Groaning, the mountain seemed to shudder underfoot, deep and old, as though the peaks were quaking. Dust sifted from the cleft’s ceiling in pale curtains. Boaz pressed a hand against the rock face where the faint red veins of ember-ore pulsed like a heartbeat. It answered his touch with slow warmth.

“It’s waking,” Theo whispered. His voice sounded small against the vastness. Tink crouched at his feet, nose twitching, the fur along her back rising in uneven spikes.

“Not waking,” Aldryn murmured, eyes half-closed as though listening to something beneath hearing. “Listening. The mountain decides whether we are worth the bother.”

Another low tremor swelled into a rhythmic grinding, stone on stone, measured and immense. The cleft widened by imperceptible degrees, splitting along seams blackened by age. Shaye drew her curved blade, but Telen caught her wrist and shook his head. “If that’s a door,” he said, “then no blade forged by hand will help us.”

Light, if it could be called that, leaked through the widening crack. It was not firelight nor sun but a muted phosphorescence, green and blue and ghost-white, glimmering like veins of moonlight trapped in crystal. When at last the two halves of the gate parted, a breath of warm air rolled outward, smelling of iron, moss, and rain that had never touched the sky.

They stood before the threshold of Durn-Kelmar.

The gate itself towered higher than any fortress wall of men, hewn from a single slab of basalt inlaid with concentric rings of gears and counterweights the size of wagons. Each tooth of the mechanism ground against another with deliberate patience, and through their interlocking cores flowed molten metal that never cooled, its glow fading to dull crimson as it reached the outermost ring. From within came the slow thunder of more machinery: great pendulums, perhaps, or chains the width of tree trunks, moving in harmony with unseen purpose.

Boaz stepped forward. Thorne padded beside him, ears low, fur shivering in the strange wind that spilled from within the gate. For the first time since the Forlaith, the Sigil at Boaz’s chest grew warm, the faint Mother-of-Pearl threads of its Agua leaf pulsing in rhythm with the mountain’s heart.

Kiera’s breath caught. “It’s alive.”

“Alive, yes,” Aldryn said, his tone caught between awe and sorrow. “And bound by the same curse that claimed Duln.”

The thought hollowed the moment. They turned back once, to where Duln’s stone form still sat in the mountain’s shadow, her face turned homeward. For a heartbeat the glow from the opening gate reached her, painting the gray of her cheek with amber. The light shifted, and she was only stone again.

Boaz bowed his head. “You brought us home, Duln. We’ll carry the rest.”

From his pack he took the ember-ore; the one she had entrusted to him before turning to stone. Its surface shimmered faintly, veins of orange winding through black rock. As he raised it toward the gate, a tremor passed through the gears. One by one, the inner rings halted, locking into place. The sound died, replaced by a single deep note like the closing of a bell.

Then silence.

A current of cold air flowed over them, followed by a deep, metallic voice, not spoken but resonating through the stone itself. The words were not Huma, nor Terra, but older, syllables chiseled rather than spoken. Aldryn’s lips moved silently, translating as best he could.

“Blood of sun and ash, bearer of leaf, why do you come?”

Boaz hesitated. “To find what was broken,” he said at last. “And to make it whole again.”

The mountain was still for a long moment. The gate answered with motion. Great chains groaned, drawing upward, and beyond them the first of the inner halls came into view. Vast tunnels veined with luminescent fungi and crystals shed steady, gentle light. Bridges of black iron arched across chasms that vanished into darkness. The air shimmered with heat, not suffocating but heavy, filled with the scent of mineral and forge.

Jaxson gave a low whistle. “Home sweet home, if you like caves.”

“Caves?” Theo grinned despite the tension. “That’s an entire world. Look at those columns…load-bearing perfection! The engineering alone…”

Lyra elbowed him lightly. “Admire later. They’re watching.”

At the far end of the first bridge, a line of figures emerged. Short, broad-shouldered silhouettes armored in stone-colored metal reflected no light. Each carried a poleaxe taller than themselves, its blade etched with runes that glimmered faintly blue. Their movements were exacting, almost mechanical. Helmets covered their faces, and from the narrow slits within, eyes like chips of obsidian regarded the intruders without a word.

Aldryn lifted his staff, but Boaz stopped him. “Let me,” he said quietly. He stepped forward until he stood just inside the threshold, the ember-ore still in hand. The guards halted as one. The foremost, a massive Terran with braids bound in iron rings, spoke a guttural phrase that vibrated through the bridge.

Aldryn whispered, “He asks whose mark we bear.”

Boaz unwrapped Duln’s sigilstone from his cloak. Its faint amber rune glowed as it touched the subterranean air. “Duln of Durn-Kelmar,” he said. “She led us here. She gave her life to open your gate.”

For an instant, the guards did not move. The lead warrior struck his poleaxe against the floor. Sparks leapt, ringing like anvils. The others repeated the motion, one after another, the rhythm spreading down the bridge until the whole cavern pulsed with sound.

A salute, or a warning.

The lead Terran lowered his weapon and gestured for them to follow. Aldryn breathed out. “It seems we have been granted… something between welcome and captivity.”

Theo muttered, “So, same as Beltin.”

Lyra’s smirk returned, brittle but real. “Let’s try not to get spooked this time.”

Together they crossed the threshold. The gate rumbled shut behind them, sealing the world of sky and wind away with a final grinding sigh. Only the mountain remained, alive, humming, ancient, and within it, the fellowship’s torchlight seemed almost redundant against the living glow of the stone.

Boaz glanced once more at where Duln had stood, then faced forward. “We keep moving,” he said. “We’re past the door. Now we see what waits in the dark.”

And the mountain answered with the slow, steady pulse of its heart.

The bridge sloped downward in a slow spiral, its surface worn smooth by ages of passage. Faint tremors pulsed through the metal beneath their boots, a heartbeat from the forge-engines far below. The Terran guards moved in measured cadence: short, powerful strides that made no echo, as if the stone itself absorbed their steps.

The company followed in silence. Only Tink’s claws scratched faintly against the bridge. Kestel, uneasy, kept to the shadows above, wings half spread. Every few paces a pillar rose from the darkness to meet the vaulted roof, carved not with ornament but with purpose: braces within braces, counterweights within stone. The air tasted of iron and damp heat.

Theo whispered to Lyra, “These supports, see how they twist like vines? Self-reinforcing helices. They’re grown, not carved.”

Lyra’s answer was dry. “I hope they don’t wilt.”

At the base of the spiral, the bridge joined a vast corridor whose ceiling arched like a cathedral nave. Glowing lichen spread in broad veins along the rock, their light mirrored in pools that collected runoff from unseen heights. Between the pools ran narrow causeways of hammered copper. The walls breathed a slow heat, warm enough that Kiera brushed sweat from her brow. Yet the warmth wasn’t oppressive. It was living warmth, the pulse of a forge long kept but never extinguished.

Boaz felt it through his boots, through the Sigil at his chest. The mountain’s rhythm was steady, deliberate, and strangely familiar. It reminded him of his father’s forge: the hush before the hammer fell.

They passed alcoves carved into the rock, each marked by sigils like clenched fists or spirals of flame. Some held statues of Terran warriors kneeling, heads bowed, their weapons crossed before them. Others were hollow, their floors dusted with white ash. Kiera lingered at one and murmured, “Are these graves?”

Aldryn nodded slightly. “Or warnings. Among the Terran, the dead often guard the living.”

The lead guard raised a gauntleted hand and the column halted. He barked an order, and two of his kin stepped forward to light torches of blackened metal that burned with pale blue fire. Without a word, they led the company through an arched gate etched with the image of a hammer striking a mountain, sparks fanning outward like wings.

Beyond it lay a chamber that stole their breath.

The holding cavern, if such a term applied, stretched wider than any hall of Cirol. Its ceiling vanished into darkness laced with glimmering veins of quartz that caught and refracted the torchlight into shifting constellations. Tiers of stone led down to a central platform where water from hidden channels cascaded into a circular pool. Around its edge stood machines, furnaces, anvils, pipes that exhaled steam in rhythmic sighs, tended by silent Terrans who glanced at the newcomers without pausing their work.

The guards guided the company to the platform and arranged them in a loose semicircle. Without ceremony, they withdrew to the perimeter, forming an unmoving ring. The gate they had entered sealed behind them with a hiss of steam and the deep clank of locking gears.

“They mean us to stay,” Lyra muttered. “Question is, for how long.”

“Long enough to decide if we’re worth smelting,” Jaxson replied under his breath.

Aldryn stepped forward, inclining his head to the nearest guard. “We come in peace, under the sign of Duln of Durn-Kelmar. We seek only audience.”

The guard did not reply. A moment later, a resonant tone echoed through the chamber, a low chime that vibrated in their chests. The other guards responded with a synchronized strike of their weapons to the ground, one, two, three, and the sound rippled outward like thunder trapped in stone.

Panels in the far wall slid open, revealing grated vents that released a thin mist of cool air. From beyond came the faint hum of voices, low and guttural, arguing in the ancient Terran tongue. Aldryn tilted his head, straining to parse the rhythm.

“Old dialect,” he whispered. “Something about surface-taint and false fire.”

Kiera frowned. “They think we’re diseased?”

“Worse,” Aldryn said. “They think we carry the sun.”

Before they could speak further, a new figure approached: a Terran not armored like the others but robed in layers of soot-stained fabric. His beard was braided with shards of glass, and in his hand he carried a staff tipped with a spinning gyre of bronze. When he spoke, his voice carried the gravity of the deep: “Who bears Duln’s stone?”

Boaz stepped forward, holding the sigilstone with both hands. The glow brightened at his touch. “I do.”

The robed Terran studied it for a long moment, then touched the stone lightly with a gloved finger. Sparks of amber leapt between them. His eyes narrowed. “Her mark still breathes. She walks no more.”

Boaz’s voice caught. “She turned to stone beneath the sun, facing this gate.”

The Terran inclined his head, a gesture of mourning or acknowledgment, Boaz could not tell. “Duln was elder and exile. Her word holds weight, yet her exile stains it. You come bearing her light, and with magic not of the forge. Such fire is peril here.”

“We mean no harm,” Kiera said softly. “We seek only understanding.”

The Terran’s gaze shifted toward her, then to Aldryn. “You speak with the cadence of ages. You know our tongue?”

“Only echoes of it,” Aldryn admitted. “But enough to offer respect.”

“Respect is tested, not spoken.” The Terran turned to the guards and spoke a command. Several nodded and withdrew through side tunnels. The remaining warriors kept their posts, unblinking. The elder turned and left through a side passage.

Theo exhaled. “That can’t be good.”

Jaxson cracked a grin. “Maybe they’re fetching tea.”

“Or weapons,” Lyra said.

Boaz looked at the vaulted ceiling, tracing the constellation-like reflections. “Either way, we wait.”

So they waited.

Time inside the mountain had no meaning. The glow of the lichen never dimmed, and the steady hiss of steam became a strange lullaby. The air was dense but breathable, touched by mineral tang and the faint sweetness of mold. Thorne prowled the perimeter restlessly, while Tink clambered onto a low forge and began inspecting the mechanisms until Theo gently scooped her down.

Aldryn sat cross-legged near the pool, fingers sketching invisible runes on the surface. “This chamber’s alive,” he murmured. “Every vent, every pipe is part of a greater lung. They built their halls to breathe.”

“We’re inside a living thing?” Lyra said. “Wonderful.”

After what felt like an hour, or a century, the side gates reopened. More Terrans entered, these unarmed but broad as anvils, bearing obsidian shields carved with intricate patterns. Behind them came the robed elder again, his bronze gyre spinning faster now.

He pointed the staff toward Boaz and Jaxson. “The forge has spoken. You will prove your flame and fleetness. Trial of stone for the strangers above.”

A silence fell heavy as the mountain itself.

Boaz met his gaze without flinching. “If that is the way of welcome, we’ll answer it.”

The elder’s eyes glinted like iron in firelight. “The mountain shall judge.” The guards stepped aside, and a deep grinding began beneath the floor of gears turning once more, drawing them toward whatever waited beyond.

The floor shifted beneath their boots, a rumble like distant thunder rolling through the platform. Rings parted with hydraulic grace; the central circle sank and slid aside to reveal a downward corridor, oval and ribbed like the inside of a bell. Blue fire swept along wall sconces in a rippling wave. The Terran guards clicked their poleaxe butts once on stone, permission granted, and the elder in soot-stained robes gestured curtly with his bronze-gyred staff.

“Come,” he said, the words careful, clipped, as though pulled from deep shelves of memory. “Walk true. Do not touch the gear-sides.”

They followed the elder, the guards fanning behind with silent precision. The passage sighed warm air, not unpleasant, mineral and yeast, wet iron and a sweetness, like bread left to rise. Along the ribs of the corridor, shallow niches held reliefs: short, broad-shouldered figures bent over anvils, stone-beasts tunneling, long chains winding into the dark. No legends, just work.

Jaxson leaned toward Theo. “Gear-sides?”

“Counterweights,” Theo murmured, eyes alight. “See those slotted walls? If the rings need to close fast, those slabs drop. Wouldn’t want to be a stray elbow.”

Lyra gave a thin smile. “Let’s keep all elbows tucked.”

The corridor opened into a chamber shaped like a shallow bowl. Terraced ledges climbed the walls, some lined with seated Terrans in matte armor, their helmets plain, their attention absolute. In the center lay an oval of polished basalt cut by two faintly glowing circles: one small, one broader, like ripples frozen mid-spread. Tall braziers of blackened iron ringed the floor at four cardinal points, their pale tongues of flame wavering but never smoking. Above, the ceiling was not a ceiling at all but a mesh of bars and cables from which hung counterbalanced stones; with every breath of the room they swayed, a slow subterranean pendulum.

The elder planted his staff so the bronze gyre spun and hummed. He spoke first in the Terran tongue, the syllables grating and deep. Helmets tipped; poleaxes shifted. He turned to the fellowship.

“Trial is named…” he said in Common, searching for phrasing. “Trial of Stone. First Ring.” He tapped the smaller circle with the butt of his staff. “You stand within. You are measured. You do not leave the ring. You do not break the other. If blood… comes,” His mouth tightened. “We say no-kill. We ask honor.”

Aldryn dipped his head. “We hear and honor your way. We seek no blood.”

The elder’s eyes, dark and polished like slag glass, flicked to the Sigil at Boaz’s chest. “Fire-bearing,” he added, slower still. “Magic of… sun. Not loved here.” He tapped his own sternum with two knuckles. “But trial is truth. If you hide, mountain knows. If you wield, mountain knows.”

Boaz nodded once. “I won’t lie to your stone.”

The elder grunted, a sound that might have been approval. He gestured to the second ring. “Second is Fleetness.” He looked toward Jaxson, who straightened under the stare. “You run, you turn. You do not break circle. If you fall, done. If you set foot outside, done. If you are caught…” His palm closed, a blunt fist. “Done.”

“Clear enough,” Jaxson said, a grin threatening.

“Not jest,” the elder replied without heat. “This is oath-work. We do not jest with oaths.” He pointed to Telen and Shaye, then to a broad flagstone at the bowl’s edge. “You stand witness. Agua know current; Agua see true.” His Common softened, a surprising courtesy. “Your eyes, sharp. We trust.”

Telen inclined his head, solemn. Shaye rested a hand over her heart. “We’ll see truly,” she said. “We’ll mark fair.”

Aldryn stepped forward, staff angled in a gesture both deferent and firm. “Honored elder, I beg one courtesy more. Let me speak the why of our coming before the mountain weighs our worth. Words first, then trial. So that you know our fire seeks binding, not breaking.”

The elder considered him for a long time, then raised his chin. “Speak. Short.”

Aldryn nodded. “We follow the Triune Sigil’s path. The leaf of Agua has begun to mend; they no longer perish when far from water. This is not conquest. It is,” He glanced to Boaz. “a returning. A repair. We would ask for Terran counsel, Terran consent. We would not force your halls to bear what they have not chosen.”

The elder listened without blinking. When Aldryn finished, he rapped the staff once. “You speak good,” he said, and his mouth twitched, humor ghosting the severity. “Too many words. Stone hears some.” His gaze dimmed, distant. “Duln was of us. Exile but true-heart. Her stone in your hand… this weighs much. But we lost much to sun-fire long ago. We test. Then we sit talk.”

“Fair,” Boaz said.

Two Terrans strode in from a side archway, their armor etched in chevrons that caught the lichen’s glow. One carried a long-shafted poleaxe whose crescent blade mirrored the mountain’s curve; the other wore gauntlets ribbed like river stone. They bowed to the elder, then faced the company.

“Champions,” the elder announced in Common. He touched the poleaxe-bearer’s chest. “Dorn.” The gauntleted one. “Kegh.” The names fell like hammers on an anvil.

Jaxson’s eyes traced their stances, shoulders, hips. The familiar prickle of Perivigilum teased his edges, the slightest slip in time that let him taste a heartbeat ahead. Dangerous comfort. He breathed slow to keep it from owning him.

Boaz stepped into the smaller circle and felt the solid basalt under his boots. The ring’s inlaid line was not paint but powdered crystal pressed into a groove, humming under his soles like a taut string. He drew his sword and rolled his shoulders, the Sigil’s leaf warm against his chest. No vengeance, Aldryn’s voice echoed in memory. Let truth move through you.

Lyra came close to the circle’s edge, not crossing. Her voice was level, almost conversational. “If he goes high, draw him lower. Make him prove he trusts his footing.” She hesitated, eyes flicking to the Terran rows. “And… don’t show them everything.”

Boaz gave half a smile. “I’ll try not to set the room on fire, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“Please don’t,” Theo said, still watching. “There are… a lot of gears.”

The elder lifted his staff; the bronze gyre purred. He spoke in Terran, the syllables carrying clean and hard. A drum somewhere in the ceiling thudded once, twice, thrice. Dorn stepped forward to the first ring, tested its edge with his boot, and nodded. He set the poleaxe upright, hands loose but sure, blade angled like a crescent moon about to fall.

Aldryn raised his staff just enough that his raven Nevara, unseen till now, fluttered from the mesh and alighted on a crossbar. “Justice, not wrath,” he said softly. “Let your mirror be clear.”

Boaz’s fingers brushed the Sigil. The warmth did not flare; it breathed, slow as the mountain. He took his stance.

Across the bowl, Jaxson and Kegh paced to the broader ring. The chalk-bright line traced a track that would demand speed and poise both, no rails, no forgiveness. Telen stood to Jaxson’s left on the witness stone; Shaye to Kegh’s right, arms folded, eyes like flint.

The elder’s Common came rough but sufficient. “Rules say: no step out. No break ring. No strike to kill. Yield by fall or circle-breach.” He touched the staff to the floor and the pendulum-stones above fell into a new rhythm, a measured tick through the bones.

He looked once more to Boaz, then to Jaxson. “Surface ones,” he said, and his voice held no scorn in it now, only the weight of oath. “Be strong. Be clean.”

He lowered the staff.

The braziers’ flames leaned as if the room itself inhaled. The rings thrummed. Dorn’s knee dipped.

Boaz moved.

And Jaxson, feeling the world slip a hair ahead, stepped into the circle of fleetness.

Dorn’s poleaxe swung first, a flash of blackened steel, cleaving downward in a perfect arc. Boaz leapt aside; the blade hit the basalt with a crash that sent sparks leaping. The impact shuddered through the entire floor.

Dorn didn’t pause. He reversed the haft, spinning the weapon in a motion born of decades of drill. The hammer end came next, thrusting for Boaz’s chest.

Boaz twisted aside, the blow grazing his shoulder hard enough to numb it momentarily. His sword felt small in his hands, a reed against a storm.

Too far to strike. Too close to breathe.

He ducked low, feeling the next swing cut air above him. The Terran fought like the mountain itself: deliberate, inexorable, every strike a test of endurance. Boaz couldn’t match power for power. He needed to get in close, inside the reach of that weapon, where the poleaxe became burden, not advantage.

Another blow came from the left, and this time Boaz met it halfway. He stepped into the strike, not away from it. The shaft screamed past his ribs as he caught it on his blade, twisted, and forced it downward. Dorn’s surprise flashed behind the visor. For the first time, the Terran stumbled half a step.

The crowd stirred. One heartbeat of sound, and stillness again.

Boaz pressed, quick now, sword a flicker of heat. He struck twice at the haft, driving the Terran back. Dorn roared, swept the poleaxe in a brutal lateral swing that knocked the blade from Boaz’s hand. The sword skittered to the far side of their ring.

Dorn advanced. Boaz’s chest heaved, empty-handed now. He rolled his shoulders, setting his stance. The Sigil pulsed, faint and warm. “No vengeance,” he whispered to himself. “Only truth.”

Dorn lunged, poleaxe thrust like a spear. Boaz sidestepped and caught the haft with both arms, using the Terran’s momentum to pull him forward. The move brought them chest-to-chest, the poleaxe caught awkwardly between them. Dorn tried to wrench it free, but Boaz locked it with his forearm, pivoted, and slammed an elbow into the Terran’s side. The armor rang, but Dorn barely flinched. The counter came like a landslide and Boaz hit the floor hard, breath leaving him in a gasp.

Dorn lifted the poleaxe for a final blow.

The Sigil flared.

Not in flame, but in balance, a shimmer of invisible force that met the descending blade and redirected it. The weapon struck the basalt ring and rebounded upward, the shock jolting Dorn’s arms.

Boaz rolled, came up with his sword reclaimed, and struck clean, with his blade pressed to the gap in Dorn’s gorget before the Terran could recover.

Both froze.

The circle’s crystal edge flared white, signaling the end. Neither moved until the elder’s voice cut through the silence:

“First ring, truth kept.”

Boaz stepped back, lowering his blade in respect. Dorn straightened, chest heaving. In one sharp motion, he struck his chest with a gauntleted fist and bowed his head.

Boaz mirrored the gesture. Sweat dripped from his chin, the Sigil cooling against his skin. The Terran crowd exhaled as one, fists tapping armor in rhythmic salute. Not victory or defeat, just recognition.

The drums shifted tempo. Faster, lighter. The Fleetness Ring pulsed alive.

Jaxson and Kegh faced each other across a wide oval of basalt etched with glowing lines. The Terran’s gauntlets gleamed like forged obsidian, every finger ridged with dull claws. His stance was narrow, balanced, ready to pounce.

Jaxson rolled his shoulders, twin short swords loose in his hands. The air between them felt thick, like water. He closed his eyes for a breath, and the world tilted a fraction forward.

Perivigilum.

The spell unfolded like a second heartbeat, slipping him half a moment into what would be. The world’s edges sharpened: the flicker before movement, the shift before a strike.

Kegh lunged. Jaxson was already gone.

The gauntlet sliced air where his head had been. Jaxson pivoted, slashing low, but Kegh’s armor turned the edge. The Terran answered with a backhand that would have broken bone if it landed; Jaxson ducked under it, pivoting in a blur. Their movements became a dance of steel and stone trading echoes.

Kegh’s power was terrifying. Every blow carried the weight of a smith’s hammer. Yet Jaxson’s rhythm was fluid, evasive, alive. He read each motion as it began: the twist of Kegh’s heel, the tightening shoulder, the faint intake before a swing, and flowed around it.

But Perivigilum came with a price. The longer he lingered in that edge of foresight, the more the world frayed: sound stretching thin, color flattening, pain delayed.

Kegh feinted left and caught him mid-turn with a strike across the ribs. The impact knocked the air from his lungs, sent him sprawling to one knee. The crowd murmured.

Jaxson blinked through the haze. The line of the circle glowed inches from his boot. He smiled grimly. “Not yet.”

Kegh charged again, gauntlets whirring through the air. This time Jaxson met him head-on, catching one arm, rolling under it, twisting to use the Terran’s momentum against him. The move sent both fighters tumbling, scraping against the stone. Jaxson came to his feet, breathing hard.

The pendulums above swung faster now, one-two, one-two, counting down an invisible rhythm.

Kegh’s strikes blurred together, relentless. Sparks flew as gauntlets met blade, each contact sending a shock through Jaxson’s arms. The Terran drove him backward toward the ring’s edge.

Breathe.

The world slowed again, threads of motion spreading before him. He saw Kegh’s next three strikes before they came, the rise of the left elbow, the overhand hook, the final sweep. He stepped inside them, one after another, until the last left them almost shoulder to shoulder.

Too close for blades.

Jaxson dropped his swords, caught Kegh’s wrist, and drove an open palm into the Terran’s chest plate. The move wasn’t brute strength, it was timing. Kegh’s own momentum carried him backward, boot heel sliding across the ring’s glowing edge.

A flare of white. Silence.

Both froze. Kegh straightened, touched his chest with one gauntlet, and inclined his head in respect. Jaxson mirrored it, still panting, still riding the edge between vision and exhaustion.

The audience struck armor with their fists in one solid rhythm, measured and deep. The elder descended from the terraces, bronze staff humming softly. His Common was halting, but the words carried weight.

“Stone… accepts fire that does not rage. Fleetness… accepts speed that does not run.” He regarded Boaz and Jaxson in turn. “You fight… clean. You honor Duln.”

Boaz bowed his head. “And your ways.”

The elder grunted approval. “Good. No cage, no chain. You walk now as guest, still watched, but free.”

He turned to the spectators and barked a phrase in Terran. Every warrior there struck their breastplates once, the sound rolling through the cavern like thunder.

Aldryn exhaled softly. “They approve,” he murmured. “For now.”

Lyra leaned on her crossbow, grinning faintly. “I’d say we passed the interview.”

The elder raised his staff once more. “The Forge-Council waits. You follow.”

The runes dimmed along the basalt floor; steam vented upward, washing away the last heat of battle. Boaz stooped to reclaim his sword, Jaxson sheathed his blades, and the fellowship gathered close.

As they ascended the ramp toward the crimson-lit passage, Boaz cast one last look back. Dorn and Kegh stood at ease in the cooling arena, silent sentinels of the old world.

For the first time, Boaz wondered not what they guarded, but what they feared might awaken if the mountain ever fell silent again.

The fellowship’s quarters were carved smooth and low-ceilinged, warm to the touch, with blue fungus glowing faintly along the joints of the stone. When the guards departed, they left behind a broad iron tray of food and a jug of steaming drink.

The scent filled the chamber: earthy, rich, and unfamiliar. On the tray lay skewers of pale meat glazed in dark oil, sliced root vegetables roasted until crisp, and a small loaf dense with grains that glimmered faintly with mineral dust.

Theo leaned over, curious. “Some kind of lizard meat,” he guessed. “Not Schraff, thankfully. We’d already be dead from the fumes.”

Kiera sniffed, cautious. “It smells like mix between fish and pork.”

Shaye crouched beside her, plucking a piece from the skewer. “Tastes better than either,” she said after chewing, surprised. “Savory, clean. They could’ve fed us stones to make a point, but they didn’t.”

Telen nodded slowly. “In Aguan custom, a meal freely given after battle is peace until dawn. I suspect it’s the same here.”

They ate on the warm floor, knees touching, speaking little. The food was simple but good, grounding after the strain of the trials. Boaz found it steadying, with the warmth of it seeping into his chest more than his stomach.

When the trays were cleared, silence returned, the kind that didn’t need to be filled.

Jaxson leaned against the wall, stretching his sore shoulder. “They fight like machines and cook like saints. I don’t know what to make of them.”

“Respect them,” Aldryn said. “They’ve kept the dark at bay longer than we’ve kept the light.”

Lyra smirked faintly. “If they ask for a rematch, I’m sending you, Aldryn.”

The laughter that followed was small but genuine, rippling softly through the chamber.

A rustle near the vent drew their eyes. A squat, whiskered creature, half groundhog, half mole, emerged, blinking at them with reflective eyes. It sniffed the air and vanished into the vent with a squeak.

Theo grinned. “Messenger. Their scouts. I’ve read about them. Little burrow-runners trained to carry stones marked with runes between levels.”

Boaz watched the vent a moment longer. “So even the earth itself carries their words.”

“Not a bad way to live,” Kiera murmured.

They settled as the light dimmed. Tink nestled against Thorne’s flank; Eira perched on the edge of a shelf and fluffed her feathers. Shaye and Telen shared a brief look of quiet pride, the satisfaction of witnesses whose word had been honored.

Aldryn leaned his staff against the wall and exhaled. “No chains, no blades, and food that doesn’t kill us. I call that a good evening.”

“Let’s not ruin it with prophecy,” Lyra murmured, already half asleep.

Boaz chuckled softly, the sound echoing faintly. “I agree.”

He looked at the Sigil leaf, its glow dim but steady, like a glow resting after the forge. Around him, the company breathed in unison, weary but whole. Somewhere deep in the walls, gears shifted in a low, contented sigh of the mountain itself.

Boaz closed his eyes. “Thank you, Duln,” he whispered. “We made it home.”

And beneath that ancient stone, among allies not yet friends, the fellowship rested, their laughter and silence mingling with the hum of a world reborn.

Leave feedback on this chapter