At first, it looked like a vault.
Not stone, not metal—somewhere between both. A bulbous structure uncovered during the southern ridge excavation, buried beneath a crust of ash and calcified root-web. Sira had spotted the curvature while scouting the widened fault, a glint under moonlight, half-sunken in ashfall.
Now, in full day, it loomed like a cracked eye staring out from the deep earth.
Riku crouched at its edge, hand trailing over the seam that ringed its top. The material was cool—not lifeless cold, but waiting cold, like a blade left unsheathed on temple stone.
Kael knelt beside him, brushing soot away with careful sweeps.
"No markings," he said. "No entry sigils. But the surface isn't inert."
Sira stood behind them, glaive in hand. "It's humming. Low. Barely there. Same tone as the whisper-root when it grew past the forge path."
Riku closed his eyes. Beneath his palm, the vault pulsed once. Like a breath that didn't belong to anything living.
He stood. "We don't force it. Not yet."
Kael arched a brow. "You're saying wait?"
"I'm saying this place chose to hide for a reason."
Sira stared down at the dome. "And yet it's opening now. That means something."
Riku looked out toward the fissure. "It means it's watching. And waiting to see if we deserve the next step."
They marked the vault's perimeter with heat-ward stones and pulled back. No excavation. No intrusion. Just… observation.
That night, Riku couldn't sleep. The forge burned steady, the winds had quieted, but something in the air made rest feel like a lie. Not fear. Not even anticipation.
Recognition.
Blackridge had been made from ash and effort. Every trench, every wall, every molten beam and alloy strut—hand-built and hammer-folded. It was a place forged.
But this vault… it was remembered.
As if it had been here before the ash. Before the stone. Before even the breath of beasts.
By morning, Kael arrived with a new reading: the glaives had doubled again.
Now eight.
Still no sound, no light.
They simply… were.
And beside each one, whisper-roots grew in spirals.
No patterns.
But no randomness either.
Riku paced the forge chamber, watching the young Draganoids train beneath the banner wall. Toma moved with clean arcs now, his glaive humming like a voice finally finding its tone. Ilven's swings were smoother, less reactive. More deliberate.
It wasn't just skill. The weapons had taught them something. Molded their grip. Their instincts.
Kael returned from the lower vault in a hurry. "Riku. You need to see this."
Down below, past the Riftglass shard, past the containment chamber where the whisper-root grew against heat-stone in soft threads, Kael showed him a new change.
The stone with the carved eye—the one Sira had recovered near the fissure—had shifted.
It now had a groove running through its center. Not carved. Melted.
As if something inside had heated precisely enough to mark a path.
And that groove aligned perfectly with the vault above.
Riku stared at it for a long while.
Then turned to Kael.
"We open it."
The next dusk, under full firelight and watch from every elite, Riku approached the vault again. This time, he did not touch it with bare hand.
He placed the melted stone into the groove that had formed at the vault's base.
Nothing happened.
Then it pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
And with a sound like bone grinding beneath the weight of mountains, the top peeled open—not cracked, not shattered—peeled, like a fruit yielding its skin.
Inside was no treasure.
No weapon.
No beast.
Just a singular throne.
Made of black filamented roots.
Not carved.
Grown.
Atop it sat no body. No ghost.
But presence. The unmistakable pressure of a crown that didn't need to be worn.
Riku stepped forward alone. The others stayed back.
The glaive at his hip thrummed—long, low, reverent.
And the whisper-roots across the entire basin shifted toward the throne.
Bowing.
Riku didn't reach for it.
Didn't sit.
He stood before the crown of root and bone, silent.
The roots didn't speak.
They offered.
And for the first time in his reign, Riku understood—
Not all power is taken.
Some of it simply waits to be claimed.