The clang echoed again — louder now. But not like steel dropped. Like something testing its weight.
Something long asleep, shifting.
Durik stepped forward, frost-framed brows drawn tight. His torch flickered — not from breeze, but as if the air itself had drawn in a breath.
Beyond the Anvilward's blackened forge, nestled into the stone like a clenched jaw, stood the rusted gate.
Ten feet tall. Forged of thick iron bars — warped inward.
Something had tried to claw its way out.
Kaia moved beside Durik, her dagger low and quiet. "That wasn't rock."
"No," Durik murmured. "That was forged iron. Old iron. Dwarven make. Locked before my grandfather's grandfather ever walked."
Rei crouched slightly, running his fingers over the faint glyphs beneath their feet. The spiral sigils had stopped glowing… but the stone beneath them still felt taut, like tension in a drawn bowstring. Energy hadn't left — it had retreated.
"Is this part of the Forge?" Rei asked.
Durik didn't answer immediately. He studied the gate. Its surface was laced with rust and scar-burns — old sigils long since faded. Chains once wrapped its latches, but now lay broken on the floor.
Not unlocked.
Not cut.
Broken.
Kaia sniffed the air, feline instincts twitching. "Smells wrong. Like frozen steel… and old grief."
Durik finally spoke. "The Anvilward wasn't built for just smithing. It was built to guard something."
Rei straightened. "A weapon?"
Durik shook his head slowly. "A secret."
A faint tremor ran through the floor. Not violent — more like a shift in breath. A turning over. Another faint clang, deeper now.
Kaia's voice was sharper. "Something's awake."
Durik turned to them, eyes grim. "This gate hasn't opened in three generations. And nothing with good intentions claws from the inside."
He placed his torch in a mount beside the threshold.
"We're not leaving this behind us. If something stirs under Druvadir, we face it now. Not with our backs turned."
Rei nodded. "Open it."
Durik gripped the bar.
The ancient lock groaned. Not in protest… but in recognition.
The dwarf prince braced his foot, twisted — and the gate shrieked open.A wash of stale, metallic air rushed over them. Bitter. Cold.
But not the chill of death.
The chill of something preserved.
Behind the gate: a tunnel, narrow and straight. The walls curved slightly inward — like they weren't carved by tools, but melted into shape. No carvings. No reliefs. Just smooth blackened stone and air that did not move.
Durik's torch dimmed the deeper they went, the flame shrinking as the cold thickened — not from absence of heat… but presence of something else.
The tunnel breathed.
Kaia murmured, "It's not hot. It's the opposite."
Rei's mark pulsed under his skin. Not pain. Not warning.Recognition.
At the end of the path: a chamber.
Circular. Smaller than the forge hall, but heavier somehow. Like every stone carried a weight not meant for mortals. At its center stood a brazier — black obsidian, ringed in silver. Not burning, but glowing. Faint pulses of blue-white light rose from its core.
The light didn't flicker.
It beat.
Kaia stepped forward, gaze narrowed. "That's not fire."
"No," Durik said quietly. "That's frost."
At the four corners of the chamber were metal slabs — not beds, not altars. More like vessels. Cold. Smooth. One of them was occupied.
A figure lay there.Still. Silent.
Its body was humanoid, but not flesh. Not stone. Its skin shimmered like glass layered over ice-veined ore — pale silver-blue, etched with runes that pulsed faintly. Its limbs were thick, chest rising and falling so slowly it could've been mistaken for stillness.
But Rei knew it wasn't dead.
The brazier's glow reached toward it — pulsing with the same rhythm as the crystal embedded in the figure's chest. A sliver of light, shaped like a teardrop of ice.
Kaia whispered, "What is that?"
Durik knelt. "That… might be one of the Seals."
Rei stared at the shard. It looked cold. But he felt heat from it — not fire… pressure. Like something buried too deep, trying to hold still.
"A Seal?" Kaia asked.
Durik nodded. "My father spoke of them in tales. Seven bindings forged after the first Rift opened. To cage what poured through. Some were lost. Some still hum. This one… it was said to have silenced a Forge that once touched the Rift."
He looked at Rei. "This isn't power. It's a wall. A wound stitched shut."
The figure on the slab stirred.
Just once.
A single breath.
Then — its eyes opened.
They were not eyes. They were frost. Pale and vast. And inside them… memory.
The three stood frozen, blades forgotten.
And then — a voice.
Not speech. Not breath. But a presence that spoke to stone. To blood. To silence.
"Will… you unbind… the silence?"