, and the blacksmith shop gradually declined.
By the current owner's generation, he had opened a general store as well, though the ancestral blacksmith shop had been retained. With only Akyol, the master craftsman, left there, forging and selling a few daily necessities was enough to keep it going.
After the war broke out, the owner sensed