The frost had settled in their bones.But the world… the world had begun to stir.
The ashes of Blackstone had cooled.The shadows of the Grove had passed.And ahead — beyond the cracked teeth of the mountains — lay something older than both: a place carved in oath and blood.
Druvadir.
Rei stood at the cliff's edge, the torn hem of his cloak fluttering behind him. Beside him, Kaia knelt by a broken milestone — the runes carved there too ancient for her to read, but not too old to remember.
The mountain whispered.
Not like the Void — not like the seductive hunger that echoed in his blood. This voice was heavier. Slower. Like an avalanche waiting in prayer.
She rose.
"They say Druvadir was the first to close the Rift," Kaia said. "The first to stand between the old world and the madness that spilled from the Tear."
Rei didn't answer right away. His hand brushed the glowing scar on his chest. It pulsed once — like a star struggling to be born.Then he nodded, slowly.
"Then maybe it holds the first answers too."
Beneath them, the dwarven forges blinked faintly through fog — buried halls lit by hearthfire, pulsing in rhythm with the wind. Deep drums echoed up through the snow — not of war yet, but of awakening.
"The Mountain remembers," Kaia murmured — a hush in her voice, like reverence wrapped in frost."Where oaths are carved into steel... and frost does not forget."
She looked at Rei then — not to question, but to witness."So which will you be?" she asked."Reforged… or remembered?"
Rei didn't smile.But something flickered behind his eyes — not warmth, not pride.A quiet ignition.
"I wasn't made for this," he said. "But maybe… I'm being shaped into it."
Far above them, crows circled.
Far below them, the mountain rumbled.
And somewhere, in a sealed vault of ice and memory, a voice older than kings opened one eye.