Kael had taken only four with him—just enough to inspect without attracting attention, just enough to run if something turned.
The ridge path north of Blackridge bent toward an abandoned site they'd once used as an outpost, months ago—during the first great expansion. Back then, the spire tower had been a triumph, a signal to themselves and any wandering eyes: we endure. It was a place of watch, a place where fire-root storage once smoldered in clay ovens beside a lean-to forge Kael built with his own hands.
Then came the raid. A swarm of blindbeasts—no warning, just teeth and thunder. They'd pulled out what they could and torched the rest. Kael remembered watching it burn. Remembered the sound of the stone cracking as heat met moisture.
And yet here they stood.
Now, at the base of the slope, the outpost stood again.
Whole.
Clean.
Not just rebuilt. Never broken.
The spire rose into the sky like it had never fallen, its curved shingles glinting with the same obsidian plating Kael had used in Blackridge's second forge. The doors were sealed, the structure unblemished, save for the sootless hearths that marked every edge of the outer tower.
No footprints around the perimeter.
No cart marks.
No signs of stone hauling.
Kael slowly placed his palm against the outer wall. It was warm—not with sun, but something internal. Something intentional.
"Check the perimeter again," he said quietly to the others. "Twice."
He drew his short-hammer, not as a weapon but as memory, and eased the door open.
The inside was silent.
No dust. No moss. Even the hinges on the door creaked with polish.
The hallways were familiar in shape but… distorted. What had once been a straight path to the storage vault now bent slightly left, then opened into a chamber that shouldn't exist—a rotunda made of heatglass panels that refracted firelight from nowhere.
Kael stepped slowly into it, boots tapping on translucent stone.
"I built none of this," he said aloud.
Behind him, Garron muttered, "It's your design. Look—anchor beams at the corners, twelve span. Your same bolts."
"Yes," Kael said. "But not my hands."
They moved deeper. A staircase now led where a lift platform had once failed. A stairway made of matte iron, balustrades carved with spirals too perfect to have been done by camphands. As if the metal had been poured through molds shaped by something smarter—or stranger.
Then they reached the forge room.
Kael stopped at the threshold.
It was a forge, certainly. Twin anvils. A bellows system that hissed softly in some repeating pattern. Shelves lined with tools—chisels, clamps, fold-plates, casting horns. Even a quenching bath, still steaming faintly. The heat in the room wasn't unbearable, but it was alive. Like it watched.
He moved carefully to one of the benches and froze.
Laid out neatly beside a strip of smoothed hide and a wire-puller was a tool—a folded instrument, half-pliers, half-torque key. It was dulled by use, but Kael recognized the make immediately.
Because he'd made it.
Or rather, was going to.
He hadn't built this tool yet. Not in this form.
And yet, there it lay.
On its side, beneath the hinge screw, three tiny letters etched into the steel by a scratch awl only Kael used.
K.A.L.
His breath slowed.
He hadn't used those initials since before the first Blood Moon. Since before the system's arrival. Since before they'd stopped being people and started being… something else.
One of the scouts moved forward, reaching for it, but Kael raised a hand. "Don't."
They all paused. A silence thicker than ash settled around them.
Kael reached forward himself, slowly, cautiously, and lifted the tool.
It felt warm.
Not forged-warm. Remembered-warm.
And on the underside, where no one but a user would think to look, a second scratch line had been engraved—small, shallow.
A date.
Day 283.
Today was Day 270.
Kael looked around the room again.
No dust. No noise. No other souls. A place rebuilt not for the tribe, but for them.
As if it had been waiting.
He slipped the tool into his belt pouch and exhaled slowly.
"We seal this place," he said. "Nobody returns without my command."
"And the hill?" Garron asked.
Kael didn't answer.
Instead, he turned back toward the entryway, steps slow, mind racing. The forge behind them hissed gently, as though marking time.
When they stepped outside, the sky had darkened.
No storm.
Just shadow.
And when Kael looked back one final time, the spire was still there—unchanged. But a new set of stairs had appeared at the side of the base.
He hadn't seen them before.
And the stone beside the steps bore a carved emblem.
Blackridge's emblem.
But mirrored.