They moved like ghosts beneath the mountain—ropes creaking, boots muffled on stone, breaths small in the cave's great throat. The pit behind them exhaled a cold that tasted of old iron and burnt prayers. Every step deeper stole another of Kaelen's certainty; the brand under his sleeve thrummed as if it had its own heartbeat now, forcing cadence into his veins.
"Keep tight," Serenya warned, voice low. "This place is older than our stories. The old ways twist easily into teeth." Her axe scraped once on the rock; the sound was a promise.
Daren stumbled, fingers cold and clumsy, catching himself on the rope. "I thought we'd be done with ghosts two mountains back," he muttered.
"Ghosts and crowns find the same graves, boy," Varik said, jaw set. For all the doubts that clung to him, he held his spear like a pledge.
Lira walked with her palms near the runes carved into the wall; sometimes she would pause, tilt her head, and listen as if the stone spoke in a language only she could interpret. "The Warden is patient," she murmured once as they passed a rune-pocked arch. "It will test what comes to it."
"How do you know such things?" Daren asked, voice barely a thread.
"Because some memories remain in stone longer than in men," Lira replied. "Because the mountain keeps secrets like a miser keeps coin."
The passage opened then into a vaulted chamber, arched ribs of rock strung with veins of faint silver. In the center stood a great wheel—an ancient contraption of iron and stone, teeth like a crown, spokes carved with names worn to ghosts. Around it were braziers that had once burned, now cold, and an altar ringed with hammered metal. Every surface bore the scratch of hands long gone.
As they approached the wheel, the brand on Kaelen's arm flared, responding like a key to a lock. The spokes trembled. Dust drifted down from the high ceiling as if the chamber exhaled.
"Here," Lira said. She moved to the altar and set her palm on the metal. The runes along the wheel brightened like waking embers. "It knows you."
A voice—not from Lira, not from any throat in the hall—filled the room. It was not loud, but it was older than the mountain's memory, resonating in bone. "Who comes?" it asked, each syllable like stone settling.
Kaelen stepped forward. The shard thrummed in his chest, every whisper within it pushing him to answer with power. Claim it, the shard urged. You are chosen. Take what is owed to you.
He swallowed. "Kaelen Duskbane," he said aloud. "Of the Ashborn. I carry the Hollow Shard. I come to learn."
Silence sat heavy after his words, a silence not empty but weighing with expectation. The wheel shivered, then turned a hair.
"Many came," the voice intoned. "Many took and were taken. What do you offer in trade?"
Kaelen felt the brand ache. He had no answer of coin or conquest. The shard hummed impatiently, promising dominion if he would but consent. He thought of his sister—her small hands, the way she braided his hair when winter came—and found his answer there.
"I offer restraint," he said, voice steady though iron trembled in it. "I offer protection. I offer to refuse the easy way."
The wheel emitted a sound that might have been a laugh or a grinding of stone. "Words eaten by wind." The voice softened. "Then show. A trial."
The chamber changed. Air tightened until every breath felt like a blade. The brazier nearest them sputtered to life, blue flame licking tongues of cold. The wheel shuddered and one of its spokes slid aside like a throat opening. From that gap rose a shape—a man at first, then the man uncoiled into something else: a suit of armour set with black glass, its helm empty until a crown of sparks burned into place. It was the Warden, or the memory of it—a guardian shaped by the old smiths to bind and to keep.
Serenya shifted into stance beside Kaelen. "Test or trap," she said. "We strike together."
The Warden did not move like a living thing. It moved like a mechanism obeying the will of the wheel, each step measured, each strike a crafted bone-cut. Its sword rang like weathered bell-metal against Kaelen's blade when they met. For every blow Kaelen parried, the Warden answered with what it had been built to test: tenacity, honor, control.
The shard roared through Kaelen as the Warden struck. In the jag of every impact, it whispered, Now. Now. Now. The temptation to answer with a sweep of shadow that would shatter bone and hush the iron choir was an ache that would not be soothed.
But restraint had a rhythm. Kaelen found it and held to it: breathe, parry, step, deflect. He allowed shadow to be his defense rather than his sword, wrapping limbs in silent coils to trap blows or smother edges. When the Warden's sword bit his shoulder, Kaelen felt the pain and did not allow it to bloom into something worse.
Sweat stung his eyes, and when the Warden's helm split with a sound like a bell being broken, its stance slowed. For the first time, the carved eyes of the armour seemed to regard him not as one more opponent but as a searching creature.
"You hold," the voice said. "You resist the easy harvest." The wheel creaked and rotated once more, and the Warden lowered its blade.
Kaelen fell to one knee, chest heaving. The brand burned like a coal struck beneath his skin. The Warden's arm reached out, and where its gauntlet touched the air a ribbon of faint light flowed to Kaelen's forearm. The mark there—new—flattened, not a brand of possession but a sigil of recognition. It pulsed with the same slow, steady beat as Kaelen's heart.
Lira spoke softly, almost reverent. "A bond," she said. "Not binding you, but naming you as one who refused. The Warden acknowledges the choice."
Serenya grunted. "Acknowledgement is a blade and a promise. Don't mistake it for mercy."
From above—the mouth of the passage—they heard a distant commotion: horns, screams of men and the thud of hurried feet. The mountain answered them with a low groan as if another chamber strained to wake.
Kaelen rose, the ribbon of light cool and new against his skin. "What was that?" Daren asked, voice high.
"Not the Crown," Lira said. Her hand hovered over the sigil. "Something moved in the deep drum. The Warden's eyes open for a reason." Her gaze sharpened like a knife. "They are waking more than we thought."
Varik walked until he stood near Kaelen, hands stained with grime and blood. For a long moment he did not speak. Then, in a voice only Kaelen could hear, he said, "If the Warden tests men, it can also name them to others. Beware those who seek the mark. The Crown will not be the only ones watching."
A chill ran through Kaelen. The sigil on his arm warmed where Varik's words set fire to his thought. Watched by whom? he wondered.
Above, a new sound rose—this one wrong for the mountain. It was not a horn of war but a chorus of metal striking metal in cadence, joined by a keening that seemed to come from stone scraping stone. The wheel in the chamber trembled as if a hand had taken hold of it and turned it beneath the mountain.
The Warden's voice—thin, like wire across a void—spoke once more. "The earth answers the key. Beware which doors you open, bearer."
Kaelen pressed a palm to the sigil. It pulsed, steady as a true heart. He did not understand everything he had been given, nor the danger that now circled them above the stone. But he understood one thing stark and simple: the mountain had chosen to speak through him, and others would hear its words.
He drew his sword. The others drew with him. They climbed toward the sound.