The storm over the Cradle had burned itself out by morning, leaving the air thick with dust and faint golden light. The hunters descended from the mountains in silence, their armor streaked with ash and the dull shimmer of cooled crystal.
For the first time in days, the land was still.
No wind. No beasts. No birds.
Only the slow hum beneath the soil — the same rhythm that had followed Aric since the Heartgrove.
The shard in his chest glowed dimly through his armor, each pulse measured, patient. He could feel it threading through him, weaving his breath and heartbeat into the quiet vibration of the earth itself.
Brann finally broke the silence. "I keep expecting the ground to start singing again."
Eira adjusted her scanner, the device flickering with intermittent light. "It is singing. You just can't hear it anymore."
Serae's bow hung at her side. "And him?" she asked, nodding toward Aric. "He can?"
Eira's answer was soft. "He doesn't hear it. He is it."
Aric said nothing. His senses felt stretched thin — as though he were standing both inside and outside his body. When he blinked, he could see faint threads of light crawling through the ground like roots seeking sunlight.
The others couldn't see them. Only he could.
---
They walked for days through the highlands, where jungles gave way to barren valleys filled with dead trees and pools of still water. The air carried a metallic tang, the scent of a world recently burned clean.
By the fourth night, the glow of distant forges broke the horizon.
"Halvspire," Eira whispered.
The city clung to the walls of a canyon, its towers half-collapsed, its walkways suspended by chains thicker than ships' masts. The forges carved into the cliffs still burned faintly blue though no smoke rose from their chimneys. Rusted lifts creaked in the wind like groaning beasts.
They crossed the bridge into silence. Not a soul stirred. Only the sound of metal shifting beneath stone.
Brann grunted. "Looks like a graveyard."
"Then why are the forges lit?" Serae murmured.
Before Aric could answer, a voice echoed through the canyon:
"Because ghosts still work them."
Figures appeared on the upper bridge — a dozen hunters clad in mismatched armor, their weapons scavenged from different eras. Their leader stepped forward, face shadowed beneath a hood of crimson fur. His armor glowed faintly at the joints where veins of crystal fused with steel.
He studied Aric for a long moment, then smiled. "So the stories were true. The Accord sent a corpse walking in human skin."
Aric's hand drifted to his blade but didn't draw. "You have a name?"
"Kaen Drav," the man said. "Leader of what's left of the free hunters. We don't bow to councils that fear their own gods."
Eira stepped forward cautiously. "We came for shelter, not a fight."
Kaen tilted his head, eyes glinting. "Shelter you'll have. But the mountain behind you woke something beneath our feet. Stay long enough and you'll hear it breathe."
---
They camped in the shell of an old forge hall. The walls were scorched black, and the ceiling was carved with reliefs of men merging with beasts, the same markings they'd seen in the Cradle. The firelight made them seem to move.
Eira hunched over her scanner. "There's residual resonance in the metal. Stronger the deeper you go."
Brann threw down his bedroll with a sigh. "Meaning?"
"Meaning the mountain wasn't the only thing that woke."
Aric sat apart from them, staring into the embers. Each flicker of light seemed to mirror the pulse in his chest. He could hear the city breathing — the low groan of old machinery waking after centuries of stillness.
When he closed his eyes, he was somewhere else. A forge glowing with molten veins. Shapes moving in the heat. Hands of metal reaching for him. The Core remembers.
He opened his eyes to find the same words etched into the wall beside him, faint but glowing.
---
By dawn, the tremors began.
The forges roared to life, flames burning cold and white. The ground beneath the hall cracked open, spilling blue light through the stone. Kaen's hunters shouted from the upper levels, weapons drawn.
Eira's voice cut through the chaos. "It's a resonance surge! Something's moving beneath us!"
Aric rose, eyes already glowing. The pulse under his feet was too familiar. "Not something," he said. "Someone."
The floor gave way. They fell into fire.
---
They landed in the old foundries deep below the canyon, where rivers of molten glass ran between rusted machines the size of towers. The air shimmered with heat and the sound of grinding metal.
Shapes crawled out of the smoke — humanoid, but wrong. Flesh and metal fused, their movements stiff but precise. Their eyes burned like tiny furnaces.
Forgelings.
Their voices scraped like blades. The Core remembers. The Core remembers.
Brann anchored his shield, runes flaring. "You've got to be kidding me!"
Serae loosed an arrow that exploded against a Forgeling's chest, scattering shards. Another lunged from the side, its arm a blade of fused iron. Aric met it mid-strike, his sword cutting a clean arc through molten armor.
The creature didn't fall—it split into two, each half crawling forward, still chanting.
"Eira!" he shouted.
"Working on it!" She slammed her hand onto a nearby control pillar, coaxing ancient runes to life. "There's a lattice signal here—same as the Cradle. If I can synchronize—"
"Just do it fast!" Brann roared, deflecting a blow that cracked his barrier.
Aric ducked another strike and plunged both blades into the floor. The resonance flared, rippling through the forge like a shockwave. Every Forgeling froze mid-motion, their eyes flickering.
He could feel them now — not as enemies, but as echoes. Their heartbeat matched his own, each one a faint thread tied to his chest. They weren't attacking him. They were calling to him.
He stepped forward slowly. "Rest," he whispered.
The Forgelings sank to their knees as one. Their cores dimmed, the chanting fading into silence. One by one, they folded in on themselves, their bodies collapsing into dust and crystal fragments.
Eira exhaled shakily. "You didn't just stop them—you shut them down."
Brann leaned against his lance, panting. "Tell me that's the last time this week we fight sentient scrap metal."
Aric stared at the glowing fragments on the floor. They pulsed faintly, answering his heartbeat. "They weren't fighting us," he said quietly. "They were waiting for a command."
---
When they returned to the surface, Kaen's hunters were waiting. None spoke as Aric stepped from the fissure. The light beneath his skin had grown stronger, spreading through the veins of his neck and hands like living gold.
Kaen dropped to one knee. "Beastworn," he said softly. "The Core's chosen."
The others followed, heads bowed. The canyon lights flickered, echoing their heartbeat in unison.
Aric's voice was quiet. "Don't kneel. I'm not what you think I am."
Kaen looked up, eyes burning with conviction. "Maybe not yet. But the world remembers you. That's enough."
---
Later, when the fires had dimmed and the canyon lay silent again, Eira found Aric standing on the outer bridge, looking north. The wind carried the scent of ash and metal, and far away, faint streaks of green light rippled through the clouds.
She stepped beside him. "You didn't tell them what you saw in the Cradle."
"No," he said.
"Why?"
"Because they want a savior." He looked down at his hands, faintly aglow. "And the Core doesn't make saviors. It makes echoes."
Eira hesitated. "Then what are you?"
He watched the horizon where the sky shimmered like glass, pulsing with distant storms.
"The next verse," he said.
The wind shifted. Somewhere below, the forges of Halvspire rumbled, answering his words like a choir deep beneath the world.
> In the dark between heartbeats, the world knelt—and Aric felt the weight of its faith settle on his shoulders.
---
End of Chapter 9 — The Hollow March