The eastern pass breathed dust, not wind.
It had been sixty days since Blackridge's gates had last opened—sixty days of silence, smoke, and work so deep it no longer needed orders. The walls now stood thicker, no longer just defenses, but rituals in obsidian and steel. And in the open yard, beside the newer of the ventglass towers, Kael stood ankle-deep in volcanic grit, hammer held like a relic.
Riku watched from the overlook above, arms crossed. The sun was pale today, dust-muted and unsure. He preferred it that way.
They hadn't spoken of the surface. Not since Hollow Reign. Not since the rootstone pulsed and something wordless recognized him. But now, it was time to breathe upward again.
He turned slightly as soft steps approached. Sira.
"East scout's returned," she murmured. "You'll want to see the report yourself."
He followed her silently down the rampart stairs, the ash sticking slightly underfoot. At the gate, a lone Draganoid scout stood tall, his right forearm bandaged, the other hand clutching a tight leather-wrapped tube.
The scout bowed. "Sovereign. I bring record and object."
"Speak," Riku said.
"Camp at sixteen klicks. No sovereign standard. Not a formal tribe. Could be merchants—or a rogue cell. But…" The scout glanced at Kael, then unrolled the cloth. "They were using this."
The blade inside was unmistakable—half-forged fireglass, triple-coiled hilt grip, weight-balanced exactly like Kael's Pattern VII. But its edge was chipped, improperly tempered. Modified.
Riku held it in his hands. Cold. Light. Faint scent of crushed brineleaf, as though someone had tried to clean it recently.
"They didn't recognize the origin?" Riku asked.
"No, Sovereign. One man called it a 'Skyfound Knife.' Said he bartered it from a desert trader."
Kael's jaw flexed. "Skyfound?" he scoffed. "That's a Blackridge edge. Pattern VII-B, fifth batch—my batch. It was never meant to leave the vault."
"It didn't," Riku said, still examining it. "This isn't stolen. This is copied."
He paused. Turned to Sira. "Has anyone been trading beyond the southern perimeter? Any break from my ban on outside contact?"
She shook her head firmly. "None, Sovereign."
"Then it means only one thing." He glanced back down at the blade. "They're copying our work. Or mimicking it. Maybe they found discarded shards… maybe a fireglass piece drifted from a former skirmish."
Kael's eyes burned. "But the weight, the curve—it's not guesswork. They had a reference."
"That's what worries me," Riku murmured.
He held up the weapon one last time, then handed it to Kael. "Double-layer the next batch. Embed trace lines in the molten core—fine enough they can't see, but clear to us."
Kael nodded, already mentally adjusting the blueprint.
"And from now on," Riku said, his voice sharper, "any weapon discarded in the field is to be destroyed—fully. No remnants, no salvage."
Sira looked to him. "What if they already spread further?"
Riku met her gaze. "Then we let them."
Silence.
"We'll build a second voice," he continued. "One the world doesn't know belongs to us. Let them use these tools. Let them claim brilliance. Let them feed our legend without seeing our face."
Kael hesitated, then slowly grinned. "You're making ghosts."
"No," Riku said, quietly. "I'm making echoes."
The next week passed in preparation. The forge was redesigned to produce trace-marked versions of the glaives—each one with a near-invisible swirl of ventdust laced in its core, visible only under flame-refraction. Subtle. Undeniable.
A series of low-tier tools—scrapers, chisels, even ceremonial blades—were also created. Purposefully flawed, easy to replicate. They were placed in a secure crate, and under a false trade name—Narren's Wake, no mention of Blackridge—they were uploaded to the global trading platform.
The response was immediate.
Overnight, four tools were claimed by monarchs under trade handles Riku didn't recognize. The exchanges were clean. No messages sent. But within a day, one of the buyers uploaded an image of their warriors training with "new curved alloys."
Kael stared at the post, then at Riku.
"You expected this."
Riku didn't reply. Instead, he turned back to the overlook, watching the outer perimeter under the cooling ashfall. The sky darkened, not from storm—but from time.
Blackridge had never expanded its walls. And yet now, it reached further than any of them could see.
He reached into his cloak and retrieved a folded page—the sketch of the unauthorized glaive copy. He stared at it one last time before feeding it into the brazier.
"Let them build their walls," he murmured. "We already live inside their shadows."
And far beyond Blackridge, under the flag of an entirely different sovereign, a group of warriors held a weapon they thought they'd discovered—unaware that the blade itself was watching them back.