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Chapter 77 - Mirror Without Face

The heat rising from the forge vents should have been familiar—Riku's senses knew every hiss, every puff of ash-laden wind rolling off the upper ridgeline. But what rose on the horizon wasn't theirs. And that made all the difference.

It began with a report.

One of Sira's long-range scouts had returned just past midnight, breathless and dry-throated, mud caked along his thighs and forearms. He'd dropped a wrapped sketchcase onto the war-table with no fanfare, but his eyes told Riku more than the parchment ever could.

"Northwest," he rasped. "Across the shard-cradle basin. A forge tower. Looks like ours."

Kael had unrolled the sketch while Riku leaned closer. Chimney fluting, scaffold grid, even the vented pressure release gate—it mirrored the design Kael had drawn up during their first obsidian-hardened expansion, months ago.

Kael didn't speak. His jaw was locked tight, knuckles pale on the edge of the table.

Sira muttered, "Coincidence doesn't build chimneys stone-for-stone."

Riku nodded slowly. "No, it doesn't."

The camp had changed in recent weeks—thicker walls, sharper eyes, and the kind of tension that came not from desperation, but readiness. They weren't scrambling anymore. They were preparing. And yet something about this… mirror-forge unsettled Riku more than any beast or sovereign challenge so far.

"We need to see them," he said finally. "Not just what they built—but how they use it."

Kael looked up. "You're not going?"

"No," Riku said. "Not yet. But Tharn is."

The Draganoid warrior stood quietly at the back of the chamber. At the mention of his name, he stepped forward, no flair, no protest.

"I want only observation," Riku instructed. "No contact unless provoked. Note the forge rhythms, material stacks, any markings or script. Watch how they treat their tools, their fire—everything. Return before second dusk."

Tharn nodded once. Then he left.

The Hollow murmured through its roots and glass veins while they waited.

Hours passed. Riku watched the inner chamber flames, watched Kael hammer blades without comment, watched Sira braid her patrol's new paths into the war-map.

Tharn returned just after the sun's arc dipped behind the edge of the crater.

He wasn't wounded. Not visibly. But his shoulders didn't set the way they usually did. His tail dragged slightly. And his gaze… it was hollow. Not in weakness, but recognition.

He handed over a second sketchmap—tighter details this time. He'd noted symbols along the forge's outer wall: not tribal crests, not sovereign marks, but something older. Crude flame-runes carved into stone and repeated around the base like prayers.

Riku read his silence before the words came.

"They don't use the forge," Tharn said softly. "They kneel to it."

No one interrupted.

"They light the flames at dusk. Not to build. To chant. Men, women, elders. They stand in a ring around the chimney mouth and chant names. Over and over. And when the fire flares—they cheer like it's spoken back."

Riku narrowed his eyes. "What names?"

Tharn's brow twitched. "I couldn't understand them. Not clearly. But I recognized the cadence. It matched the syllable structure on your ghost seal."

Kael's forge hammer dropped, clanging onto the anvil.

"They're not copying us," Sira whispered. "They're imitating something older. Through you."

Riku's voice was calm. "No. Through the fire."

He turned to Tharn again. "Did they notice you?"

Tharn nodded slowly. "I think… one of them looked through me. A child. No older than ten. She smiled. Like I was part of the rite."

They stood in silence a long time. The forge heat no longer felt like theirs.

Kael finally broke it. "If they're not building weapons, what is that forge for?"

"Faith," Riku said, not blinking. "But not like a church. Like a mirror. They're trying to become something they saw. Or were told about."

Sira's gaze turned flinty. "Should we strike first?"

"No," Riku said, sharp enough to halt the room. "Not yet. We're not at war with ghosts."

He looked at the sketch again. The angles were too perfect to be imitation. And the materials used—heat-treated emberstone, fluted obsidian alloy braces—required knowledge not found in wandering tribes or even most sovereign camps.

This wasn't mimicry.

It was inheritance.

He rolled up the parchment and set it in the sealed vault behind the command altar. As the mechanisms locked into place, a sudden pulse went through his palm.

A new reading.

Quiet. Soft.

[Crafted Item: Blackridge Obsidian Forge Tower][Environmental Echo Detected | Variant Structure Within Range][No action required.]

Riku didn't move.

The system had never commented before. Not like that. Not about something outside his domain.

He didn't show the others.

Instead, he closed the vault and turned toward the central flame. His voice, when he spoke, was steel.

"We keep watching. Not just them. Ourselves. Our own reactions. I won't have us becoming the very thing we fear in them."

Kael nodded. But Sira's gaze lingered longer than it should have.

That night, the forge fire hissed louder than usual. And for just a moment—only one—Riku thought he saw a reflection in the flames that wasn't his.

No face.

Just flame. Shaped like memory.

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