The hammer rang against steel in a rhythm that would have made Veskar proud. Clang-ping. Clang-ping. Each strike sent sparks dancing across the shadowed interior of the forge, illuminating rough-hewn stone walls and the concentrated face of the dwarf woman working the glowing metal.
Elric paused at the threshold, his medallion giving a gentle pulse. Not the violent shuddering it had produced around Veskar's threshold artifact, but something more subtle. Like recognition.
"You planning to stand there gawking all morning, or are you coming in?" The dwarf didn't look up from her work, but her voice carried the no-nonsense tone of someone accustomed to being obeyed in her own space.
He ducked through the doorway, noting the defensive runes carved into the lintel. Professional work—the kind that would give even a Witcher pause if triggered.
"Torga Runehand?"
"Depends on who's asking." She finally looked up, burnished gold eyes taking in his Griffin medallion, the rune-scarred hands, the way he held himself like a man comfortable with violence but more at ease with books. "Though I suspect I know."
The forge was smaller than Veskar's but better organized. Tools hung in precise arrangements, each one gleaming with care. Finished pieces lined shelves along the walls—not weapons, mostly, but implements of craft and magic. Sign-focusing rings, ward-stones, and other items that spoke to a mind more interested in creation than destruction.
"Veskar sent me." Elric approached the anvil, keeping his hands visible. "Said you might have information about—"
"About what's stirring in the Wolf's den?" Torga set down her hammer and wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. The sigil-burn tattoo around her right eye caught the forge-light, looking for a moment like a living flame. "Aye, I might at that."
She turned to a barrel of water and plunged the piece she'd been working—a delicate chain of interlocking rings—into the liquid. Steam hissed up between them.
"Question is, what makes you think you deserve to know?"
The challenge hung in the air like smoke. Elric had expected this—Veskar had warned him that Torga didn't trust easily, especially when it came to Witchers.
"Because I'm the one they called to fix it."
"They called you?" Torga's laugh was sharp as broken glass. "Boy, you don't look old enough to have mastered basic Signs, let alone whatever's got Vesemir spooked enough to break thirty years of silence."
"I'm older than I look."
"And I'm the Queen of Redania." She pulled the chain from the water and examined it with a critical eye. "Every young Witcher thinks he's special. Every one thinks his enhanced this or modified that makes him the answer to problems older and meaner than he can imagine."
Elric felt heat rise in his chest—not magical, just irritation. "I've been modifying Signs since I was twenty. I've sealed rifts that should have taken a team of mages to contain. I've—"
"You've played with forces you don't understand and gotten lucky." Torga's voice cut through his protestations like a blade through silk. "Same as every other fool who thinks reading old books makes him wise."
She hung the chain on a peg and turned to face him fully. The missing pinky on her left hand was obvious now, the scarred flesh pale against her weathered skin.
"You know what that cost me?" She held up the maimed hand. "Thought I was clever, binding a ward-stone with a modified Quen matrix. Real innovative work. The kind of thing that would have made my name if it hadn't exploded in my face."
Elric's irritation cooled, replaced by something closer to understanding. "What happened?"
"What always happens when you assume you're smarter than the people who came before." Torga walked to a workbench and began sorting through small tools with her good hand. "The matrix collapsed. Took my finger, nearly took my eye, and damn near killed the Wolf Witcher who was fool enough to trust my work."
"You worked with the Wolf School?"
"For three years. Created sigil-augmented armor, enhanced medallions, focusing rings." Her voice was flat, professional. "Good work, mostly. Until it wasn't."
She selected a small lens from the collection on her bench—a monocle of sorts, with runes etched around its rim. When she held it up to her eye, the scarred flesh around the socket glowed faintly.
"Interesting." She was looking at him through the lens now, and whatever she saw made her expression shift. "Very interesting."
"What do you see?"
"Magic leaves traces, boy. Signature patterns that tell a story if you know how to read them." Torga lowered the lens and studied his face. "Your story's... complicated."
She moved around him in a slow circle, occasionally raising the lens for another look. Elric forced himself to stand still, though every instinct told him to step away from the scrutiny.
"Griffin training, obviously. But modified. Enhanced beyond anything the old masters achieved." She paused in front of him. "Where did you learn to weave tri-glyph sequences?"
"I found fragments in old ruins. Pieced together—"
"No." Torga's voice was sharp. "These aren't reconstructions. They're too clean, too integrated with your natural casting patterns. Someone taught you this, or..."
She trailed off, raising the lens again.
"Or what?"
"Or something else shaped your magic from the inside." The dwarf lowered the lens and walked back to her bench. "Tell me, have you ever felt like your innovations weren't entirely your own? Like you were remembering rather than inventing?"
The question hit closer to home than Elric was comfortable admitting. There had been moments—working late into the night on a complex glyph sequence, finding solutions that seemed to come from nowhere—when he'd wondered the same thing.
"Sometimes."
"And your medallion's been singing lately? Acting strange?"
"Since I got Vesemir's message." Elric touched the griffin pendant through his robes. "It's never done that before."
Torga was quiet for a long moment, her expression thoughtful. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its confrontational edge.
"Thirty years ago, I was part of a project. Joint effort between several schools—mostly Wolf and Griffin, but others too. We called it threshold magic."
Elric's breath caught. "Veskar mentioned—"
"Veskar was there too. Good man, for a traditionalist." Torga began cleaning her tools with methodical precision. "The project was meant to explore magic from before the Conjunction. Pure source energy, unfiltered by the laws that govern our current reality."
"What went wrong?"
"Everything." She set down a half-cleaned file and looked at him directly. "Seven good people died in a single day. Witchers, mages, scholars—all of them convinced they could handle forces that existed before the world settled into its current shape."
"And now you think something from that project is awakening."
"I think your medallion's been singing because whatever we tried to bind back then recognizes you for what you are." Torga's gold eyes were hard as coins. "A Griffin who's spent years pushing the boundaries of what Witcher magic can do. The same sort of work that got those seven people killed."
She walked to a locked chest in the corner of the forge and worked it open with a key that hung around her neck. From inside, she withdrew something wrapped in dark cloth.
"I swore I'd never make another one of these." She unwrapped the object, revealing an amulet of dark metal inscribed with interlocking runes. "Sign-focusing charm. It'll help stabilize your magic if things go... difficult."
Elric reached for it, then hesitated. "What's the price?"
"Smart question." Torga's smile was grim. "The price is that you remember what I'm about to tell you. The Wolves are pragmatists. They see a problem, they find the most direct way to solve it. Usually involves sharp steel and steady hands."
She pressed the amulet into his palm. The metal was warm, pulsing with contained energy.
"Your Griffin masters were theorists. They saw a problem, they wanted to understand it completely before acting. Usually involved long study and careful preparation."
"Different approaches."
"Approaches that got people killed when they tried to work together." Torga's voice was heavy with old pain. "The Wolves don't trust Griffin magic, especially now. If they're desperate enough to call you for help, it means their methods have failed. And if their methods have failed..."
She didn't finish the sentence.
Elric slipped the amulet over his head. It settled against his chest next to his medallion, and immediately he felt the difference—his magical channels stabilized, the chaotic humming in his skull quieted to a manageable whisper.
"Better?"
"Much." He flexed his fingers, testing the enhanced control. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet." Torga walked him toward the forge's entrance. "Whatever's stirring at Kaer Morhen, it's been building for months. I've felt the disturbances—ripples in the magical fabric that shouldn't exist. Other smiths have reported similar problems. Enchantments failing, ward-stones cracking for no reason."
They stepped out into the mountain air. The sun had climbed higher while they talked, burning off the morning mist. Snow dusted the peaks around them, early winter claiming the high places.
"Three days north of here, you'll find the old trade road that leads to Kaer Senyalta." Torga pointed toward a gap between two peaks. "It's a harder route than the main pass, but it'll save you time if you're in a hurry."
"I am."
"Then you'll want to avoid the Blue Mountains entirely. Strange things moving in those forests lately. Cultists, by all accounts. The kind who worship things that should stay buried."
Elric's medallion gave a small pulse at the mention of cultists. "What kind of things?"
"The kind that feed on magic and grow stronger with each meal." Torga's expression was grim. "Be careful, Griffin. Whatever's calling you north, it's been waiting a long time for someone like you to answer."
She turned to go back into her forge, then paused at the threshold.
"One more thing. The old bindings were made by people who understood the cost. Don't assume you're the first to think you can improve on their work."
With that, she disappeared into the forge's shadowed interior, leaving Elric alone with the wind and the weight of her warning.
He shouldered his pack and checked his weapons. The steel blade sat comfortable on his hip, the silver sword rode easy on his back. The focusing charm hummed against his chest, a steady counterpoint to his medallion's song.
The path north beckoned, winding through peaks that had witnessed empires rise and fall. Somewhere beyond those mountains, Kaer Morhen waited. And with it, whatever ancient power had stirred from its long sleep.
Elric's medallion hummed its steady song, no longer frantic but still insistent. The focusing charm helped, but it couldn't entirely mask the sensation of being drawn toward something vast and hungry.
He pulled his cloak tight against the mountain wind and began walking. Behind him, the ring of hammer on anvil resumed—clang-ping, clang-ping—a rhythm as old as civilization itself.
The sound followed him until distance and wind finally swallowed it, but the echo remained in his mind. A reminder that some knowledge came at a price higher than flesh and blood.
A price measured in souls.