There were no lights in the King's chamber.
Only the forge-heart — a basin of still-burning coals set into the center of the room. It cast no flame. Only heat. Steady. Ancient.
King Rurik stood before it, unarmored, cloaked only in silence.
He had dismissed the guards. Sent away the stewards. Even the Runepriests, murmuring prayers of warding and remembrance, had not been allowed past the outer threshold.
He was alone.
Except for the stone.
The Gem of Skarnveil lay on a small anvil beside the basin — still wrapped, but no longer still. It pulsed. Not fast. Not bright.
But deep.
Like it breathed.
Like it remembered something older than kings.
Rurik did not touch it.
Not yet.
His hands rested behind his back. One of them — the right — twitched occasionally. A reminder.
The fire had touched him.
And it had not let go.
He looked into the coals. They were not wild. They did not dance. But they were not dead either. They waited.
Just like the mountain.
Just like the Wyrm.
And just like the voice in his thoughts, subtle and quiet, that had begun whispering ever since the Sanctum roared.
You held the fire once.
You saw the throne.
It is still waiting.
He exhaled through his nose.
"The fire offers vision," he muttered. "Not destiny."
But the Gem pulsed again.
A single flare.
And for the briefest instant, he saw it again:
A crown of ash.A blade of black flame.A host of dwarves bowing beneath a sky split with Riftlight.
Then the vision faded.
Rurik gritted his teeth.
He turned from the Gem. Walked to the wall of weapons — ancestral axes, rune-hammers, blades once wielded by kings who had knelt to no one, not even the gods. He traced his fingers over the haft of an ancient maul.
It did not burn him.
But it did not answer him, either.
They're watching, he thought. All of them. The council. The priests. Durik.
Rei.
The Riftborn.
He did not hate the boy.
He did not even fear him.
He feared what he might unleash.
And worse… he feared what he might become, if left alone.
But in that fear, another thought had begun to fester.
A question.
What if I guided him? What if I became the one who forged the Riftborn into a weapon the world could never break?
What if I used the Gem?
He turned slowly, staring once more at the small anvil.
The Gem did not glow. It waited.
Rurik took a step toward it.
One more.
He reached out——then stopped.
His fingers hovered an inch above the cloth.
And he remembered:
The first time he had touched it.
In the Sanctum.
The world had melted away. And he had stood before a throne of flame, not as a king… but as something more. Something that burned but did not die.
But to become that, he thought, what must I lose?
He saw Durik's face.
His second son.
The one he never truly expected to become heir.
And yet, the boy had walked into the heart of the mountain with a Riftborn, and had not flinched. He had tempered his fear into steel.
Rurik lowered his hand.
The whispers did not stop.
But they quieted.
For now.
He turned from the Gem.
Not because he did not desire it.
But because he still could choose.
And choice, above all, was what defined a king.
Not the fire.
Not the stone.
Not the legacy.
But what he would sacrifice to protect them.
Behind him, the Gem pulsed again — once, like a final exhale.
He did not look back.
But his hand still glowed faintly red.
And somewhere deep within the mountain,the Wyrm stirred.