The mountain no longer breathed like stone.
It pulsed.
A low, rhythmic tremor ran through its roots — not a quake, but a heartbeat, patient and ancient.
Kael followed the sound downward. The walls glimmered with veins of molten crystal, faint as blood seen through pale skin. Each pulse of light answered the rhythm in his chest, as though the mountain itself were listening to him.
Lyraen walked a few steps behind. Her torch burned blue, its flame steady even as the air thickened with heat. Shadows bent toward her, drawn by something older than light.
"Do you feel it?" she asked softly.
Kael didn't answer. His hand was pressed to the stone. Beneath it, something vast stirred — not alive, not dead, but remembering.
They reached a hollow chamber carved into the bones of the world. The forge lay at its center: a vast circle of metal sunk into the rock, runes etched along its rim in patterns that hurt the eyes if studied too long.
Above it, suspended in the air, floated a single ember.
No smoke, no ash. Just a spark, red as dawn, steady as a star.
Lyraen's voice trembled. "That's impossible. The Heart of Creation was extinguished before the First Age ended."
Kael stepped closer. "Then what's keeping it alive?"
He reached out. The ember brightened, responding — not to touch, but to recognition.
Symbols awoke on the ground around him, igniting one by one in concentric circles.
"He remembers us," whispered the forge.
Or maybe it was the wind, or the mountain itself — it didn't matter. The voice was everywhere.
The stone rippled like water. Light burst through the cracks, turning air into liquid gold.
Kael fell to one knee, gripping his chest as the Seed inside him shuddered awake.
He saw — for an instant — worlds forming in the dark: galaxies like petals unfurling, each one orbiting the ember at the center of all things.
Lyraen's shadow fractured into a dozen reflections, each one watching from a different moment in time. "Kael," she said, but her voice echoed through centuries.
He rose slowly. His eyes glowed like mirrors reflecting a starfield.
"It's not the Heart that's alive," he said. "It's me it was waiting for."
The forge answered with a sound like thunder reversed — an explosion pulled inward.
The ember expanded, swallowing the chamber in radiance.
And as the mountain roared, the voice returned — the same one the world had heard above, now speaking through every drop of molten stone:
"Then awaken, Worldseed. Let the forges burn anew."
Light consumed everything.
The world exhaled.