The spiral fell like a tooth into the earth, turning and turning until the light above thinned to a rumor. Each step down carried them further from the forges and fires, farther from shouted orders and the small comforts of flame. Here the stone smelled of cold iron and sleep; the mountain's breath moved slow and heavy. Ribs of rock curved above them like the belly of a sleeping beast.
Kaelen's hand never left the rope. The brand on his forearm throbbed with a steady, second heartbeat. Behind him, Serenya moved like a promise kept—Embercleave slung, eyes sharp as a whetstone. Varik's shoulders hunched; Daren's jaw was set; Lira's mage-light bobbed pale as a will-o'-the-wisp. Neren's fingers trembled, not from cold but from lines drawn in a hand that had not expected to sketch the heart of the mountain.
The spiral ended in a chamber that smelled of salt and rust. The Maw rose before them: a hollow ringed with metal and obsidian, its mouth ragged, rimmed by bones of machines half-buried in slag. The pool at its center was a black mirror. Carvings older than the Ashborn tongue spiraled the walls: teeth, hands, a crown inverted.
The brand pulsed, tugging at Kaelen as if the Maw were a compass and he the needle. For a heartbeat the floor seemed to shift and breathe. Lira whispered, "This is older than any forge. This is where the first bindings were made."
Something moved at the pool's edge—shadow drawing itself up, forming the unfinished figure they had seen in visions. It stepped forward with the slow, cautious grace of something dragged awake from long drowning.
"We used to call this the Womb," Lira said, voice soft. "It birthed weapons, bargains, and our first chains."
The thing spoke without sound that a throat could catch. "Bearer." The single syllable carried recognition and the ache of seasons.
The shard thudded in Kaelen's chest. Open for me, it urged. Let me loose and bury them all. The old voice answered like cold stone: Open for us.
Memory folded into him—not his own but stitched into the mountain's seams. He saw banners raised over cleaved stone, artisans binding men to runes, shards cleaving through sky and falling as glass that hummed with stolen divinity. He saw the first Warden-keepers, then the crown-men who learned the mountain's tongue and turned its hands to making binds.
"You are the first Ashborn?" Kaelen asked, keeping his voice steady.
"We were many firsts," the figure replied. "Stewards, wardens, then leavings. We made locks and were made into them. Men gave away the keys for crowns."
The Warden's edges shimmered with the brand's light. "We were meant to be keys. We became the lockkeepers. Then they sharpened us into teeth."
What the Warden offered was simple and terrible: knowledge and power for a price. The mountain could be made an ally—but it would take what it needed. The smith who stepped out of the constructs behind the Warden explained the trade.
She looked to Kaelen with bronze-barked face and eyes like rain. "I am what remains willing to call itself smith," she said. "We kept pattern and hands. The Maw bargains: a memory, a pledge, a thing you alone would guard. Give that, and the mountain will lend a key. Refuse, and the old teeth remain."
Kaelen felt his lieutenants' breaths where they stood—Serenya's impatience, Lira's careful distance, Varik's restless focus. He thought of his sister's laugh braided with smoke, the small, foolish oath he'd once sworn to protect it. Trade a private truth for a conduit through stone? The shard inside him hummed with appetite.
"Name the cost plainly," Kaelen said. "No riddles."
The smith's bronze lips thinned. "Not a name. A trust. A promise the mountain can swallow. If it takes, you will gain the conduit: the Warden-sigil becomes a channel. You may move the mountain's veins without being bound. But what you give—memory, vow, a thing of the heart—will go. Not lost in dust, but kept by the stone. You will not remember unless the mountain chooses to return it."
Varik's voice cut, rough as flint. "We need that key. For the Crown to have it is the end."
Serenya's answer was the swing of her axe. "Give the heart, save a thousand, and lose yourself. Or refuse and watch the Crown learn to bind every throat with crystal. There is no safe coin."
The Warden's face did not judge. "Decide," it said.
Kaelen folded his hands into his lap and allowed the mountain's memory to run like a reel before his mind: his sister's hair tucked behind her ear, his mother's lullaby hummed wrong in the dark, Daren's wide, frightened eyes in the training yard. He wrote a list in his bones of the things he could not lose, then scribbled them on paper as though script might bind fate.
"Give me until dawn," he said at last. "One night to prepare. If I bind, do what must be done. If I refuse, seal these teeth."
The smith inclined her head. "The Maw honors a night. But the world above does not wait."
They left the Maw heavier than they'd come—brand stinging, decisions nested like knives in their packs. As the spiral cranked them upward the mountain answered them with a far, slow bell—an echo meant to be heard across valley and forge. Scouts came running before the sun rose: the Hollow Crown had taken no more chances. A larger device, sharper and stranger than the first, ground its way along the valley toward the forges—an engine the size of a small tower, rimmed in woven crystal.
Kaelen sat with his list in his palm and his sword in his lap. For the first time since the shard had found him, he felt the full weight of the choice: a single private truth traded for a key that might save or damn. Dawn would not be the same for anyone.
He tied the paper to his belt, pressed his fingers to the brand, and let the mountain's steady pulse answer like a second heart.
Dawn would ask for an answer. The world was already demanding one.