The crack ran silently at first.
No cry, no quake, just the low rasp of stone surrendering to something older beneath. Kael had noticed it while setting the last reinforcement struts near the southwest rim of Blackridge's lower excavation pit. He crouched beside the fissure, running a gloved finger along its warm edge. Emberglass, he mouthed to himself, the word known more from forgotten notes than lived experience.
Riku arrived minutes later, eyes already fixed on the red glow threading up from beneath the surface. The light wasn't fire. It didn't flicker. It pulsed—steady, like the heart of something that didn't want to be found.
"No tremors?" he asked quietly.
Kael shook his head. "Not natural ones. The veins widened after the third dig, but the earth didn't shift. It… responded."
They stood above a small shelf of broken basalt, now glowing in uneven veins of orange-red. One cracked open entirely as Kael tapped it with his pry-blade. The inside was smooth as polished resin, layered in circular striations that faintly moved, like liquid held inside a solid.
Sira dropped beside them moments later, having descended from patrol over the upper ridge. She said nothing, only squatted and placed her palm near the opening. Her eyes narrowed.
"Warm, not hot. No heat damage," she muttered. "Whatever it is… it's alive."
Riku signaled for two silent workers to lower rope, and they descended. No fanfare. Just the clatter of boots and stone, and the fading sound of breath as the cavern accepted them.
Inside, the space expanded unnaturally. The emberglass veins formed a crude corridor, uncarved yet unmistakably architectural. The stone had not been built, but it knew how to arrange itself.
They advanced by torchlight, which dulled visibly in the presence of the veins. Light was absorbed, diffused. Not repelled, not hostile. But dimmed—as if the walls preferred their own glow.
They moved for thirty paces before reaching the heart of it.
A low platform emerged from the floor, shaped like a spiral disc half-buried in the ground. Three thin pillars, each about shoulder height, stood arranged in a triangle around the platform. Their tips were carved—or perhaps formed—into curled spirals, almost like insect antennae or vine-tips frozen mid-growth.
Kael stepped near the nearest one and tried to rest his tool kit beside it. But the moment metal touched the pillar, the tool flickered—and duplicated.
A perfect copy of Kael's forge prong sat beside the original, same scuffs, same blade-worn edges. Kael didn't move. He stared.
"I didn't activate anything," he said flatly.
"You didn't need to," Riku replied.
Riku picked up the copy and turned it in his hand. Lighter. Balanced. Still sharp. But it wasn't just a replica—it was subtly better. As if the material had watched its own creation and decided to improve.
Sira crouched again, inspecting the vein lines near the spiral. They ran in concentric arcs beneath the floor, bending toward the platform but never quite touching it.
"These aren't veins," she said at last. "They're root channels. Everything's growing around that platform. Or listening to it."
Riku placed the forged prong back beside the pillar. Nothing happened.
Then he picked it up again.
The duplication triggered once more.
A second copy emerged, but this time—warped. The weight was uneven. The metal hissed faintly in Riku's hand, like it rejected the replication.
It dropped to the stone and shattered.
Kael stepped forward. "It's not infinite. It's… conditional." He didn't finish the thought aloud.
Riku's eyes narrowed, then shifted toward the silent dark at the end of the corridor.
Something about the structure made sense. Not in words. Not even in reason. Just in rhythm.
He set down a small coil-blade from his belt. Used, dulled from last week's ridge skirmish. He waited.
Nothing.
He unsheathed the newly-forged glaive—the one forged during the second Blood Moon, its steel folded from his own personal forge route, engraved along the spine with an unintentional pattern of heat-sinks that had never been designed.
He placed that glaive across the triangle's center.
Nothing happened.
Until he stepped away.
The ground beneath it shimmered. The glaive vanished.
And was replaced by two.
Both identical. Both untouched.
But one of them—barely, barely—had a shorter hilt.
"Symmetry failure," Kael said softly. "It misread the craft."
"No," Riku said. "It tested me."
He took both glaives. One hummed faintly when touched, resonating with the nearby veins. The other did not.
He slid the resonant one into his back-sling. "We log this chamber. No one returns without me. This is not a forge. It's an echo."
Sira tilted her head. "Of what?"
Riku's jaw clenched.
"Of memory," he said. "And memory... doesn't repeat."
They exited the chamber in silence, torches dimming behind them.
But beneath the surface, the veins pulsed once more. Not randomly.
In rhythm.
As if waiting for him to come back.