Smoke rose in strange patterns that morning—thin, too high, and bending eastward even though there was no wind.
Riku stood at the outer edge of the ash-field, just past the northern trench, eyes on the motionless smoke. It wasn't the forges. It wasn't the vents. Something in the basin had shifted again.
Sira approached from the southern rampart, her boots silent over char-rock. Her armor bore streaks of oil and black ash from dawn drills.
"The wyrmlings refused to land today," she said. "Kael says it's the pressure—atmospheric instability, maybe geothermal."
Riku didn't respond immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the ribbon of smoke still curling unnaturally against the open sky. It wasn't dispersing.
"It's not weather," he said. "It's memory."
Sira blinked. "Come again?"
He finally turned to face her. "Stone remembers. So does ash. Everything that's burned leaves something behind. A pressure. A weight. The deeper the fire, the longer it stays."
"Kael call that science?"
"No," he said. "Kael won't call this anything."
Sira looked up at the smoke again. "You think it's tied to the shard?"
Riku didn't answer. He didn't need to.
They both knew that since the shard had been retrieved, the air around Blackridge had changed. Not violently. But subtly—like standing too close to a sound you couldn't quite hear, but felt in your ribs.
That evening, three scouts reported strange noise in the northeast passage—scraping. Rhythmic. As if something was dragging metal across stone far underground.
No one was sent to investigate. Not yet.
Instead, Riku gathered the senior fighters—Tharn, Sira, Kael, and two of the new glaive-bearers, Toma and Ilven—in the lower chamber beside the wyrmling pen.
It was Ilven who asked it, young and untested still, but honest:
"Are we under threat?"
Riku watched the wyrmling nearest him flick its tongue at the warmth-stone mounted near its perch. Its eyes glinted silver in the half-light.
"Not yet," Riku said.
Toma glanced up. "You're not denying it either."
"No," Riku admitted. "Because I don't know what it is yet."
Kael crossed his arms. "Whatever the signal stone was talking to—whatever passed the ridge without heat signature—it's not beast. Not sovereign either. I'm not even sure it's… from this side of the veil."
Sira looked between them. "So it's ghost stories now?"
"Echoes," Riku corrected. "Which is worse. Ghosts die. Echoes keep moving."
The silence in the room deepened.
Ilven leaned forward slightly. "So what do we do?"
"We keep digging," Riku said. "Not with blades. With patience. We catalog everything—every tremor, every ash drift, every change in the way the wind curls through the trenches. And when it speaks again—when the stone hums—we listen."
Kael's brow furrowed. "And if listening's not enough?"
Riku's voice turned quieter. "Then we answer."
That night, when the camp quieted and the ash settled over the walls like a second skin, Riku stood alone in the observation alcove. Below, the basin was nearly still.
But his eyes weren't on the ground.
They were on the ridge beyond the crater, where a single red shimmer had begun to glow at the base of an ancient fissure. No flame. Just light. Wrong light.
He didn't sound the alert.
He didn't send Kael.
He simply watched.
And for the first time in many nights, he whispered—not a command, but a memory.
"Echoes only reach those who remember the sound."
Then he turned from the ridge and walked back toward the forge, where the wyrmlings had begun hissing softly in their sleep.
As if they remembered something too.