Chapter 121 – The Doors Beneath
The Hollow still buzzed with celebration.
Carts of ore rumbled through the streets, glimmering veins of iron and copper stacked high. The smiths had already begun hammering the first crude bars, their hammers ringing like a chorus of triumph. Children followed the carts, laughing and pointing, their hands dusted gray from sneaking handfuls of stone as though it were treasure.
To most, this was victory. Proof that the Hollow could stand on its own, free of the fickle whims of trade caravans.
But Kael's thoughts lay far beneath, where lantern-light kissed old stone.
He stood again in the cavern, its air damp and heavy. Before him, the great stone doors loomed in silence, their surfaces veined with runes that pulsed so faintly he almost thought it was his imagination.
Umbra padded beside him, the wolf's fur bristling. Even the beast seemed uneasy in this place, ears flat and tail low.
Kael reached out, brushing his fingers over one of the runes. It flared dimly, a whisper of power brushing against his chaos magic. Not hostile, not yet — but watching.
He could feel it.
Something waited beyond.
Not treasure, not ore. Something older.
"Why are you here?" he muttered under his breath, voice echoing faintly through the cavern. "What are you hiding?"
He wanted to push. To force the doors wide with his magic, to see what lay beyond. But something in his chest — instinct or fear — held him back. Not yet. Not without understanding.
The council chamber was louder than the cavern.
Fenrik slammed a calloused hand on the table. "It is wealth enough to forge an empire. That cavern is worth more than any trade caravan, any harvest! We must claim it properly. Guard it day and night."
Rogan snorted, arms folded. "Wealth?" His voice rumbled like distant thunder. "Wealth does not matter if it swallows men whole. I've seen mines turn on their diggers. I've seen whole companies vanish in holes like that. You call it wealth. I call it a curse."
Thalos grunted his agreement, tusks flashing. "The ogre speaks truth. The air down there was wrong. I don't care for cursed stone."
The debate spiraled from there — voices clashing, overlapping. Some called it a gift, others a danger. Some wanted to seal it, others to mine every ounce of metal from its veins.
Kael listened, silent. His eyes lingered not on the piles of ore samples scattered across the table but on the faint chalk sketch of the stone doors one of the miners had drawn. Even rendered poorly, the shape filled him with unease.
Finally, when the shouting grew too much, Kael rose. His chair scraped loudly against the stone floor, silencing the chamber.
"You speak as though the cavern belongs to us," Kael said, his voice steady but sharp. "But those doors… they are no gift. They were not left for us. They were built for a purpose we do not yet understand."
Lyria studied him carefully. "You think it's dangerous."
Kael's gaze lingered on the sketch. "I know it is."
Fenrik scowled. "And yet you would leave all that ore untouched?"
"No," Kael said quickly. "The metals above are ours to claim. They will help us grow strong. But the doors…" He shook his head. "The doors stay shut. For now."
The silence that followed was heavy. Council members shifted uneasily in their seats.
At last, Rogan spoke, voice low. "You feel it too, then. The weight. Like something waiting."
Kael met his eyes and nodded.
That night, Kael returned once more to the cavern.
He lit no lantern. He didn't need to — the faint glow of the runes painted the doors in pale light. He sat cross-legged before them, Umbra lying at his side.
He tried to still his mind, to listen.
The Hollow above was loud with celebration, with laughter, with hammers striking ore. But here, in the belly of the earth, all he could hear was his own breath and the faint hum of something that did not belong.
A promise.
A warning.
A door that was not meant to stay closed forever.
Kael closed his eyes. His mother's voice echoed faintly in memory: You must decide what kind of world you will shape, Kael.
And in the quiet, for the first time, he wondered if the world beneath would one day shape him instead.