The dream was always the same. A song of shifting weight and ancient pressure, a melody sung not with sound, but with the slow, grinding movement of continents. Kaelen was deep within the dream, a ghost in the bedrock, when a different sound shattered it.
A hammer, striking iron. Once. Twice. Then a rapid, urgent clanging that was not for shaping metal, but for raising the village.
He jolted awake in his cot, the stone-song evaporating like mist. The grey light of false dawn seeped through the shutters of the loft. Below, he heard Master Corbin's cot groan as the big man stood. The alarm bell from the watchtower at the village edge continued to ring, its tone sharp with panic.
"Kaelen!" Corbin's voice was a gravelly command. "Up. Now."
Kaelen was already pulling on his tunic and trousers, his heart thudding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He scrambled down the ladder from the loft. Corbin was at the workshop's heavy door, not opening it, but peering through a crack. His broad back was rigid.
"What is it?" Kaelen asked, his voice thick with sleep. "Wolves? Bandits?"
Corbin didn't turn. "Wolves don't wear plate armor. Bandits don't march in formation." He finally looked at Kaelen, and the expression on his master's face—a mixture of grim acceptance and deep, chilling fear—struck Kaelen harder than any winter wind. "Knights. But not ours."
The words hung in the cold air. Not ours. The Oath-Bound Knights of the Flame were the kingdom's protectors. Their arrival, while formal, was a cause for reassurance, not terror. But knights who were not theirs could only mean one thing: war had found its way to their remote mountain valley.
"Stay here," Corbin ordered, his voice low. He moved to the great stone slab that served as his workbench. With a grunt of effort, he pushed it aside, revealing a hidden space in the floor—a root cellar Kaelen had known about, but never seen used for anything but turnips. "If you hear fighting… if you hear screaming that gets too close, you get in. You pull the slab closed over you. You understand?"
"Master, I can fight—" Kaelen began, his pride stung.
"You cannot fight this," Corbin snapped, turning to grip Kaelen by his shoulders. His eyes were fierce. "This is not a brawl with the miller's boys. This is steel and sorcery. Your only duty is to survive. Remember your promise to me. To be careful."
Before Kaelen could argue, the sounds from outside changed. The alarm bell choked off mid-ring. Shouts were replaced by screams. Not cries of fear, but shrieks of pure agony, horribly brief, and then silence. A new sound wormed its way through the cracks in the door: a low, sizzling hum, like fat dripping on a hot fire, but a hundred times louder.
Corbin's face paled. "The Blight," he whispered, a word Kaelen had only ever heard in the old, fearful stories. "By the stone, they've brought the Blight here."
Driven by a dread he could not name, Kaelen rushed to the shuttered window of the workshop, peering through a knothole that looked out onto the village square.
Oakhaven was dying.
Men and women, villagers he had known his whole life, lay still on the frozen ground. There was no blood. They looked… withered, as if the life had been sucked from them in an instant. Standing among them were a dozen figures in jet-black armor, their helms featureless except for a single, vertical slit that glowed with a sickly green light. They moved with an unnatural, fluid silence.
In the center of the square stood their leader. He was taller than the others, his armor adorned with cruel, hook-like spikes. In his hand, he held no weapon. Instead, a nimbus of the same green energy writhed around his gauntlet. As Kaelen watched, frozen in horror, the knight pointed at the village watchtower, a sturdy structure of oak and stone that had stood for generations.
The green energy lashed out. It did not shatter the tower. It rotted it. The wood blackened and crumbled to ash in a heartbeat. The stone blocks, the very stone Kaelen's grandfather had quarried, did not fall. They dissolved, collapsing into a heap of grey, acidic-smelling dust that settled over the square like a shroud.
"They're not just killing people," Kaelen breathed, his voice trembling. "They're killing the stone."
Corbin pulled him away from the window. "They seek things made of the old power. They can smell it." His eyes darted around the workshop, landing on the tools, the half-finished carvings, the very walls. He was a man making a desperate calculation. "They will come here. The mason's workshop. They will sense it."
He grabbed a small leather satchel from a hook and thrust it into Kaelen's hands. It was heavy with a few days' worth of journey-bread and dried meat. Then, from around his own neck, Corbin pulled a leather thong bearing a smooth, grey river stone etched with a single, complex rune. He pressed it into Kaelen's palm, closing his fingers around it.
"The runestone I gave you. Do you still have it?"
Kaelen nodded, fumbling in his own tunic to pull out the simple stone Corbin had given him years ago.
"Good. This one is its pair," Corbin said, his voice rushed. "When the time comes, it will guide you. Listen to it. Remember the songs I taught you. The deep songs."
"I'm not leaving you!" Kaelen pleaded, tears of fear and defiance welling in his eyes.
A thunderous blow shook the heavy oak door of the workshop, splintering the wood around the iron bolt. The sizzling hum was right outside.
Corbin's face softened for a fleeting second. He placed a rough hand on Kaelen's cheek. "You are a better mender than I ever was, boy. Now, you must mend what is broken after. Survive."
With a roar of effort that seemed to shake the foundations of the workshop itself, Corbin turned to face the door. He planted his feet wide, his hands slamming palm-first against the stone floor. A vibration, deep and powerful, thrummed through Kaelen's boots.
The stone of the workshop floor rippled. Like water struck by a stone, a wave of solid rock surged upward, reinforcing the door, sealing it behind a barrier of freshly-shaped granite. The air filled with the grinding groan of earth magic, a sound Kaelen had only felt in his dreams.
Master Corbin stood tall, his back to Kaelen, his hands still pressed to the floor. His shoulders seemed broader, his form more solid, as if he were drawing strength from the very bones of the mountain. The Weaver's Mark he had always hidden began to show—his skin taking on the rough, grey texture of unworked stone.
The green light intensified outside, and the sizzling hum became a deafening shriek. The newly-formed stone barrier began to blacken and crack.
"KAELEN, NOW!" Corbin bellowed, his voice echoing with the power of the earth.
Tears streaming down his face, Kaelen scrambled into the root cellar, pulling the heavy workbench slab over the opening just as the workshop door exploded inward in a storm of dust and decay.
The last thing Kaelen saw before darkness swallowed him was the defiant, granite-shaped form of his master, standing alone against the consuming green light. The last thing he heard was not the sound of battle, but the beginning of a low, resonant chant—the deep song of the Stone-Singers—before it was cut short by a silence more terrible than any scream.