Chapter 35: Fire in the Mountain
The forge hall still smelled of dust and silence, but now it held something else too, the sharp tang of old stone disturbed, the faint iron taste of blood, the heat of exertion. They had fought, they had driven the creatures back into cracks and tunnels, and now the mountain watched, waiting to see if they would claim or flee.
Thorek stood in the center, his beard matted with sweat, his hammer still streaked with black where Hollowspawn ash had clung. He laid the head of it against the cold anvil and drew in a slow breath, chest rising like a bellows, eyes bright and burning. "We cannot leave it dark," he said, his voice low but hard enough to echo, "the mountain knows its keepers by fire, not by footsteps. If we want Karvendral to remember us, we light it."
Elias wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and looked at the vast throat of the forge basin, its emptiness like a wound in the hall. "If it's fire the mountain wants, I can help with that."
Thorek's eyes flicked to him, narrowed, not in doubt but in the sharp way a smith weighs a piece of strange ore. "We light with craft first," he said, "old oil, old coal, wood stripped clean, sparks struck honest. But when the breath is caught, aye, then you give it your fire, and the mountain will know we came with more than torches."
Hale gave a short nod, his tone steady, practical. "Do it then. Elvi, check the chimneys again, make sure they draw and won't choke us out. Lysera, set veils at the mouth of the forge hall, I don't want the beasts slipping in on us while we're blind. Noll, with her, anchor it. Rook, stay with Elias."
Elvi's grin flashed sharp, a quick knife of satisfaction, then she vanished into the stairwell that wound up toward the vents. Lysera brushed a veil thin and pale across the entry arch, her fingers weaving the air until it shimmered faint, Noll echoing her gestures, his ward threads laying steady reinforcement.
Thorek and Hale began the practical work, moving with the rhythm of habit, not haste. They stripped the dried beams from old scaffolding, cracked brittle timbers into armfuls of fuel, broke open sealed jars of oil that still held a bitter tang. Thorek worked the bellows with cautious reverence, testing the leather, tightening buckles, and every motion carried the weight of a man not just stoking fire, but waking kin.
Elias crouched by the basin, pressing one hand to the stone. His Resonance Sense hummed back at him, a deep slow note that wanted filling. He drew breath, steadied the spear across his knees, and let the weave crawl up his arm. A spark danced at his palm, then a coil of heat, then a flame the size of a coin. He held it, let it grow, until it was an orb the size of an apple floating steady in the air. Not a wild blaze, not the desperate lashing fire of Ember Ravine, but something clean, controlled, a fireball shaped to endure.
Elvi returned, her braid streaked with soot, a smear across her cheek. "Chimneys clear," she said, "dust thick, but it'll rise."
Thorek's grin split his face, fierce and young in the glow. "Then feed it."
They laid the wood first, careful as priests laying relics, then coal chipped from the bins that had waited centuries, then oil drizzled like blessing. Elias lowered his hand, guiding the orb down, setting it against the timber. The wood caught reluctant, then the oil hissed, then the coal flared, and suddenly the basin was breathing again.
Heat rolled out, first thin, then thick. Shadows fled up the walls. The hammer braids on the pillars gleamed, faint at first, then strong. The bellows groaned and answered when Thorek drove his foot into the pedal, wind rushing through ducts to feed the flames.
The forge was awake.
Elias felt it in his bones before his eyes believed it. The hum of the Loom threads stitched into the stone deepened, filling his chest, vibrating under his ribs like a second heartbeat. He staggered a step back and laughed, sharp and breathless, because it felt alive, like the mountain itself had exhaled.
Rook's ears pricked high, his muzzle lifted, nostrils flaring. He growled once, not in warning, in recognition, then sat back on his haunches and stilled, tail flicking slow, eyes gleaming in the new firelight.
Lysera's veil rippled, threads pulling tighter, brighter. She turned her head just enough for Elias to see her eyes, pale and sharpened. "The Loom remembers," she whispered.
Thorek slammed both hands onto the anvil face, tears hidden in the soot of his beard, his voice booming like iron striking iron. "Karvendral lives!"
The hall took the words and carried them up the chimneys, rolling out into the night above like smoke and thunder, the mountain awake, the forge lit, the heart claimed.
The forge burned steady, but its light did not banish the mountain's silence. It only deepened it, pushed shadows back into corners where eyes might wait. The heat rolled against their skin, welcome after weeks of cold marches, yet the weight of the place pressed heavier now that it breathed again.
Hale walked the perimeter slow, spear in hand, gaze measuring stone and arch the way a man counts coins he cannot afford to lose. "We hold here tonight," he said, voice clipped, certain. "But we hold awake. No one lets their eyes close without knowing who watches."
Elvi hopped up onto the rim of a side balcony, bow strung now that there was room to use it. She sat cross legged, an arrow resting across her lap, her eyes sweeping the door mouths. "Plenty of shadows left to hide a throat cutter," she muttered. "Good thing I'm patient."
Noll crouched by Lysera at the entry veil, his young hands steady now, feeding thread into the barrier with careful breaths. His eyes still darted to the fire as if afraid it might vanish if he looked away too long, but his weave held, thin strands bright and taut across the arch. Lysera did not praise, she did not need to, her silence was enough to tell the boy he was doing well.
Elias sat near the basin, spear laid across his knees, eyes fixed on the fire. He had drawn a second flame earlier, smaller, steady, and it hovered above his palm now like a coin of molten copper. He practiced pulling it back, releasing, reshaping. The control came easier here, as if the forge lent its memory to his hand. Each time he let the fire dissolve he felt less drain, more balance. Progress measured not in roars of power, but in the quiet mastery of repetition.
Thorek paced the floor, unable to keep still, his hands trailing along stone and chain, his hammer knocking softly against anvils as if speaking with them. Finally he stopped, placed his palm flat against a pillar carved with braids of flame, and spoke in a voice gone almost chant.
"They will have felt it," he said. "The Hollowspawn. The ones that gnaw the deep places, that hate light and fire. We woke the forge, they will come sniffing. They always do."
Elias turned the word over in his mouth, low and steady. "Hollowspawn."
Thorek nodded, grim, final. "Aye. And now that Karvendral breathes again, they will remember their hunger. We'll see them before long."
Rook growled deep in his chest, ears angled toward one of the darker arches, as if to say the waiting had already begun.
Hale planted his spear butt against the stone, eyes cutting toward the sound. "Then we stay sharp," he said. "The forge is ours, but the mountain will make us earn it."
The squad tightened their circle, fire at their back, stone at their sides, shadows pressed close. The mountain listened, and in the silence between heartbeats, Elias thought he heard the faint scrape of something moving far below, climbing toward the light.
The scrape came again, faint, far, but not imagined. Elias felt it through the stone as much as he heard it, a vibration carried up from deep caverns, like fingernails dragged across bone. His Resonance Sense hummed in warning, threads shifting uneasily, the Loom whispering of something that should not walk but did.
Rook's growl deepened, the wolf lowering himself to the floor, ears flat, teeth bared toward the dark of the eastern hall.
"Contact," Elias said, quiet, no need to shout. His voice carried enough weight that every head lifted, every hand closed tighter on steel or weave.
Lysera spread her veil thin across the hall mouth, threads brightening like frost catching moonlight. The weave shivered at once, as if brushed by something slick, something that slid along its edge without truly touching, and then retreated again. Her jaw tightened. "It feels wrong," she whispered, "like a gap pretending to be whole."
Thorek grunted, his hammer resting across one shoulder. "Aye. Hollowspawn. Told you."
The word hung heavy.
The scrape grew louder, multiplied, became a rhythm, claws against stone, teeth grinding through old rock. From the dark archways, eyes glimmered. Not eyes with pupils, but hollows that drank the torchlight and spat it back as dull reflections, like lanterns half drowned in tar.
The first one crawled into view, a shape half man, half cavern, its limbs jointed wrong, its skin a crust of stone with seams of shadow leaking between. Its mouth gaped too wide, a crack that split from chin to chest, lined with jagged shards where teeth should be. When it breathed, dust spilled from its lungs.
Noll flinched, threads twitching wild, but Elias barked low, steady, "Hold." The boy grit his teeth and steadied the ward.
The creature paused at the edge of Lysera's veil, tilted its head, and pressed forward. The ward sparked, resisted, held. But the thing did not recoil. It pressed harder, its body bending at impossible angles, limbs sliding bonelessly, until the veil shrieked like stretched glass.
Lysera hissed, pouring more thread into the weave. "It's testing. Not breaking, testing."
Another shape slithered from the hall, and another. Soon half a dozen crawled at the threshold, their movements jerking, their mouths cracking wider as if scenting blood.
Thorek stepped forward, hammer raised, his voice carrying the weight of stone and story. "Spawn of the Hollow," he spat, "cracks made flesh, void made hunger. You will not take Karvendral while I stand."
The nearest one shrieked, the sound like rock grinding on rock, a noise that stabbed the ears and set teeth on edge. Then it lunged.
The veil shattered.
Elias thrust his palm forward, fire blooming in his hand, the new forged flame roaring into a sphere that struck the Hollowspawn square in its chest. The thing burst in dust and shards, stone fragments skittering across the floor. But even as it fell, two more shoved past its ruin, claws raking, jaws opening wide enough to swallow a man's head whole.
Hale met one with his spear, the point punching through the hollow of its throat. The creature shuddered but did not bleed, its body collapsing like a cave in, still clawing until he wrenched the spear free.
Elvi's arrow sang, striking an eye socket, the shaft snapping as the creature toppled, not dead, not alive, unmade.
Rook slammed into another, his teeth sinking into stone flesh, shaking until dust and shadow burst free. He spat grit, snarled, and leapt for the next.
Noll cried out, his ward flaring wide, catching three at once and holding them back for a heartbeat, just long enough for Thorek to swing his hammer. The strike landed like thunder. The Hollowspawn cracked apart, their shells exploding into powder, their shadows hissing as they faded into the floor.
The chamber fell still. The veil torn. The forge fire burning steady. The echoes of shrieks still rattling the pillars.
They stood in the silence, breathing hard, weapons raised, waiting for the next scrape. But none came. Only the slow settling of dust, the faint drip of water from some unseen seam, the heartbeat of the mountain under their boots.
Lysera's shoulders sagged. Noll dropped to one knee, threads unravelling around his hands, his chest heaving.
Thorek planted his hammer on the stone and leaned heavy on it, his face grim. "That," he said, voice low, "was only the first. They'll keep coming. They always do. Hollowspawn don't forget a hall once it burns again."
Elias looked into the darkness where the creatures had vanished, his spear still warm from the fire he'd pulled, his chest aching with the hum of threads strained and tested. "Then we don't give it back," he said. "This is ours now. And if they want it, they'll have to choke on us first."
The forge fire cracked. The mountain listened. And Karvendral kept its silence, holding the weight of the oath they had just spoken without meaning to.