A mountain does not remember. It waits.
The gem pulsed once in Rei's hand — cold, faint, and final.
Skarnveil was unbound.
The chamber that once held the seal lay in ruin now. Silent, save for the faint drip of melting frost and the soft hiss of dying runes. Rei stood at the edge of the altar where the Warden had shattered, the blue crystal wrapped in cloth — and yet even wrapped, it glowed.
Kaia watched him carefully. Her blade remained at her back, but her tension hadn't eased. She could feel it — not magic. Not flame.
Presence.
Durik crouched low, one hand pressed to the stone. His ear turned toward it. Listening. Searching.
Then — thud.
A tremor. Low. Distant.
Then again — thud-thud.
Rei looked up. "That's not an echo."
Durik stood, face pale beneath his frost-wrought beard.
"The Forge," he whispered. "It breathes again."
**
Above — Throneforge, Capital of Druvadir
The mountains groaned.
Across the holdfasts and skymines of Druvadir, stone sang. Long-dead runes lit up in silent halls. Sealed doors cracked at the edges. Anvils that had not felt spark in centuries began to hum.
In the Throneforge — seat of the mountain kings — alarms were not rung. They answered themselves.
In the center of the throne hall, a great rune circle burst to life in colors of forgefire and frost. Ancient inscriptions climbed the walls like ivy.
And seated upon his basalt throne, adorned in embersteel and obsidian plates, High King Rurik, first of his name and flamebound son of the Forge, stood with a booming laugh.
"It stirs! The Forge stirs!"
The Runepriests bowed low, stunned into reverent fear.
"My King—" one croaked, "the runes have flared across all levels. The Heartward shivers. The Anvilward moans in its sleep—"
"And Skarnveil?" Rurik asked, eyes bright.
The priest hesitated.
Then bowed deeper.
"It is… broken."
Rurik clenched his fists.
"Then the seal is undone. The ice that silenced our blood… melts."
He turned toward the old wall — the Map of Flame, carved in myth. His voice rang like hammers.
"The Runefrost has cracked. And our time has come again."
"But sire," the rune-chronicler warned, "the seal was there to—"
"Hold us back?" Rurik sneered. "Hold us small? Nay. That gem — the core of Skarnveil — it belongs here. In Druvadir. In the hands of its rightful kings."
He drew his warhammer and pointed it to the blazing rune-map.
"Send word. All forgemasters. All deepdelvers. And scouts to the Old Veins. We descend."
**
South — Thornevale, Forest of Silverroots
Far across the cracked lands, where twilight fell beneath living boughs, the elves of Thornevale stirred.
In the Temple of Whispering Leaves, the Starseers raised their pale eyes to the canopy. Birds scattered. Leaves curled inward.
The earth had trembled — and not from storm or beast.
One elf, cloaked in silver-gold, stepped forward and whispered to the roots.
"It is Skarnveil," she said. "One of the Seven Seal's bind to bound The Rift is gone."
Another Starseer, older, bowed her head.
"And the Riftborn lives."
They did not scream. Elves rarely do.
But the trees knew their fear.
The first speaker stepped toward the gathering pool, where waters shimmered with memory.
"If the dwarves claim Skarnveil… if they bring that power to flame again… they will burn everything. Again."
"And the Riftborn?"
"We must find him," she said. "Before they break what little silence remains."
**
Far in the fire-ridden heights north of Druvadir, where wind howls like the dead and mountains rise like the bones of titans, a tremor split the silence.
The ancient forge—sealed beneath basalt and centuries of frost—shuddered. Its long-dead coals hissed, as if exhaling the first breath of a waking god. Heat bled into the stone, creeping down the roots of the mountain.
Then it came.
A roar.
Not close.
Not here.
But far.
Deep within the true mountain, where maps fail and only myth treads, something vast and scaled had opened its eyes.
A sound like cracking glaciers and splintering heavens echoed through the bones of Druvadir.
A Wyrm.
Ancient. Bound in soot and silence.
The dragon of the Forge…Had awakened.
Its cry rolled like thunder across frozen peaks, reverberating downward—
—downward—
—until it reached the Old Vein.
Where Rei stood still.
And where the chains had vanished.
But the thing that stirred here...
Was not the Wyrm.
This was deeper.
Older.
Hungrier.
Something the Wyrm had once feared.
And again, in the black-blooded silence of the Vein, that voice came:
"Riftborn…"