The vision ended not with a whisper, but a weight.
Altan's breath caught as the stillness lifted from his limbs. The trance broke like glass, leaving behind its glimmering edges, raw and luminous, burned into his mind. He stood in the clearing beneath the monolith, its shadow stretching like a blade across the stones.
His skin still tingled with the phantom heat of the dream. But what lingered deeper was the memory of the symbols, the fire-wrought runes burned into stone older than cities, older than names.
He turned slowly and looked again at the monolith.
The carvings were clearer now. Not just markings. Sigils. Runes of the ancient fire. Not the crude ones favored by southern pyromancers. Those were child's play compared to this. These were deeper. Older. Functional.
But flawed.
Remnants, left behind by those who had tried to shape something greater than themselves and failed. The power was there, buried like a glowing ember beneath ash, but the design faltered. To Altan, the flaws weren't hidden. They shone like warnings written in fire. The runes were half-formed. Their symmetry buckled. Their flow stumbled.
He moved with purpose, retrieving a parchment roll from his satchel and unfurling it across a nearby flat stone. He knelt, ink and brush in hand, but he didn't merely copy. He began to rework them, lines shifting under his brush in curves not found on the monolith, but remembered from somewhere far deeper.
From within.
His Sea of Mind stirred like a deep lake struck by thunder.
Beyond the waking world, beneath the surface of conscious thought, his inner sanctum opened. There, drifting in that ocean of stillness, were tomes of forgotten knowledge, some bound in hide, others etched in glass or starlight. Many from this continent. Others from places only touched by dreamwalkers, whispered of by dead gods. Realms where thought shaped matter and runes were living script.
He reached for them.
And they answered.
With each breath, Altan pulled from that deep archive. He corrected the monolith's runes. Thickened certain strokes where energy would falter. Diverted curves where heat would bottleneck. Replaced unstable coils with recursive fire-lattices, shapes that could take in higher qi loads without collapse. These weren't mere improvements. They were evolutions.
Then he stood and called for Daalo.
The old engineer arrived minutes later with his crew. When he saw the sigils Altan had drawn, he exhaled slowly through his nose, a breath held too long.
"These aren't just etchings," Daalo muttered. "This is deep sigilcraft. Flame behavior. Heat flow. Qi retention and dispersal. Folded into loops like a sword folded in fire. Gods... we can't inscribe this quickly."
Altan didn't look up. "We're not doing it quickly. We're doing it right."
Daalo glanced toward the center of the ancient stone ring, its earth cleared and the surrounding stones stabilized and aligned with the monolith's foundation. There, Altan moved again, raising both hands, fingers glowing faintly red.
With a slow breath, Altan traced fire qi into the dirt, no brush, no tools, just raw will and heat. A central sigil bloomed beneath him, then widened outward in precise, concentric layers. Ten smaller rings branched around the main seal, each one set with a separate pattern like keys in a lock. It wasn't just art. It was a circuit, tuned to the leyline humming beneath their feet.
The ground pulsed with it. Fire qi drawn upward from the hidden currents below, channeled through the sigil like breath through lungs.
When it was done, he stepped back, sweat beading along his brow.
"Bring the warmages," Altan said. "Only those with fire affinity. Ten at a time. No more."
They came in silence, ten men and women moving into the circle, each stepping into one of the outer rings. No command was needed. Their training told them enough.
Altan stood at the center. He raised his hand, feeling the leyline's pull beneath the circle. Then he placed his palm to the ground and spoke.
"Draw fire into your core," he said. "Push it into the ring. Hold it. Do not let it break."
Each warmage obeyed. The sigil flared in response, reacting to their combined presence. Lines glowed faintly red-gold, the air thickening with heat. The earth shimmered like iron on the forge.
Altan inhaled slowly.
His fingers splayed against the dirt, and from the monolith's shadowed foundation, he reached downward, beneath stone, beneath soil, into the deep arterial flow of fire qi running through the land. The leyline answered. It pulsed like a living vein, and he drew from it, not greedily, but in rhythm, in tune, like breath drawn through lungs.
His arms trembled as he channeled the surge.
The energy coursed up through him, spine to fingertips, then radiated outward in a web of flickering sigil-light. The circle pulsed. The rings throbbed. The warmages standing within each ring straightened as the fire moved through them, an ancient tide stirred by one will.
The sigils fed them. Not raw force, but ordered flame, disciplined, woven, shaped.
A crate of weapons waited beside Daalo. The first was a battered falcata, its blade notched from hard fighting. Altan took it reverently, placed it before him on a flat stone, and examined the existing runes etched along the spine. They were passable, basic flame-inscription, typical of southern forgemarks, but insufficient.
Insufficient for what was coming.
Altan reached again into the Sea of Mind.
And he rewrote the blade.
He guided fire qi into his fingers, not to burn, but to speak. The sigil he etched wasn't merely drawn. It was composed, like a score of flame. Every movement deliberate, every line drawn to balance intake, amplification, and release. What had been a static emblem now pulsed with embedded intention.
The moment he finished, the sigil shimmered and activated.
A soft glow spread across the falcata's edge, its old lines overwritten by a new geometry. The runes drank in the flame. Held it. Refined it.
"Touch it," Altan said to the first warmage.
The man obeyed, palm brushing the steel. A ring of light leapt from the blade to the sigil beneath him. His eyes widened. The rune pulsed with him.
The others followed. One by one, they each laid hands to the marked weapons as Altan channeled his qi through the central seal into them. Flame-threaded symbols ignited on metal, glowing not with destruction, but with structure. Reinforced runes born from monolith wisdom and shaped by Sea-born precision.
Some warmages gritted their teeth as the qi looped through them. Others swayed, staggered. A few dropped to one knee as the power surged through the array. When the ten were spent, they were guided out and another group took their place.
Not one complained.
Not one hesitated.
And Altan did not pause.
He moved from blade to blade, each falcata laid out in sequence. The process was methodical. He etched the revised sigils with precision, guiding the fire qi into stable patterns. Curved steel took on the new markings with ease, each line calculated for flow, retention, and controlled release. The glow that followed was not for show. It signaled proper alignment. Altan checked each blade's response, making small corrections as needed. The work demanded focus, not flair.
By the time the moons rose on the third day, over a hundred falcatas had been remade, no longer ordinary steel with glyphs scratched across the surface, but living extensions of fire itself.
Altan sat back on his heels, chest rising with slow exhaustion. His voice was hoarse when he turned to Daalo.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we start on the armor."
Daalo nodded silently and motioned to crates nearby, iron helms, plated chestguards, vambraces stacked like bones of a war-beast.
Altan's eyes lingered on a helmet.
No shortcuts.
He reached out, fingers trailing its edge, and watched the old runes flicker beneath his touch.
Soon, even these would be reborn.
Not just forged, but rewritten.
This time, he would draw from the leyline once more, but for protection, not offense. The armor would not match the falcatas in raw potency. But it would serve. Against the Nerathil, even contact would be warded. Even a bite would recoil like poison.
That work would begin at dawn.
By the fourth day, the forge circle had quieted. The weapons gleamed with restrained power, the armor sealed with woven flame. Those chosen to wield them had already been named: one hundred fifty from the Blacktide Cohort, one hundred fifty elite Stormguard, and fifty officers from the Threnari Moorfire warbands. Each had been tested. Each had stood within the circle. Now, they bore more than steel. They carried structure, purpose, and the first edge to fight the Nerathil.