The desert did not end. It only changed its shape.
For two days Kael and Liora walked beneath a sun that refused to rise or set—caught between hours, as if the world struggled to decide what came next. The light shifted only in hue: gold at dawn, blue by mid‑morning, violet by noon. Glass ridges ran like frozen rivers between dunes, humming faintly beneath their boots.
They followed the hum. Liora said underground tunnels answered that frequency—a web of forgotten conduits once used to channel aether into Solmaris's foundations. "If we reach the old Veins," she said, "we can hide until the Concord stops shaking."
Kael kept his hood low. The mark above his heart no longer glowed outwardly, but deep within he felt its rhythm cycling through intervals—each faster than before, as if learning a song.
When the dunes finally broke open into a depression of half‑melted stone, they found a signal tower collapsed sideways like a felled obsidian tree. Beyond its shadow, half‑buried stairs led downward into metallic dark. As wind swept over the entrance, it carried a note of depth—a sound that wanted listeners.
"This is it," Liora said softly.
The moment they crossed the threshold, heat fell away. The air cooled, infused with faint wetness. The walls pulsed with underlying radiance, each vein outlined by drifting light.
"Why do they call them the Veins?" Kael whispered.
"Because they carry what keeps the world alive," she answered. "Every city above draws from somewhere below. This is blood they tried to forget."
Hours passed unknown beneath the ground. Passages wound in organic arcs, splitting and merging like capillaries. Liora paused often to adjust her prism lens, mapping residual current. Kael felt unnecessary, yet safe for the first time in weeks; the darkness did not fear him—it recognized him.
At a junction shaped like a ribcage, they found signs of habitation. Rusted lanterns. A trail of melted coins. Writing scratched into a glass wall: FORGET US KINDLY.
The phrase appeared again farther in, spelled differently each time—as if several people had written it while language eroded. Voices echoed faintly up ahead: rhythmic beats, metallic and human. They slowed their pace until sound resolved into drums accompanied by hiss of steam.
From a ledge above they glimpsed a massive cavern lit by the glow of forge‑fires. Hundreds of men and women moved among suspended walkways, every body marked by streaks of iron across their skin. Limbs of copper, eyes of polished brass—people part‑flesh, part‑metal, working in unified rhythm. The air smelled of oil and hot stone.
Liora drew in sharp breath. "Draveth. Exiled forge‑kin."
Kael frowned. "I thought the Dominion purged them."
"They descended. Looks like they kept their industry."
He would have watched longer but a shadow rose behind them.
A man stood at the tunnel mouth, taller than Kael, his right arm encased entirely in molten metal that cooled and reheated with each movement. Sparks spilled when he flexed his fingers.
"Easier to ask direction than spy," the stranger said. "Come down quietly before you melt the roof."
His accent rolled like gravel behind glass. When they descended, torches illuminated fine runes carved across his arm, each symbol glowing as if breathing.
"I am Talen Forge‑Born, once of Rimehart's third descent," he said. "You bring the echo of the sun with you. Even the walls remember your steps."
"You can sense it?" Kael asked.
Talen smiled, revealing a line of gleaming metal teeth. "My blood sings against yours."
Before Kael could reply, the ground shook—the forge fires flaring blue. Murmurs swept across the cavern. "Another breach," someone shouted. "The veins upstream are collapsing!"
Smoke poured from the far tunnel. Workers grabbed tools and hammers, racing toward the disturbance. Without hesitation Talen motioned for them to follow. They entered a corridor awash in heat. The molten lines inside the wall were bursting like arteries.
"Overdraw," Chanted artisans translated to Kael over the roar. "Pressure climbing."
Talen planted his metal hand against the wall; runes shifted from red to gold. "It's not overdraw," he grunted. "It's—someone pushing current backward."
The next quake ripped the tunnel apart. Kael threw himself over Liora as crystal shards rained down. Behind falling dust, an impossible sight emerged—a river of liquid light flowingagainst gravity, climbing toward the surface.
In its tide drifted silhouettes of people, faces blurred, their limbs dissolving into filaments. Each mouth whispered the same phrase: "We remember."
Liora staggered backward, covering her ears. "They're fragments of Solmaris's memory," she cried. "The city's overflow is flooding the Veins!"
Kael felt his pulse join the current. The mark on his chest pulsed once and, for an instant, he saw the pattern behind the chaos—streams of data obeying a command older than the Concord. A whisper of instruction filtered through the light:
Containment compromised.
Designate anchor.
The words branded his awareness. An instinct not his own guided his hands.
He knelt by the flowing river, pressed palm to glass, and willed.
The light responded.
A sphere of resonance bloomed from his touch, expanding outward like ink through water, freezing motion in its radius. The reversed current halted; fragmented souls hung motionless mid‑ascension, forming an eerie sculpture of light. The quakes ceased. The only sound afterward was cooling stone.
When Kael withdrew his hand, faint runes lingered on the surface—unknown even to Liora.
She looked pale. "What did you do?"
"Whatever it asked."
"It?"
"The voice inside the current."
Talen laughed once, astonished. "You command bloodflow of the world like a god. No wonder the surface burns."
"I don't command," Kael answered quietly. "It just listens."
They led him back into the main forge cavern where workers stared openly. Some crossed fingers against curses; others bowed slightly. The incident spread faster than breath: the Soulless who stilled the current.
Around the great firepit, Talen spread a map forged of hammered copper, lines etched with flickering light showing where Veins connected across the continent.
"Every flow node sings to another," he explained. " Solmaris sits atop the heart‑core, but when you reversed that stream for even a minute, vibrations echoed all the way to Rimehart. If their forges feel the pulse, they'll think the Forgemind rises—and with it, war."
"War?" Liora asked. "Against what?"
Talen tapped Kael's chest with his tempered finger. "Whatever carries that mark."
Kael answered only with a weary breath. He knew enough: forces already moved above, drawn to the new constellations. Whether divine or human, they would reach here soon.
Liora studied Talen's intricate runes. "You could help us escape before the Dominion takes notice."
He raised an eyebrow. "Escape where?"
"East. Toward the isles. If the pattern spreading through the Veins originates here, we need to reach the source before it corrupts the entire lattice."
Talen considered, folding the map. "To cross Dominion lines means through the lower smeltway. Dangerous, haunted by echo‑leeches, but possible."
Liora met Kael's eyes. "Better choices?"
Kael shook his head. "Haunted sounds safer than worshipped."
They departed the next morning‑that‑was‑not‑morning—time truly failed here. Talen equipped them with rebreathers woven from dragon‑iron mesh and gave Kael a weapon resembling a tuning hammer forged of mirrored steel. "Strikes at the right frequency," he said. "Won't kill—but reminds things they're mortal."
The smeltway began narrow then broadened into serpentine causeways above lakes of molten light. Creepers of residual energy crawled over every surface, glowing deep red when approached. Halfway through, wind rose from unseen depths carrying a thousand whispers.
Liora whispered, "Echo‑leeches."
They appeared—lines of transparent form slithering up the railings, feeding on stray sound. Each time Kael exhaled, one drifted closer. When it touched him, the breath froze in his chest—memories playing backward like a dream rewound.
He swung the tuning hammer. The air rang a clear chime; the creature exploded into dust. Another followed, then many. Soon the entire cavern filled with translucent forms swirling like schools of fish.
Talen roared, bringing his molten arm down onto the walkway. The metal sang; waves of heat rolled outward, driving half the creatures back. Liora channeled pure light through her lens, thinning the swarm in arcs of blue fire.
But more came.
Kael felt surrounded by whispers that weren't hostile at all—each voice begging, pleading to be heard.
He closed his eyes, letting the rhythm of the mark guide him again.
This time he sang—not words, but the tune that lived beneath his heartbeat.
The hammer resonated, matching pitch. The leeches froze mid‑air. Their bodies refracted outward, leaving behind traces of emotion—laughter, sorrow—folding themselves peacefully into the flux below.
When it ended, silence returned so purely that Kael nearly wept.
Talen leaned against a rail, eyes reflecting firelight. "You calm the ghosts as easily as you anger the living."
Kael managed a tired smile. "Ghosts know what they are."
Past the smeltway they entered narrower tunnels descending toward a chamber where molten energy gathered into slow pools. Above each pool, enormous mirrors hung suspended by chains—the Forge of Reflections, Talen called it—where draveth once shaped constructs using echoes as templates.
Every mirror shimmered weakly; some cracked, leaking faint beams of forgotten images. Kael stared into one and saw shapes shifting endlessly—a desert reversed into sky, cities inverted, his own face multiplied until he couldn't tell which was truly himself.
Liora touched his arm. "Don't stare too long. Reflection remembers longer than reality."
He tore his gaze away, but not before seeing a final flash: a crown of light descending through darkness toward nine waiting shadows.
They camped near the edge of the pools. Steam rose in gentle plumes. Liora worked through her notes, muttering formulas she half‑remembered. Talen dismantled his arm for cleaning, metal hissing as it cooled.
Kael sat apart, staring into the dark water that glowed faintly from beneath. The surface showed him not his face but innumerable others—souls bound in the current. He heard them whisper like breeze through reeds:
You are the anchor.
Hold us.
He whispered back, "I can't."
Their response was simply, Then drift.
He glimpsed the images vanish into endless depth.
When dawn—or something like it—touched the far ceiling, he rose quietly. His chestmark had cooled, leaving faint golden scars across skin. For the first time since awakening the shard, the world felt temporarily quiet.
Liora appeared beside him, holding two tin cups of dark brew. She watched him a long time before speaking.
"You saved hundreds here yesterday. But every action wakes heavier things."
"Then I'll stop acting."
"You can't. You're the melody the world remembered. Silence won't un‑write it."
He sipped the bitter drink, gazed down the corridor where molten light faded into distant gloom. A sense of inevitability settled—a pull toward the east, through walls, through time. He knew coming here only delayed what waited ahead.
"East, then," he murmured.
Liora nodded. Talen soon joined them, reassembling his cracked arm with fresh resin from the forges. "Smeltway's clear for now," he said. "Past this last hall we break into wind tunnels—the ones that lead out toward the open fracture plain."
Kael glanced back at the Forge of Reflections. The cracked mirror hummed softly, its light aligning with his own mark, creating ripples like a heartbeat shared across glass and flesh. He didn't know if it meant warning or farewell.
The passage beyond narrowed until they crawled through fissures, heat subsiding to chill. After an hour of echoing breaths, pale daylight shimmered ahead. They emerged onto a ridge overlooking an endless plain of obsidian mud where slow‑moving rivers reflected the heavens upside‑down.
Far away, mountains of black ice punctured clouds. From one of those peaks rose a pillar of smoke. Talen shaded his eyes. "Rimehart," he said. "Home of the Bound. If war stirs there already, the ground will know soon."
Below the ridge a caravan crept along the mirrored flats—ragged pilgrims carrying relics and light‑lamps. All faces turned toward the eastern horizon, where a faint aurora had begun to glow in daylight: the Nine Crowns newly born among the clouds.
Liora tightened her cloak. "It looks like the world's opening its eyes."
Kael watched the shimmering reflection ripple through the rivers and saw how every vein of light below pulsed in sync with the mark on his chest.
"No," he said quietly. "It's waking up."
In the silence that followed, the first wind of the coming storm brushed the Veins, carrying the sound of distant hammers striking in unison—Rimehart's forges answering something older than faith.
They descended toward that sound.