The doorway didn't open so much as swallow him.
Tarn stepped down into a low, slanted corridor lined in moss-eaten stone. Cold lived in the walls. Not the kind that nipped — the kind that remembered. The sort of cold that had once frozen a man's name on his breath and left it there for others to trip over later.
A torch sputtered to life ahead. Not by him. Not by any hand he saw.
He didn't ask how.
The barrow was quiet, but not silent. Stone doesn't stay silent forever. It ticked, breathed, leaked. Drips echoed from somewhere distant. The sound of cloth brushing stone passed him once like someone else walking the other way — only there was no one. When he glanced back, the entrance was gone. Not closed. Gone.
He kept walking.
A row of old bones marked the hallway bend. Not scattered. Arranged — crossed arms, skulls upturned, feet aligned east-west. Burial format. Careful. Intentional. A shrine of the forgotten.
Tarn stopped and lowered to one knee, pressing his fingers briefly to his own lips and then the stone. It was an old field rite. One he'd never fully believed in.
Didn't matter.
He did it anyway.
Beyond the bones, the hall opened into a chamber. Round. Low-ceilinged. Twelve relic niches carved into the stone walls — all empty. A broken chain hung from the ceiling's center, the last link shaped like an open eye.
Tarn stood beneath it.
He could feel the weight of the barrow watching.
Then he heard it — a shift behind him. A footstep. Real, this time.
Veiss.
The old man entered without torch or sound. Just presence.
"Sit," he said. "You'll dream better that way."
"There's nothing here to dream on."
"There's everything."
Veiss threw him something. Tarn caught it by reflex — soft, rolled fabric. A cloak. Not new, but thick. Salt-wool, judging by the smell. Issued to barrow-watchers in the old days.
"You know what this was?" Veiss asked, settling on the far wall.
"Trial cloak," Tarn muttered. "Oath-sealed. They wore it if they wanted the relic to burn clean."
"And if it didn't?"
"They walked out scorched."
Veiss nodded. "Or they didn't walk out at all."
Silence again. The barrow pulsed in time with nothing but memory.
Tarn didn't ask questions. Didn't voice fears. He folded the cloak around him and sat. The chain above him swayed once — no breeze.
"You were thrown here," Veiss said, "because you didn't flinch."
"I moved."
"But you didn't yield."
Tarn looked up. "I didn't do it for honor."
Veiss met his gaze. "Good. Men who do things for honor either die quick or come back needing to be put down."
The cloak was heavier than it should be. Not with weight. With something older.
Tarn leaned back.
He didn't remember sleep.
He woke to warmth.
Real warmth — not dream-heat, not fever. A soft, yellow light flared from the center chain. It hadn't burned when he'd slept. But now, it glowed faintly.
Veiss stood beside it.
In his hands was the writ.
Signed.
"There's ash in your mouth," Veiss said. "That means it took."
"What took?"
"The barrow doesn't care about oaths. It cares about thread. Whether you're part of the pattern, or not."
Tarn sat up slowly. "I thought this was just a scare."
"It was. And it wasn't."
Veiss offered the writ — now marked with a second glyph beside the signature: the open-eye sigil from the chain. Burned into the parchment. Not drawn.
"You're part of the thread now," Veiss said. "And so am I."
Tarn took the writ.
"And now?"
"Now we ride."
"Where?"
"To claim the claim."
The barrow groaned — not a creak, not an echo. A sound like a door long sealed deciding to remember how to open.
Tarn rose, cloak still draped over his shoulders. Brae waited at the edge of the clearing. The spear circle looked smaller now, like a ring of bent fingers offering something they didn't own.
Veiss looked at Tarn like a man deciding whether to sharpen the knife or teach the hand to hold it.
"You still want this rise?" he asked.
"I didn't come for nothing."
"Then let's give 'em something."
They walked into the dawn, and behind them, the barrow sealed without sound.