The forge burned low the next morning, its glow muffled by the heavy silence pressing in on Blackridge. No beasts came in the night. No new tremors cracked the trenches. But that quiet only made Riku more alert. It was the kind of silence that felt arranged.
He stood at the map table beneath the stone archway, eyes tracing the marked impact zones and trench breaches. Dozens of small red marks, only a handful of which had fully healed.
Kael entered, dark rings under his eyes, holding a strip of ash-smeared cloth. "You'll want to see this," he said, unrolling it across the table.
Sooted charcoal etched along the cloth in field lines and tactical angles—positions, symbols, notations. A forward operating plan, recovered from a body burned during the previous night's Apex assault. But the sigils weren't Nightforge. They were different—precise, ceremonial, with vertical lines intersecting circular glyphs.
Riku stared for a moment longer, then finally said, "Iron Veil."
Kael nodded grimly. "Confirmed from three scouts. They've moved up past the basalt fangs on the northeastern shelf. Small camps, perimeter towers with mirrored signal rods. They're claiming land with discipline. Not force."
"And Nightforge?" Riku asked.
Sira answered from the forge stairs, her voice clipped. "Still building siege lines across the western cracks. Heavy labor camps, fire-beast haulers. They're not even hiding it."
"So we've got one hammer," Kael muttered, "and one knife."
Riku said nothing for a long while.
Then: "We'll watch both."
By midday, Sira had dispatched three elite scouts outfitted with the newer heat-trace cloaks—quiet against the vents, thin enough to mask body temperature against lava rock. Their target was an Iron Veil relay tower perched along the rim of a collapsed fumarole, twenty kilometers northeast.
The report returned just before dusk.
A small column of armored soldiers—distinct from Nightforge's mercenaries—was stationed around the relay. Their armor was pale grey, not metal but something flexible that shimmered slightly in the Blood Moon light. No beasts. No siege equipment. But they moved like soldiers who didn't need either.
More importantly: one of them had worn a crest. Circular, ringed with fractured symbols. An insignia Iron Veil had not used publicly.
"They're not just consolidating," Sira said, her voice lower than usual. "They're organizing a command structure. And they're using relay towers we never saw in the first cycle."
Kael frowned. "We hit the convoy, they didn't blink. But they're laying out strategy like they already know who's watching."
Riku stood from the forge bench. "They don't care who's watching. Because they think they're already ahead."
That night, Riku moved alone to the western ridge.
From there, beneath the rising curve of the Blood Moon, he saw what Nightforge had built in silence.
A scar across the land—pits dug into the cracked lava fields, filled with slow-burning slag. Black-armored figures marched in drills, their faces obscured by mirrored helms. They weren't just soldiers—they were practiced.
And then came a shape behind them.
A beast, but not like the others.
Towering. Still in shackles. A quadruped draped in chains and steam coils, its molten blood coursing visibly beneath its obsidian-cracked hide. They were taming it.
Riku didn't breathe for a moment.
Nightforge was preparing for something more than defense.
He returned to Blackridge before dawn, silent.
Sira met him at the forge gate. "You saw it too?"
He nodded once. "Both Iron Veil and Nightforge are done hiding. They're moving toward the crater's center. And they'll kill each other getting there—unless someone gets there first."
Kael joined them, arms folded, jaw tight. "You want us to march first?"
"No," Riku said. "Not yet. Let them fight."
"But they're marking everything around us—"
"And they still don't know where we are."
He turned toward the forge.
"Let them guess. Let them burn themselves out. Then we move."
In the war chamber, he unfolded the updated scouting maps. He marked Iron Veil's forward posts with quiet precision, then drew a thin curved line beneath their encampments. Not a route of invasion.
A route of collapse.
If the time came, he wouldn't face them head-on.
He'd break the ground beneath their feet.
The Blood Moon bathed the room in red as he turned down the forge light. Outside, Blackridge remained hidden, quiet, and whole.
For now.
But the knives were out. And soon, the fires would follow.