The summons came with no words, only the hiss of steam and the knock of armored fists on stone.

Boaz was already awake. He had been since before the light shifted, if it could be called light. The faint glow of lichen painted the walls in dim blues and greens, and the constant pulse of the mountain filled the air like a slow heartbeat. When the door unsealed, hot air rolled in, carrying the scent of metal and oil.

Two Terran guards entered, faces hidden behind masks of hammered iron. They gestured for the fellowship to rise. No weapons were demanded this time; none were offered.

Aldryn leaned on his staff. “Now we learn whether last night’s meal was welcome or farewell.”

Telen grunted softly. “Terrans don’t seem to invite the condemned to breakfast.”

They followed the guards through a warren of corridors, each carved with astonishing precision. The stone here bore no tool marks, only layered patterns like rippled sand frozen in motion. Steam drifted from vents in the floor, carrying faint mineral warmth. As they walked, small whiskered creatures darted from holes in the walls, pausing to watch with bright, wet eyes before vanishing again.

“There go the messengers again,” Theo whispered. “They probably already told the council we’re on our way.”

No one laughed. The gravity of the place pressed like the weight of the mountain itself.

The passage ended in a massive archway sealed by twin slabs of obsidian. Lines of molten metal ran through their seams, pulsing faintly as the guards approached. One pressed a rune carved into his gauntlet; the doors parted with a deep, grinding sigh.

Beyond lay the Deephold Council Chamber.

The space was vast yet claustrophobic. Circular, domed, and carved entirely from living rock, massive chains descended from the ceiling, supporting a ring of molten-light lanterns that burned without flame. Around the perimeter stood six Terrans, each upon a dais of differing height, their armor worked with runes that caught and refracted the glow.

Between them, at the chamber’s heart, a round platform of iron and stone waited. The place of petitioners. The fellowship stepped forward, boots sounding loud against the metal floor.

One of the Stonewardens, an elder with a beard bound in copper rings, spoke first. His voice carried the rumble of grinding stone. “Surface-born. You stand before Wardens of Durn-Kelmar. You were tested. Steel and flame; you live still. Speak now, say why.”

Aldryn bowed slightly, careful but proud. “We seek the truth of the Triune Sigil, the leaf that once bound your people’s strength to the world above. We come in peace and honor the trial you set.”

The elder’s eyes narrowed. “Peace soft. Honor breaks. You seek thing buried deep than memory. Why should we loose what stone sealed?”

Boaz met the stare. “Because what was sealed is dying. The corruption that crawls above will not stop at the surface. When it reaches the deep, there will be no earth left to hold the mountain.”

The council stirred. A few exchanged quiet words in their harsh, guttural tongue. The sound echoed like chisels striking an unseen wall.

Another Warden, a younger woman with armor etched with geometric lines, spoke. Her Common was halting but more clear. “Words easy. Proof hard. You bring magic that burns. We smell it. We feel it. Why trust flame again? Flame took much from us.”

Boaz lowered his gaze briefly. “I know,” he said. “Fire breaks as easily as it binds. But it’s not vengeance I carry.” He lifted the Sigil slightly, its faint red glow spilling across the metal floor. “It’s justice.”

The Terrans flinched almost imperceptibly, as though the light itself pressed against their senses. The woman stepped back; two others gripped their weapons.

“Enough,” growled the copper-bearded elder. “No fire here.”

Boaz closed his fist over the Sigil until the light faded. The silence that followed was long. The sound of dripping water somewhere behind the dais filled the space like slow punctuation.

At last, a Warden with one eye clouded by a white scar leaned forward. “You fight well,” he said. “Too well for wanderers, surface-folk. Tell me, surface-king, who taught you name you carry?”

Boaz blinked. “Name?”

“The mark upon your chest. The old rune, Vetharion. Forged here, long before wars. You speak justice, yet wield what born of punishment.”

Aldryn’s eyes widened slightly. He murmured, “Old tongue. Vetharion, mirror wound.”

The scarred Warden nodded. “You remember, elder. Few do.”

Another councilor scoffed. “Words of ghosts. The surface brings only rot.”

Tension rippled across the dais. Two spoke rapidly in Terran, their voices rising like hammer and anvil. Aldryn caught only fragments: curse… leaf… burial.

Kiera touched his sleeve gently. “What are they saying?”

Aldryn’s brow furrowed. “Debating whether to let us leave alive.”

That earned a grim smile from Jaxson. “At least they’re debating it.”

The younger female Warden struck her spear against the dais, silencing the others. “Enough talk. The deep has heard your fire’s echo. We will decide what to do with you, but not before the forge cools.”

Aldryn bowed again, slightly deeper this time. “We thank you for the hearing, Stonewardens.”

No reply came. One by one, the Terrans turned and disappeared into side tunnels behind their platforms. Only the copper-bearded elder lingered. He studied Boaz for a long, unreadable moment, then rumbled, “You speak truth, or believe you do. Both dangerous. Rest. We call again when stone decided.”

The guards re-formed around the fellowship and led them from the chamber. The great doors sealed behind them with the same grinding sigh, and the echo hung in the air like fading thunder.

As they walked back through the corridors, Lyra exhaled. “Well, that could’ve gone worse.”

Aldryn murmured, “We were heard. In this place, that is victory enough for one morning.”

Telen’s expression was unreadable. “They are not done weighing us. The mountain takes its time.”

Boaz looked at the Sigil in his palm, its faint glow returning as if in response. “We have to be patient I guess.” He tucked it below his tunic.

Behind them, in the dark of the corridor, a small burrow-runner darted from a vent and vanished ahead of the guards, already carrying news of the council’s visitors deeper into the heart of Durn-Kelmar.

The guards led them not to their quarters but into a new corridor that spiraled deeper. The air grew warmer, tinged with the scent of roasting root and hot iron. Ahead, a faint orange glow pulsed like the reflection of a forge.

They emerged into a hall lined with stone tables sunk directly into the floor. Steam curled from iron kettles set into hollows along one wall, and Terrans moved among them with precise economy, stirring, pouring, serving. None spoke.

One guard motioned toward an empty table near a vent where heat rose in gentle drafts. The company sat. Trays appeared, not lavish, but deliberate. Flat loaves of coarse bread still warm from the forge-ovens. Bowls of roasted root medley: carrot, stone potato, and pale mushrooms. Slices of white meat glazed with mineral salt and faintly luminescent oil.

Telen recognized it first. “Cave lizard,” he murmured. “Safe for us.”

Aldryn nodded. “They know the Schraff would kill us. A courtesy, and a test of knowledge both.”

Boaz lifted a piece with his fingers, the texture firm and dense, like smoked fish. “It’s good,” he said after a bite. “Tastes… honest. Better than trail food.”

Jaxson grinned, already eating. “If honesty tastes like this, I’ll take seconds.”

Lyra smirked. “Try diplomacy for dessert; we’ll need it.”

The Terran who served them lingered a moment. Her face was soot-streaked, her eyes glinting like polished hematite. “Eat,” she said in rough Common. “The forge waits for no one.” She turned and disappeared into the heat.

Shaye watched her go. “They feed us as equals but guard us as prisoners.”

The group ate mostly in silence. The hum of the deep filled every pause: the rhythmic pulse of gears, the sigh of steam, the faint chitter of burrow-runners scurrying through vents. When the guards returned, the plates were empty.

“Council calls again,” one said.

Aldryn rose, wiping his hands on his sleeve. “Let us see what temper the mountain has cooled to.”

The second summons led them not to the main dais but to a narrower chamber adjoining it, like a council annex, less ceremonial and more practical. The ceiling was lower, the light redder, the air thick with metallic tang. Five of the six Stonewardens were already there, standing around a circular table carved with runic veins that glowed faintly under their hands.

The copper-bearded elder who had spoken before was absent. In his place stood a different Warden, broad-shouldered, eyes like smoldering coals, whose armor bore jagged engravings instead of smooth lines. He regarded the fellowship as one might regard a crack in a foundation.

“You are called again,” he said in a tone that barely qualified as Common. “You speak, we decide. Speak quick.”

Aldryn inclined his head. “We thank you for hearing us once more. We seek not to claim but to understand the leaf of your Sigil, the one said to bind fire to stone. The world above…”

“Lies,” the hardline Warden interrupted, voice rising like a forge bellows. “Surface burns and lies. The leaf is curse, not gift. One who bears it carries ruin in his chest.”

Boaz opened his mouth, but Aldryn’s staff tapped lightly against his boot, a silent let me.

“Honored Warden,” Aldryn said, calm as water. “Your words echo older speech. ‘Ruin in the chest’…that phrasing is from the Song of the Deep Sleepers. You quote from dream-incantation, not record.”

That drew attention. Several Terrans shifted uneasily. One muttered a word that sounded like Vaedrun, a name half-feared. The hardliner sneered. “Old songs remember truth better than talkers. Your fire-bearer came to bury us again. We should bury him first.”

A hiss swept the chamber as the molten lines across the table flared. The tension was physical, the air dense with heat. Before Boaz could speak, another Warden raised a hand. Her armor was simple, unadorned save for a strip of cloth the color of deep moss. “Enough, Ghor,” she said in Terran, then turned to the fellowship. “You fought with restraint. That counts for more than prophecy.” Her Common was accented but steady. She looked toward Telen. “You are Agua. The deep water flows still in your people?”

Telen bowed slightly. “It does. The curse that bound us to the waters has lifted.”

The Warden’s eyes softened. “Then the Sundering weakens. Perhaps the mountain should listen before striking.”

Ghor growled low in his throat. “Water softens stone until both split.”

Lyra spoke before she could stop herself. “Maybe, or maybe it keeps the cracks from spreading.”

Every Terran in the room turned toward her. The silence was sudden and immense. The younger Warden, the one who had spoken of the trial in the arena, tilted her head. “Your tongue is sharp,” she said, “but not false.”

Lyra exhaled slowly. “We didn’t come to change you. Only to mend what was already broken.”

The youngest of the councilors, a slim Terran barely past youth, his beard only starting to braid, studied her with open curiosity. “You speak like someone who’s buried a friend.”

Lyra’s gaze fell for a heartbeat. “Haven’t we all?”

That landed deeper than she expected. The young Warden nodded once and said nothing more.

Jaxson, fidgeting with tension, muttered, “You’d bury us all anyway, if the sun got too close.”

The words hung in the air like smoke. Every Terran stiffened.

Aldryn closed his eyes. “Jaxson…”

But Kiera was faster. She stepped forward, her tone soft and clear. “He speaks from fear, not insult. You guard your home as we guard our lives. But fear is no wall, it only hides the wound. We ask not for your trust, only your hearing.”

The elder Warden’s eyes lingered on her for a long moment, then he grunted, the sound halfway to a sigh.

Boaz stepped beside her. “If the Sigil has a leaf here, it belongs to you as much as to us. But if it’s dying, none of us will keep it. Not you, not me, not the world above. Help us find it, before what sleeps beneath your mountain wakes hungry.”

The councilors exchanged looks heavy with meaning. The glowing runes beneath their hands pulsed erratically: heartbeat or warning, none could tell. Finally, the moss-armored Warden spoke again. “We will call the elder back. There is talk of old flame and stone prophecy, perhaps too much truth to ignore.”

Ghor spat a word in Terran that made the molten light flicker and stalked from the room, muttering like falling gravel.

When he was gone, Aldryn leaned toward Boaz and spoke low enough that only those nearest heard. “Those words he used, ‘buried before the breath of dawn,’ I’ve heard them before. Not in speech, but in the fragments of old dream-verse, Terran or older still. They don’t belong to any living tongue.”

Boaz frowned. “Dream-verse?”

Aldryn nodded. “Ritual phrasing, half spell, half memory. Some of the deep orders once believed words could carry will through sleep. If that old practice still echoes here, it may be stirring them in their rest.”

Lyra glanced uneasily toward the tunnel Ghor had taken. “So they’re quoting dreams now?”

“Or nightmares,” Aldryn said softly. “Either way, not of their choosing.”

The youngest councilor, who had been standing closer to them, must’ve heard them, because he turned toward them at these words. “The deep has ears,” he said quietly. “Speak carefully, fire-bearer. Not all whispers here are ours.”

The red light along the runes flickered, then steadied. The moss-armored Warden raised her hand. “Enough for one morning. The forge will answer at dusk.”

The guards re-formed around the fellowship and led them out. Behind them, the molten lines across the council table pulsed once, slow and irregular, like the echo of a heart that had missed its beat.

The corridor outside the council chamber felt colder now, though the same veins of molten metal pulsed faintly along the walls. The guards said nothing, only motioned for the company to follow.

No one spoke until they reached a side passage lined with carved benches and vents that breathed steady heat. One guard rapped the butt of his poleaxe on the floor and stopped. “Wait,” he said simply.

They obeyed. The air here was warm. Far below, the rhythmic clank of forges echoed up the shafts in a deep thunder.

Lyra exhaled first. “We’re alive. That’s a start.”

Theo sank onto the nearest bench. “Barely. That room could’ve exploded if one of them sneezed wrong.”

“Don’t joke,” Kiera said, though her voice lacked its usual firmness. “You felt it. Something in that chamber didn’t belong to the living.”

Boaz nodded slowly. “Aldryn, those lines you mentioned, dream-verse. You’re certain that’s what it was?”

The old mage tilted his head, staring into the heat-haze rising from a vent. “Certain enough. They were reciting something that wasn’t argument, but incantation. The cadence carried weight, as if they’d spoken it before, in their sleep, perhaps, or through someone else’s will.”

Telen frowned. “You think they’re being guided?”

“Guided, or haunted,” Aldryn replied. “Hard to tell where the difference ends in a place that listens as this one does.” The group fell silent. Steam hissed softly from the vents, filling the air with the smell of minerals and ash, but not an unpleasant smell.

A pair of Terran guards approached down the corridor, carrying clay flasks and a small iron bowl of glowing stones. One placed the bowl near them; warmth spread at once. The other set the flasks on the floor. “Drink,” he said. “Stone tea. For calm.”

Shaye inclined her head. “You honor us.”

The Terran gave a slight nod, more acknowledgment than reply, and withdrew a few paces, remaining within sight but turning his back in a gesture halfway between respect and vigilance.

Theo lifted a flask, sniffed cautiously, and smiled. “Smells like mushrooms and iron filings.” He took a sip, blinked, and handed it to Lyra. “Tastes like both.”

Lyra tried it anyway. “It’s terrible,” she said, then after a pause, “but oddly comforting.”

A faint smile tugged at Kiera’s lips. “Like most of what we’ve found underground so far.”

Boaz didn’t drink. He stared at the distant shimmer where the corridor bent away, listening to the hum that seemed to run beneath the floor. “They said the forge will answer at dusk. What does that mean?”

“Decision by craft,” Aldryn said. “The Wardens don’t vote, they forge consensus, literally. Each strikes the anvil in turn; the sound tells the others whether the metal is true.”

Lyra raised a brow. “So our fate depends on acoustics?”

“On resonance,” Aldryn corrected. “They believe truth has a tone.”

Jaxson leaned back, running a hand through his hair. “Let’s hope we ring pleasantly.”

Shaye’s tone was mild. “You didn’t earlier.”

He winced. “You’re right.”

Telen folded his arms, his voice calm but firm. “They respect stillness, Jaxson. Words that echo without purpose sound like cracks to them.”

Jaxson nodded, chastened. “I’ll remember.”

Boaz looked between Telen and Shaye. “You two spoke their language better than we did without saying a word.”

Shaye smiled faintly. “The Aguan and the Terran share more than either likes to admit. Depth changes how one listens.”

Aldryn’s gaze drifted toward the guards standing watch. “It may also change how one dreams. I think the mountain itself hums through them. Perhaps those phrases we heard were…”

Kiera interrupted gently. “A warning?”

He nodded. “Or a symptom.”

They sat for a time, letting the warmth seep through the stone. Around them, Terrans moved with quiet purpose, carrying ingots, adjusting valves, feeding the forges far below. None met their eyes directly, yet none seemed hostile. It felt less like imprisonment and more like being studied by the earth itself.

Boaz turned the Sigil leaf in his hands. The red glow pulsed faintly, as if answering the rhythm underfoot. “It feels different down here,” he murmured. “Heavier, steadier. Like the fire’s learning patience.”

“And we should learn with it,” Aldryn said. “If the Sigil truly binds races as much as elements, this is where it must prove itself.”

Lyra looked at the lichen-lit ceiling. “Do you think they’ll ever trust us enough to show us their forges?”

“They might,” Theo said. “Once they decide we’re not planning to steal their secrets.”

Kiera smiled at that, the first genuine warmth since dawn. “Or once they believe we’re not afraid of their trials.”

One of the guards turned slightly, the faint scrape of metal on metal. “Fear is wisdom,” he said in heavy Common, surprising them. “Stone teaches it.”

Aldryn inclined his head. “And the wise learn to listen before striking.”

The guard gave a single, sharp nod, then faced forward again.

Boaz stood, stretching the stiffness from his shoulders. “Whatever they decide, we face it together. We earned a hearing. I suppose that’s more than most get.”

Telen rose as well. “And if they refuse?”

Boaz met his gaze. “We’ll have to keep walking until we find the truth ourselves. The mountain doesn’t have to open for us, we can carve our way through.”

Lyra groaned. “Please, no more metaphors.” That drew small laughter, low but real, echoing softly off the stone.

Aldryn smiled faintly. “Laughter in a Terran hall. There’s a first.”

Kiera looked around at the group: the bruises, the soot, the wary light in every face, and felt a strange calm settle over her. “We’ll need it before dusk.”

The words lingered as they gathered their things. The guards had gestured for them to follow once more, leading them toward an antechamber where the light deepened to crimson.

As they walked, a burrow-runner scurried past along the wall, wearing a harness that held a sliver of metal engraved with tiny runes. It vanished into a side tunnel headed toward the heart of the mountain.

Theo watched it go. “More messages,” he said softly. “The mountain’s still gossiping about us.”

Boaz adjusted the strap across his shoulder and didn’t slow his pace. “Let’s make sure it remembers the right story.” The sound of the forges rose ahead, steady, vast, and waiting.

Dusk in Durn-Kelmar was not sunset but cooling: the forge-heat easing, the lantern-rings dimming to a deeper red. When the guards summoned them again, the halls felt tighter, the air more deliberate. They were led through the obsidian doors into the great chamber, where all six Stonewardens stood at their posts. The copper-bearded elder had returned; Ghor, the jagged-etched hardliner, gripped his dais like a man ready to break rock with his hands.

The platform of petitioners rose with a hiss and locked into place.

The elder spoke first, voice iron-steady. “Forge cooled. Ears opened. Speak, surface-born. Mountain weighs while you speak.”

Aldryn bowed and stepped back, deference that said not I. Boaz moved to the front, but before he could speak, the moss-marked Warden lifted a hand toward Telen.

“Agua,” she said in careful Common. “Water-kin. Tell how your curse loosens. Tell fast. True words are short.”

Telen didn’t glance at Boaz for permission. He set his spear’s butt gently to the iron and answered as if giving weather and tide. “Our people could not live seven days from the waters. Now we can. It began when the Sigil’s first leaf returned to life. We do not call this mercy. We call it change. Change can drown or carry. We would rather swim with it.”

The youngest councilor leaned forward, interest plain, but Ghor snorted, “Water follows easy paths. Stone holds.”

“Stone cracks when water finds truth,” Telen said, voice calm as a still pool. “A crack is not always death. Sometimes it is a doorway to renewal.”

A low murmur rippled around the ring of Wardens. The elder’s beard rings clicked softly as he turned to Boaz. “Fire-bearer, speak.”

Boaz set his palms on the platform railing. His voice came low, unforced. “You tested us and we tried to meet you clean. That was your language. Let me try yours again.” He touched the Sigil under his tunic, not to show it, but to feel it. “We came because the world above is splitting along old lines. If your leaf is sleeping, and we think it is, then the split will run through these halls, whether you open your doors or bolt them. We don’t ask for trust. We ask to stand beside you while we find the truth.”

Ghor’s mouth twisted. “You ask to take stone’s breath. You ask us to be fools.”

Boaz met his gaze without blinking. “I ask you to not stand alone.”

Silence held. The red lantern-ring hummed. Lyra cleared her throat, stepped beside Boaz, and, without ornament, told the room the thing Terrans respect most: the hardest truth.

“You don’t owe us anything,” she said. “You don’t owe the surface anything. You’ve kept breathing down here while the rest of us choked on ash and rumor. If I were you, I’d keep your gates shut and let the surface world rot.” She let the words sit until Ghor’s eyes sharpened with pleased malice, and then she added, softer, “But you also know shut doors don’t stop the rot. We saw a tree in the Forlaith with a dead Terran bound inside it and a false leaf buried at the roots. That lie didn’t stay in the forest. It walked. It learned. You can hate us and still help us kill the lie that’s coming for you too.”

The youngest councilor’s jaw eased; he studied Lyra as if weighing ore. “You speak hard and do not flatter,” he said. “This we like.”

Jaxson, keyed tight by the moment, tried to help and nearly snapped the blade. “Hiding in stone won’t save you when the roof falls.”

Every helm on every dais shifted. The temperature in the chamber seemed to drop.

He opened his mouth to fix it, but Kiera was already there. She stepped between Jaxson and the council with a healer’s steadiness. “He meant fear doesn’t save anyone,” she said quietly. “It didn’t save us in Beltin. It won’t save you here. We’ve lost friends this year because we hesitated to act until the wound festered. We don’t want that for you. We don’t want it for anyone.”

A beat. Then the moss-marked Warden nodded, once. The elder’s fingers loosened on his staff. The scar-eyed Warden, the one who had named Vetharion, spoke for the first time tonight. “You carry old work,” he said to Boaz. “Mirror-wound. Punishment shaped into balance. You used it in the ring and did not break oath. This we saw.” His good eye cut to Ghor. “Stone sees.”

Ghor’s reply came like a thrown hammer. “Stone remembers too. Flame took. Flame lied. Flame buried us once with binding song. And now…” His voice dropped, and the cadence went wrong, slipping into that heavy, borrowed rhythm Aldryn had named: dream-verse. “…bury the ash before first breath, seal the sun, let the deep keep its sleep.”

The runes along the dais pulsed out of time. Several Wardens shifted, uneasy as if a draft had touched them where no air should move. The copper-bound elder rapped his staff hard enough to ring the chamber. The pulse steadied. “No sleep-songs in council,” he said, first in Terran, then in broken Common. “We speak waking.”

Ghor’s jaw knotted. He said nothing more.

Boaz didn’t press. He lifted the Sigil into sight again, not blazing, not daring, simply present, and the faint Mother-of-Pearl leaf-glow met the red of the lanterns without fighting it. The tone of the room changed a hair’s breadth, like a forge flame settling when the bellows are set right.

“Listen to this, if you won’t listen to me,” he said. “When the first leaf bound to the Sigil, the Agua didn’t become fire. They didn’t become us. They became themselves once again, unbound from a curse that should never have been theirs. If there is a Terran leaf here, it won’t make you anything but more truly Terran. If I’m wrong, you can throw us out and seal every door you have. But if I’m right, and you send us away, you’re turning your back on the one thing that might hold the surface corruption at bay when it learns how to infiltrate your halls.”

The youngest councilor looked to the moss-marked Warden. She didn’t answer. She looked to the elder. He did not yet answer either. It was Telen who moved the air again. He stepped forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with Boaz: a small change, a large signal.

“In the marsh,” Telen said, “we pulled one another from water that tried to remember us wrong. Today, we watched your fighters pull restraint from rage. I do not ask you to love us. I ask you to do what you do best; endure with purpose. Share the work. If the Sigil has a leaf here, it touches your people whether you like it or not. Better with us than against us. Better beside than behind a wall.”

A long breath worked through the council chamber, traveling dais to dais like a wave through stone. The youngest councilor addressed Telen directly, voice almost courteous. “Water-kin. If we open what was sealed and the deep breaks, will Agua stand in the breach?”

Telen didn’t look to Boaz for the answer. “We will,” he said simply. “Not because of prophecy. Because of neighbors.”

Aldryn’s eyes softened at that word. Neighbors, not allies. The right shape for Terran ears.

Ghor laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Neighbors bring noise.”

Lyra didn’t blink. “So do avalanches. We’re trying to stop one.”

The elder raised his staff. The lantern ring lowered a fraction; the chains sang. He studied each of them in turn: the rash youth, the blunt truth, the healer’s mercy, the quiet Agua, the fire-bearer who hadn’t burned their hall to ash. “Stone hears more than words,” he said at last. “We struck anvil while you waited. The tone was not false.” His gaze slid to the scar-eyed Warden. “Old names woke, Vetharion, and others. Old shape of oath. We cannot spit and send you away. Not yet.”

Ghor’s fingers tightened; the runes under his palms flickered. The elder did not look at him. “You are not free,” the elder continued. “You are bound Guests. You walk with eyes on you. You eat what we give. You do not teach fire to young hands. In return, we open a way: one way only. The Sanctum of Stoneheart.”

Boaz inclined his head. “We accept your terms.”

The moss-marked Warden added, “At dawn, we bring you to the Sanctum. At dusk tomorrow, we weigh again. Between, we listen for tone.”

“And if tone lies?” Ghor asked.

“Stone will say,” the elder replied, final as a hammer fall. He thumped his staff; the platform shuddered and began to lower.

As the ring descended, Lyra exhaled a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding. Jaxson stared at his boots, chastened but alive. Kiera’s hand brushed Boaz’s sleeve once, no words, just a steadying touch. Telen kept step with the guards as if he’d walked these halls for years.

Above them, the councilors receded into heat-shadow. For a heartbeat Boaz thought he heard the dream-cadence whisper along the chains, seal the sun, but the sound was only metal cooling.

“Bound guests,” Lyra murmured as they reached the floor. “I’ll take it.”

Boaz nodded, eyes on the corridor that would lead them wherever Terrans hid their oldest truths. “Tomorrow the Sanctum,” he said. “Tonight we rest.”

“And listen,” Aldryn added, gaze tilted toward the ceiling. “Because something else is listening back.”

The guards turned, and the mountain’s low pulse guided them away; deeper, toward whatever the stone was finally willing to show.

Their escorts led them back to their quarters. Food awaited them again: roasted roots, lizard meat, and cups of the bitter stone-tea. It was simpler than the morning meal, but no less deliberate.

“They keep feeding us,” Theo said, easing down beside the brazier. “Either they like us or they’re fattening us.”

Lyra chuckled faintly. “If they wanted us dead, we’d be decorations on the walls by now.”

Shaye sat cross-legged, turning a piece of stone potato over in her fingers. “Food means peace,” she said. “At least until morning.”

Boaz accepted a cup of tea and stared into the muted glow of the coals. “Bound guests,” he murmured. “Not prisoners, not friends. Something between.”

Kiera met his gaze. “Hopefully between is where trust begins.”

Telen nodded in quiet agreement. “Among Agua, we call it the hold-breath. When the current could drown or carry. You wait. You listen for its pull.”

Aldryn smiled faintly at that. “Then we wait, and we listen. This mountain hums when it’s thinking.”

For a while they did just that; no words, only the rhythm of the deep. Somewhere beyond the walls, the slow grind of gears turned like a giant’s heartbeat. Each pulse sent a tremor through the floor, small but steady.

Theo leaned against the stone. “Do you think they’ll really let us into this Archive?”

“They’ll show us exactly what they mean us to see,” Lyra said. “And hide what matters most to them.”

“Which is still more than anyone’s seen in centuries,” Aldryn said. “Durn-Kelmar’s secrets outlived empires. Even the rumor of its forges kept kings awake.”

Jaxson snorted. “Let’s hope it keeps us alive instead.”

Thorne shifted near the entrance, fur bristling once before settling. Tink crawled onto his shoulder and chirred softly. Mika lounged nearby, and Eira, Nevara, and Kestel all found nooks in the walls to rest in.

Boaz reached and rested a hand on the lynx’s flank. “We’re under their roof now. Whatever happens next, we match their pace. Slow, steady, deliberate.”

Lyra smirked. “We? Slow and deliberate? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Then start watching,” Boaz said, faintly smiling.

The laughter was small but real, quickly swallowed by the stone, yet leaving its warmth behind. Kiera leaned her head against the wall, eyes half-closed.

In the far corner, one of the vents exhaled a faint plume of steam. The air changed tone, almost like a sigh, and from somewhere deep below came a single, measured clang, the unmistakable sound of a hammer striking an anvil.

“Decision made,” Telen murmured.

“Or something awakened,” Aldryn said.

No one replied. They sat together, the fire’s low light painting their faces in copper and shadow. For the first time since entering the mountain, the heat felt less like oppression and more like life.

When at last the brazier dimmed, Kiera whispered a quiet prayer of thanks, to the stone, to the light, to whatever still listened. Boaz stayed awake the longest as usual, watching the last thread of smoke coil upward. Somewhere beyond the walls, he thought he heard a faint rhythm, not of forge or gear but of words, carried through the rock in a whisper that wasn’t meant for human ears:

—bury the ash before first breath—

He opened his eyes fully, listening, but the sound was gone. Only the mountain’s pulse remained, slow and alive. He lay back at last, letting the hum cradle him. Tomorrow would bring the trial. Tonight, even the stone slept lightly.

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