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Chapter 47 - Chapter 47: The Hollow Vales

The Hollow Vales were dead land.

Not barren—dead.

Trees stood, but their trunks were hollow and ashen, flaking to dust if touched. The soil was black with fine soot, and no birds called from the twisted branches overhead. The wind carried a metallic tang, like blood left too long in the sun.

Duncan stepped carefully through the dense brush, his boots leaving no prints in the unnatural soil. Behind him, the Beastborne advanced in silence. Even the beasts tread with unease—ears flattened, tails still.

The First Beast sniffed the air once and gave a low, warning growl.

"This place remembers."

Mora Vale walked beside Duncan, twin blades crossed at her back, eyes narrowed.

"I fought here once," she murmured. "Years ago. Before the Vales went silent. There were villages then… miners, farmers, scavengers. All gone now."

"What happened?" Duncan asked.

She shook her head.

"No one ever said. Just rumors. That fire bled from the earth. That the Dominion sealed something below it."

Duncan said nothing.

He could feel it—beneath his skin. A pressure, ancient and watching.

Something waited in the dark.

The Buried Screams

They made camp under the rotted frame of an old watchtower, its iron supports bent inward like it had been crushed by an unseen force.

That night, the dreams returned.

Not visions.

Screams.

Duncan stood in a room made of obsidian walls, the air thick with ash. Chained figures surrounded him—beast-men, humans, even Dominion soldiers—all writhing, screaming, dissolving into dust.

At the center of the chamber was a pit.

A pit that burned upward.

He moved toward it.

But as he stepped over the edge, a voice echoed from below.

"Flame is not your gift."

"It is your debt."

He woke in a cold sweat.

The Statue Beneath the Roots

The next morning, scouts reported a strange structure ahead. Duncan, Mora Vale, and three others advanced to investigate.

They found it beneath the roots of a toppled giantwood—partially unearthed by erosion and time.

A statue.

Ten feet tall.

It depicted a humanoid beast—half-stag, half-man—wearing Dominion armor and holding a lance shaped like a falling star.

Its eyes had been gouged out, and its mouth filled with ash.

Carved into the base were three glyphs, the oldest language of fire:

"Memory Must Be Bound."

Mora stepped back. "It's one of the Forgeblooded."

Duncan looked at her sharply. "You've seen these before?"

"Only in sketchings. They were ancient beast-kings. Pre-Dominion. The architects feared them—because they remembered how the flame was stolen."

The First Beast lowered its head solemnly.

"This one was called Vael. He tried to break the chains. They buried him here… and made his name a curse."

Duncan stared at the statue.

And then the ground trembled.

Beneath the Vale

With a deafening crack, the statue split at the base, revealing a shaft that plunged into the earth.

Faint heat rose from the darkness.

Not the fire of war.

The fire of memory.

Duncan didn't hesitate.

He descended.

The shaft led to a chamber long-abandoned—a forge of black iron and bone. Chains hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered in carvings—records of war, of beast and man fighting side by side… and then, turning against one another.

In the center of the chamber was a pool of liquid emberlight.

Still.

Ancient.

Unclaimed.

The moment Duncan stepped near it, the runes on his arms flared.

And a voice—soft, male, broken—whispered in his ear.

"You carry his blood."

The Burden of Inheritance

The vision struck like a blow.

Duncan staggered as images flooded him again.

The Forgeblooded King—Vael—stood atop a battlefield of ash, holding a broken Dominion standard in one hand and the corpse of a man in the other.

A man who looked like Duncan.

"You stole my gift," Vael had said.

"Then buried the truth."

And then the fire had consumed them both.

Duncan fell to his knees, breathing hard, the emberlight in the pool now swirling, reacting to his presence.

He understood now.

The flame inside him wasn't just power.

It was legacy—stolen, buried, returned.

And the world would burn again if he didn't wield it differently.

A New Oath

When Duncan emerged, Mora Vale met his eyes.

"You saw something," she said.

He nodded. "I saw a king who tried to remember. And what the Dominion did to him."

He turned to the Beastborne, his voice quiet but unshaking.

"We're not marching to start a war. We're marching to unbury one."

He drew his blade and traced the glyphs onto the old tower wall:

Memory Must Be Free.

The First Beast let out a thunderous roar—and for a moment, the Hollow Vales pulsed with light.

The curse had not lifted.

But it had recognized something new.

Hope.

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