Chapter 24: Ash and Iron
The temple still hummed with the weight of the mural, its cold grooves heavy in Elias's palm long after he'd pulled his hand away. No one spoke for a stretch. The fire had burned low, its smoke drawn into cracks above like the temple itself wanted their words carried upward.
It was Hale who finally broke the silence. His voice was flat, the kind that already had a tally in mind. "The Warden encampment. The one we passed before we dropped the children." His eyes lifted from the floor to the rest of them. "They'll sweep Thornveil from that nest. It's not a question of if. It's when."
Elvi's fingers tightened on her bow, the worn leather grip creaking. "Then waiting means dying."
Lysera's gaze was as sharp as her words. "They spread their net. We sit, we're caught. We move, we walk into their teeth. Unless" her pale eyes flicked toward Elias, "we choose the place where the teeth break first."
Elias leaned back against the stone, sore muscles dragging at him like wet gear. He could almost hear the Warden campfires, the clank of armor, the horns ready to blow. His chest ached with the memory of Ava, the children in the cage, the mural of a soldier lifting one to safety.
"We hit them before the net closes," he said. "Take the fight to them. Thin them out where it hurts."
Hale's mouth pulled into a line. "That's a pretty thought. They've got numbers. Walls. Signal poles."
"Then we don't play their game," Elias said. He glanced at Thorek, who had perked up like a hound catching scent. "Back home we had something called landmines. Bury them, mask them, and when a man or horse steps wrong, boom, whole line gone."
Thorek's beard split in a grin. "By the Forge, lad, now you're speaking my language." His hammer clinked against his belt as he leaned forward, eyes bright as molten gold. "Tell me more of these mines. Do they bite louder than your hand bombs?"
"Worse," Elias said. He sketched the shape in the dirt with the butt of his spear. A small metal shell, filled with powder and core fragments, pressure triggers waiting for weight. "You don't throw them. You let the enemy march themselves to pieces."
Lysera crossed her arms, her face unreadable, but there was something calculating in her stare. "And you would have me weave veils over them. Turn bare dirt into harmless ground, until their boots break it open."
"Exactly," Elias said.
Noll was listening with wide eyes, shoulders tight. "That sounds… cruel."
Elias met his gaze, steady. "Cruel is a cage full of children waiting for a Choir. This is war. Better it's them than us."
Hale gave the boy a look, not harsh, not gentle, just soldier to soldier. "You learn fast, you live. You balk, you bury friends."
Silence sat heavy after that, broken only by the drip of water in the temple's veins.
At last Elias pushed to his feet, planting the spear in the dirt between them. "Then it's settled. We don't choke in their net. We weave our own."
Thorek slapped the haft of his hammer against his palm, laughing low. "By the Forge, I'll sing the sparks alive for this."
Elvi shook her head, though her lips twitched like she half wanted to smile. "Gods save us from dwarves and madmen."
Lysera's eyes lingered on Elias. Not approval. Not yet. But recognition. "One week," she said. "Weave. Forge. Train. When the Wardens march, we'll be ready to break them."
Elias nodded once. A week. Enough time to prepare, or enough time to dig their graves.
The temple fire guttered low, but in the silence after, he swore he could almost hear the Loom humming, like a blade waiting to be drawn.
The week passed in sweat, sparks, and shadows. Thornveil did not grow quieter, if anything it pressed closer. Howls at night circled like wolves learning patience, and every morning the ground was painted with new tracks Elias didn't remember seeing the day before. The forest was listening, watching, waiting for them to misstep.
But inside the temple, the squad carved order from chaos.
Thorek's forge went from a jumble of scavenged scrap to something alive. He dug channels in the stone for air flow, fed bellows until his arms shook, then laughed and started again. The place became a heart that beat fire. Iron screamed and bent under his hammer, cores hissed as he split them and caged their resonance in steel shells. At night he fell asleep on the floor, soot streaked across his beard, muttering half finished equations.
Elias gave him every scrap of memory he could dredge up. Sketches in dirt, clumsy diagrams on slate, words like pressure plate and shrapnel casing that meant nothing to the others but made Thorek's eyes shine. Together they worked through failures, mines that fizzled with a sad cough, grenades that cracked too early and sent the dwarf's beard smoking. Every failure was fuel. By the end of the week they had a dozen shells that hummed low and mean, buried in sand buckets to muffle their bite until they were needed.
Lysera wove illusions over the shells with a precision that made Elias's skin crawl. Moss that looked too natural, dirt that lay too still, roots that bent just right to hide steel beneath them. Her veils didn't just hide the traps, they invited feet to fall where they would kill. More than once Elias caught himself staring at her hands, the subtle flicker of her threads, and wondered how much of her coldness was mask and how much was survival.
Elvi spent her nights stringing arrows until her fingers bled, then sharpening them by firelight. She scouted the encampment twice, moving silent through Thornveil while Elias tried not to pace until she returned. Each time she brought back more than maps: counts of sentries, the rhythm of guard shifts, the smoke trail of cooking fires. She knew their prey better than they knew themselves.
Hale trained them like a commander who already heard horns blowing. Drills until their muscles burned, battle formations until they moved like parts of the same body. He drilled silence into them, hand signals instead of words, and when Elias slipped and muttered "shit" too loud Hale had him run until his lungs clawed. But he also drilled trust, made them breathe together, made them feel the rhythm of survival as one.
Noll grew the most. He started the week trembling when he cast a ward, threads shaking under his hands like wet rope. By the end his walls held steady even under Hale's spear thrusts, even when Elvi lobbed stones at him from angles he didn't expect. He'd found a rhythm, quicker than before, his weaving almost keeping pace with his heartbeat. The boy carried bruises like badges and grinned through them. Elias could see the soldier in him, rough and unpolished but burning bright.
Rook prowled at the edge of everything. He dragged carcasses of beasts back for Thorek to strip for cores, silver eyes always fixed on Elias like waiting for permission. When the others slept, the wolf curled against his side, breath steady, heartbeat strong. Elias swore sometimes he could feel Rook humming, resonance in miniature, hungry for more.
Elias himself… he bled for the week. Pushed harder than his ribs liked, drove his body past the aches until they dulled into background noise. He trained with Hale, sparred with Noll, learned to weave properly under Lysera's sharp tongue. For the first time he managed to lace a body enhancement without tearing something in his chest. His spear sang sharper when he pushed vibration into the head, his lungs held heat longer when he burned oxygen in the air to flare fire. And beneath it all his Resonance Sense shifted, stretched. He caught faint weaves in the forest itself — the way Thornveil's fog carried threads like veins, the way roots hummed low when stepped on. Subtle, but there. Another step closer to control.
On the seventh night, the squad gathered by the fire. Ash dusted the forge, the traps lay in sacks ready to be planted, and the air in the temple felt like the tight calm before thunder.
"They'll move soon," Elvi said, voice low. "Supplies are piling at their camp. More torches. More horns. They're calling for a sweep."
Hale nodded. "Then we strike before the sweep strikes us. We choose the ground. We make them bleed their numbers where they can't hide." His eyes went around the fire, one face at a time. "This isn't a raid. This isn't a skirmish. This is a cut. If we fail, we won't walk away."
Noll swallowed hard but didn't flinch. His hands clenched his knees, and his voice steadied when he spoke. "Then we don't fail."
Thorek laughed, deep and booming. "That's the spirit, lad. By the Forge, we'll make a song out of this fight."
Lysera's gaze lingered on Elias. "Your mines will sing, too, if they work."
Elias smirked without humor. "They'll work. And if not, I'll improvise. Story of my life." He leaned on the spear, the etchings catching firelight, and felt the hum in his chest like a war drum. "We've been running drills for weeks. Time to see if we actually learned anything."
Rook's tail thumped against the stone, a steady beat. Elias scratched his ears and the wolf's silver eyes gleamed back at him, sharp and waiting.
"Tomorrow," Hale said. "We set the traps at first light, pick our pinch point, and let them march to their own graves."
The fire popped, sending sparks spiraling into the dark. No one spoke after that. They didn't need to. The week of training had burned hesitation out of them.
Outside, Thornveil whispered with the rustle of branches and distant howls, like it was listening to their plans, weighing whether it would swallow them whole or let them carve their line in its soil.
Elias lay back against the stone, staring into the shadows above. He thought of Ava, of her laugh on summer mornings, of the mural carved deep into the temple wall, of the faceless soldier lifting a child as the world cracked. His hand closed on the spear and he whispered, too soft for the others to hear.
"Tomorrow, we make the world listen."
Dawn came gray, low clouds pressed like damp cloth over the Thornveil canopy. The squad moved light, gear wrapped to keep from clanking, weapons tied down. They followed Elvi's lead along deer runs and hollow creek beds, careful to leave no trail that a trained eye could read.
Elias felt it in his bones before he saw it. The hum of Wardens ahead, the steady vibration of men drilled into one rhythm. His Resonance Sense picked up their patrols like faint drumbeats moving through fog. When they reached the ridgeline, he crouched beside Hale and looked down.
The encampment sprawled across a shallow clearing, too many tents, too many torches, walls of sharpened stakes, and the pale shimmer of wards laced across the perimeter. Smoke curled up from cookfires. Armor clattered. The sound of discipline, the sound of an army that would sweep Thornveil clean if left alone.
Hale's jaw flexed. "They'll march by dusk. We take them before they're ready."
Elvi pointed to a narrow ravine that cut across the east approach, where the ground funneled tight between stone shoulders. "There. They'll have to march through two by two."
Thorek grinned, already hefting the sacks of mines. "A fine throat for a song."
Lysera knelt and brushed her palm across the soil. Threads rose under her touch, weaving into a veil that made stone look unbroken, moss untouched. "They'll never see them."
Elias crouched beside her, sketching the pressure trigger in the dirt one last time. "Step here, weight sets it off. Enough core powder inside to rip through the first ranks. If they keep pressing, the second line pays for it too." He glanced up at Thorek. "Spacing matters. No chain reactions. One bite at a time."
The dwarf laughed under his breath. "Aye, aye, shortstack. I'll not waste good thunder."
They worked in silence, each man and woman moving like part of a single weave. Thorek buried the shells deep enough to hold, shallow enough to trigger. Elias kept his Resonance Sense tuned tight, feeling the hum of powder inside each one, steadying the frequency so they didn't sing too early. Lysera layered her illusions so smooth even Elias couldn't see the seams once she was done.
By the time the sun slid behind the canopy, the ground was primed.
Back at the ridgeline, Hale unrolled the crude map Elvi had drawn in soot on bark. "They'll march here. We hit here." His finger tapped the pinch point. "Elvi on the flanks, Thorek at the choke with me. Noll holds the ward over the mines until I give the signal. Lysera, blind the torches. Elias" Hale's eyes locked on him. "You read their rhythm. You tell us when they're coming, and how many."
Elias nodded. His Resonance Sense already stretched, listening for the drum of boots, the hum of threads carried in armor and wards. "I'll know."
The plan was set. No one questioned it.
Night crept fast in Thornveil, fog thickening, sounds sharper in the quiet. The squad settled into the brush above the ravine, waiting. The fireflies came first, then the distant jangle of iron, then the faint low hum Elias felt in his ribs before he heard it.
"They're moving," he whispered. "Two dozen. Maybe more behind them."
Rook's ears pricked, hackles rising, a low growl rumbling in his chest. Elias pressed a hand against his neck, steadying him.
The others shifted, silent, ready. Elvi nocked an arrow, Hale lowered his spear, Thorek's grin was bright in the dark. Lysera's veil shimmered invisible across the soil where death waited.
The fog parted below. Torches flared, shields gleamed, and the Wardens filed into the ravine in twos, just as planned.
Elias's heart hammered, not from fear, but from the hum in his bones, the Loom itself seemed to tighten, threads thrumming like a bowstring pulled taut.
He leaned closer to Hale and whispered, voice low, steady.
"Now it begins."