JOIN MY PATREON (INFO IN AUTHER NOTES)
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The bonfires of the village had burned down to embers, casting a dull, pulsating glow that did little to fight the oppressive darkness of the Barrowlands. The heat had faded, but the smell remained—a cloying, metallic stench of burnt bone, ozone, and the unnatural, copper tang of ancient death.
There was no sleep for the Vanguard.
Adrenaline, once the fuel of their victory, had turned into a jittery, cold exhaustion. Men sat on upturned crates or leaned against the stone walls of the sept, sharpening their obsidian spear tips with whetstones, their eyes darting toward the shadows every time a log popped in the fire. They had won the skirmish, but the war sat heavy on the horizon, glowing with a bruised purple light to the south.
Torrhen Stark stood at the northern edge of the perimeter.
He was looking at the ground.
The frost had returned with a vengeance, coating the mud in a brittle shell of white. But the tracks he was studying broke through the frost. They were distinct, a chaotic scrawl written in the earth by things that did not walk like men.
There were the drag marks of bony feet that didn't lift high enough to clear the ground. There were the scuffs of rusted weapons trailing in the dirt. And there was something else.
"Slime," Torrhen whispered, his breath misting.
A trail of black, necrotic fluid connected the footprints. It looked like oil, but it smelled like a gangrenous wound.
"It doesn't freeze," Braddon rumbled, crouching beside his brother.
The slime hissed faintly against the metal. It bubbled, resisting the temperature of the freezing night.
Torrhen diagnosed, his eyes narrowing. "It is the physical residue of the magic that drives them. It rejects the natural order. It rejects the cold of the winter just as it rejects the heat of life."
Braddon rubbed the slime between his armored fingers. it evaporated into a noxious grey smoke.
"They retreat," Braddon stated, looking at the direction of the tracks. "They don't scatter. They don't wander into the hills to hide. They move with purpose."
"They are soldiers," Torrhen said. "Or at least, they were. They remember formation. They remember home."
He looked west, following the line of the tracks into the dark, rolling hills. The landscape there was rugged, a series of jagged ridges that looked like the spine of a buried dragon.
"A barrow nearby. A rally point."Torrhen said.
Hallis walked up to them. He looked exhausted, a bandage wrapped around his forehead where a stone had struck him, but his sword was drawn.
"My Prince," Hallis said softly. "The men are ready to ride for Barrowton at first light. If we leave now, we can be at the Lord Dustin's walls by midday."
Torrhen stood up, wiping his hands on his leathers. He looked at Hallis, then back at the dark hills.
"If we ride for Barrowton now," Torrhen said, his voice flat, "we leave an active nest at our backs. We leave a flank exposed."
"It was a raiding party, my Prince," Hallis argued gently. "We shattered them. Surely the rest have fled?"
"The dead do not flee" Torrhen corrected. "They regroup. They repair. And they recruit."
He pointed to the black tracks.
"That trail leads to a source. A barrow that has been cracked open. If we march south to Barrowton, whatever is inside will pour out behind us. It will cut our supply lines. It will kill the refugees trailing in our wake. It will hit us from the rear while we are fighting the siege."
"We cannot fight a war on two fronts," Torrhen said. "Not with three hundred men."
"So we hunt them?" Hallis asked, looking at the foreboding hills. "In the dark?"
"We hunt them," Torrhen confirmed. "We burn the nest."
—--------------------------------
The Vanguard moved out within the hour.
They left the horses behind in the village, guarded by fifty men. The terrain ahead was too rough, the risk of a broken leg in a hole too high. This would be an infantry action.
Two hundred and fifty men marched into the dark. They carried torches, but Torrhen ordered them kept low and shielded, using them only to check footing. They navigated by the pale light of the stars and the uncanny guidance of the Stark brothers.
The tracking was not difficult. The trail of the wights was a scar on the land. Where they had walked, the soil was withered and black, the life sucked out of the plants by their passing.
Braddon took point.
The transformation had connected him to the earth in a way even Torrhen didn't fully understand.
He stopped frequently, tilting his heavy, crested helm to the side.
"What is it?" Torrhen asked at one such pause, signaling the column to halt.
"Vibrations," Braddon murmured, his voice a low rumble inside the helmet. "Deep. Rhythmic. Like a drum beating in a cellar."
"They are pacing," Torrhen realized.
They pushed on. The wind grew louder, howling through the rocky outcrops. The temperature dropped further, turning the breath of the men into thick plumes of fog.
Every mile they marched, the sense of dread deepened. It wasn't just fear of the enemy; it was a biological revulsion. The air tasted stale, as if they were walking into a room that had been sealed for centuries.
"My Prince," hallis whispered, walking beside Torrhen. "The men... they feel it. The cold. It's not natural."
"It's the aura of the Barrow," Torrhen explained, keeping his eyes forward.
—-------------------------------------------------
After two hours of marching, they crested a ridge and saw it.
It sat in a bowl-shaped depression between two rocky spurs. It was a barrow, but it was unlike any of the smooth, grass-covered mounds they had passed on the road.
The earth covering the stone structure had been blasted away, leaving the grey granite ribs of the tomb exposed to the sky like a picked carcass. The turf was torn up in great concentric rings, thrown outward as if by a subterranean explosion.
But it was the entrance that stopped the breath in Torrhen's throat.
The lintel stone—a block of granite weighing easily ten tons—was cracked down the middle. The massive sealing door, the stone meant to keep the dead in and the living out, hadn't been levered open by thieves. It hadn't been eroded by time.
It had been punched out.
The seal lay twenty feet from the entrance, face down in the dirt, dragging a furrow of earth behind it.
"Gods," Hallis breathed. "What kind of leverage..."
"No leverage," Braddon interrupted. He walked down the slope, his boots sliding on the loose scree. He approached the displaced stone.
"Impact," Braddon called back. "From the inside. Something hit this. Something big."
Torrhen walked down to join him. He looked at the shattered doorway. It was a black mouth, jagged and broken. A faint, necrotic mist curled from the opening, pooling around their ankles.
"We found the nest," Torrhen said.
"It was opened from the inside," Hallis said, joining them, his sword drawn.
He looked at the cracks in the stone frame.
"Something woke up in there," Torrhen deduced. "Something strong enough to ignore the wards and smash the door down. And once the door was open..."
"The rest followed," Braddon finished.
Torrhen looked at the tracks. The footprints of the smaller wights—the ones they had fought in the village—led back into the darkness.
He turned to look at the Vanguard. The two hundred and fifty men stood on the ridge, silhouetted against the stars. They were looking down at the broken tomb with palpable fear. It looked like a gateway to hell.
He looked at the size of the opening. It was large—large enough for Braddon—but narrow enough that only three men could walk abreast.
"We don't send everyone," Torrhen decided. "We form a cork."
He turned to the men on the ridge.
"First Hundred!" Torrhen commanded. "With me! Rest, form a perimeter! Shield wall at the entrance. If anything comes out that isn't us, you kill it."
—-------------------------------------------
They descended the slope, their faces grim masks of determination. They checked their straps, tightened their grips.
Torrhen stood at the entrance. The smell was overpowering now—dry rot, copper, and something musky, like an animal den.
Braddon stepped up beside him. The Guardian blocked out the stars.
"I take point," Braddon said.
"I'm right behind you," Torrhen said.
"Ready?" Torrhen asked the men behind him.
A hundred spears thumped against a hundred shields. THUD.
"Forward," Torrhen commanded.
The transition was instant. The biting wind of the Barrowlands vanished, replaced by a stillness so profound it felt heavy. The temperature stabilized at a deep, dry chill.
Torrhen raised his right hand and willed the Mark to glow.
The white brand on his palm flared up, casting a stark, monochromatic light. It illuminated the tunnel ahead.
It was a smooth bore, cut through the earth and lined with stones. The craftsmanship was First Man, rough but eternal. The walls were covered in niches, but these upper niches were empty.
"They've moved down," Braddon whispered, his voice echoing strangely in the stone tube. "To the main hall."
They marched. The sound of their boots was deafening. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
The tunnel sloped downward at a steep angle. The air grew thicker, harder to breathe.
After fifty yards, the tunnel opened up.
Torrhen raised his hand higher. The light spilled out into a vast chamber.
It was an ossuary of immense proportions. The ceiling was lost in the gloom, supported by natural pillars of rock that had been carved into the shapes of weeping faces. The floor was a grid of stone sarcophagi, arranged like pews in a cathedral of death.
And it was occupied.
Click.
The sound came from the shadows.
Scritch. Scratch.
Then, a low, rhythmic thumping.
BOOM... BOOM...
Braddon stopped. The hundred men behind him froze.
—---------------------------------------
From the deepest recesses of the hall, the shadows detached themselves from the stone.
Three dozen wights surged into the light. These were not the fresh corpses of the recent dead, nor were they the bronze-clad warriors of the Age of Heroes. These were the dregs of the barrow—the thralls, the servants, the damaged skeletons that had been left behind when the main host marched. They were missing arms, missing jaws, their bones yellowed and brittle.
But the blue fire in their eyes burned with the same hateful intensity.
They threw themselves with a chaotic, clattering fury.
"Shields!" a sergeant roared, his voice cracking in the confined space.
The Vanguard reacted with the muscle memory. The front rank dropped to one knee, slamming their heavy oak shields onto the stone floor. The second rank stepped in, locking their shields over the heads of the first. It was a wall of wood and iron, bristling with the deadly black points of dragonglass.
The wights hit the wall like a handful of gravel thrown against a door. They clawed, they bit, they swung broken femurs and rusted knives.
The dragonglass spears darted out like viper tongues.
Snap. Crumble. Dust.
The efficiency of the obsidian was terrifying. A spear tip grazed a tibia, and the leg disintegrated. A thrust to the ribcage caused the entire spine to unspool into powder. The wights fell apart as the obsidian severed the necromantic binding that held them together. Piles of dust began to accumulate at the base of the shields.
"Hold the line!" the sergeant shouted. "Controlled thrusts! Don't overextend!"
It was going well. Too well. The enemy was frail, their attacks uncoordinated. The men were beginning to relax, their fear replaced by the grim satisfaction of a slaughter.
Then, the floor shook.
BOOM.
Dust rained down from the ceiling, coating the shoulders of the men in grey powder. Stalactites vibrated, singing a high, dangerous note.
The soldiers glanced up, their eyes wide.
A heavy, wet sound. Footsteps. But they were massive. They were rhythmic, slow, and heavy enough to vibrate the marrow in the bones of the living.
The wights stopped attacking. As if commanded by a silent signal, the remaining skeletons scrambled back, retreating into the shadows, clearing a path down the center of the great hall.
"They're making way," Braddon realized. "Something is coming."
From the deepest shadow at the far end of the hall, a shape emerged.
At first, it was just a silhouette blocking out the faint bioluminescence of the moss on the walls. Then, as it stepped into the radius of Torrhen's light, the horror was revealed.
It was humanoid, but monstrous. It stood nine feet tall, its head scraping the tips of the hanging stalactites. It was clad in rotten furs that hung in tatters, and rusted chains were wrapped around its forearms like jewelry. Its flesh was leathery and desiccated, grey as old parchment, pulled tight over bones as thick as tree trunks.
A Giant.
Torrhen had seen the Giant in the ice beneath the Weirwood, but that had been a peaceful sleeper. This was a nightmare.
Its eyes burned with the hateful blue stars, glowing brighter than any wight they had seen. Half its face was missing, the flesh torn away to reveal the massive, grinning skull beneath. The jaw hung slack, held on by a single tendon.
Braddon realized, his voice flat. "That's how the seal was opened."
The Giant Wight stopped ten paces from the shield wall. It looked down at the men. To the Giant, the shield wall was nothing more than a toy fence.
It opened its mouth.
The Giant Wight roared , screech that slammed into the minds of the men. It wasn't a noise; it was a pressure wave of pure hate. Men clutched their ears, dropping their spears. The torches flickered and dimmed.
It charged.
The hallway was wide, but for a creature of this size, it was a corridor. The Giant couldn't maneuver, but it didn't need to. It lowered its shoulder, tucking its chin, and became a battering ram of dead meat and petrified bone.
"Brace!" Torrhen shouted, bracing his own hand against the back of the sergeant. "Link arms!"
The Giant hit the shield wall.
CRUNCH.
The sound was sickening. It was the sound of oak exploding.
Men screamed. The sheer mass of the creature—thousands of pounds of dead weight moving at speed—shattered the shield wall like kindling. The front rank didn't just fall; they were flattened.
Three soldiers were thrown backward, flying through the air like ragdolls to smash against the stone walls of the tunnel. Their chests were crushed, their armor caved in. They were dead before they hit the ground.
The Giant didn't stop. It reached out with a hand the size of a shovel. It grabbed a fourth man by the torso.
The Giant squeezed.
The sound of breastplate crumpling was audible over the screams. The Giant tossed the body aside .
The Vanguard broke. The formation disintegrated into chaos.
"Back!" Torrhen ordered, waving his glowing hand frantically. "Give it room or it will crush you all! Fall back to the tunnel mouth!"
The soldiers scrambled back, terrified. Their discipline had held against the skeletons, but this was a force of nature. They couldn't get close enough to stab without being swatted aside like flies.
The Giant Wight stomped forward, blocking the entire passage. It raised a fist like a boulder, preparing to smash the retreating sergeant into paste.
"Braddon!" Torrhen yelled.
"I have him," Braddon replied.
Braddon stepped out of the formation.
He looked small compared to the Giant, but massive compared to the men. Seven feet of grey-skinned, armored fury walking toward nine feet of ancient death.
The Giant Wight paused. It looked at the grey-skinned figure standing in its path.
The Giant roared again, a silent challenge, and swung.
It was a massive, backhand blow. The Giant's arm, heavy with dead muscle and wrapped in iron chains, swept through the air. It was a blow meant to decapitate a horse, a blow that would have knocked a stone pillar over.
Braddon didn't dodge. He didn't try to duck under it.
He planted his feet. He raised his left arm, encased in the inch-thick steel plate of the Iron Skin, and braced it against his head.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening. The vibration was so intense that dust shook loose from the ceiling again.
Braddon slid back two feet. His steel boots carved deep white grooves into the stone floor, sparks flying from his heels.
But he didn't fall.
The armor held. The rivets groaned, the steel plate dented slightly, but it did not buckle.
Braddon lowered his arm. He looked up at the Giant.
"My turn," Braddon growled.
He reached over his shoulder and unslung the Weirwood maul.
He swung.
He didn't aim for the head; the Giant was too tall. He aimed for the foundation.
CRACK.
The heavy steel head of the maul slammed into the Giant's right knee.
The sound was like a tree branch snapping in a storm. The Giant's leg buckled sideways at an unnatural angle. The kneecap pulverized instantly.
The Giant Wight stumbled, losing its balance. It howled silently, It lashed out with its other hand, a desperate grab for stability.
Its hand closed around Braddon.
The Giant grabbed Braddon by the gorget and the shoulder, its fingers wrapping around his upper body.
With a heave of necrotic strength, the Giant lifted Braddon into the air.
Braddon's feet left the ground. He was dangled five feet in the air, face-to-face with the rotting visage of the monster. The Giant squeezed, trying to crush the metal man.
The Iron groaned. The leather straps creaked, stretched to their breaking point.
Braddon dropped his maul. It clattered to the floor.
He grabbed the Giant's wrists with his own massive hands.
It was a contest of raw power—the dead strength of the ancient world against the alchemical strength of the new. The Giant pushed; Braddon pushed back. The muscles in Braddon's neck bulged, turning dark grey with strain.
"Torrhen!" Braddon grunted, his voice tight with exertion. "Now! I can't hold him forever!"
Torrhen was already moving.
He sprinted forward from the back of the line.
He ran towards the wall.
Moving with the unnatural grace of a shadowcat. He leaped, planting a foot on the lowest stone burial shelf. He vaulted upward, finding a handhold on a carving, and propelled himself into the air.
He was airborne for a heartbeat, soaring over the grappling monsters.
He landed on the Giant's shoulders, right behind its massive, matted head.
The cold emanating from Torrhen was intense. The Giant thrashed, sensing the parasite on its back. It tried to let go of Braddon to reach behind its head, but Braddon roared and clamped his hands down, pinning the Giant's arms.
"Hold him!" Torrhen shouted.
Torrhen placed both bare hands on the Giant's neck, right at the base of the skull, where the spine met the brain.
"SLEEP."
The command was spoken in the Old Tongue, guttural and harsh.
He didn't just freeze. He pushed his magic deep.
He sent a spike of absolute cold directly into the spine.
The reaction was instant.
The moisture in the Giant's neck flash-froze. The grey flesh turned white, then translucent blue. The massive vertebrae, tough as granite, became brittle as glass in a fraction of a second.
The frost spread rapidly, creeping up the back of the skull and down between the shoulder blades.
"Braddon! Drop him!" Torrhen shouted, jumping clear.
He leaped from the Giant's back, rolling as he hit the stone floor.
Braddon let go.
He didn't just release the Giant; he slammed his armored boot into the creature's chest.
The Giant fell backward.
It was a statue of meat and ice toppling over.
As its head hit the stone floor, the frozen neck couldn't take the force.
SHATTER.
The sound was like a chandelier dropping.
The head snapped off cleanly at the neck. it shattered into a thousand frozen shards of bone and brain matter, scattering across the floor.
The blue lights in the eyes winked out instantly.
—--------------------------
Silence returned to the barrow,The air in the vast ossuary was thick with dust—pulverized bone, ancient lime, and the glittering frost that still hung suspended in the atmosphere from Torrhen's magic. The only sounds were the ragged, heaving breaths of the Men and the settling of the debris.
Click... clatter.
A piece of the Giant's frozen skull fell to the floor, the sound echoing like a dropped marble in a canyon.
"Clear the rest!" Hallis shouted, his voice cracking. He wiped a smear of black gore from his cheek, his eyes wild. "Don't let them regroup! Sweep the corners!"
The spell of shock broke. The Vanguard remembered they were soldiers.
With the Giant dead—its massive, corpse acting as a grisly barricade in the center of the hall—the remaining wights lost their terrifying momentum. They were no longer a horde; they were scattered vermin.
The cleanup was methodical and brutal.
A wight, missing an arm, tried to crawl behind a pillar. A soldier pinned it with a boot and thrust his spear downward. Snap. The blue light died, and the bones collapsed into a heap of dust.
Another wight lunged from a niche, jaws snapping. Two spearmen caught it on their points simultaneously. Crumble. It fell apart in mid-air, raining down as harmless gravel.
Torrhen Stark did not join the cleanup.
He stood for a moment, staring at the frozen, headless mountain of the Giant. He could feel the residual heat of the magic fading from his blood, leaving him feeling hollowed out and cold. His hand, the Marked one, throbbed with a dull ache.
He walked to the back of the chamber, his boots crunching on the layer of frost and bone meal. The light from his hand cast long, dancing shadows against the back wall.
There, in the deepest recess of the tomb, There was an alcove carved into the living rock, set apart from the burial shelves. It was designed not for a body, but for an altar. In the center of the alcove stood a pedestal of rough-hewn granite, waist-high and sturdy.
On the pedestal lay the remains of a monolith.
It had once been a single, imposing slab of black basalt, volcanic and heavy, dragged here from some distant fire-mountain. It was covered in the runes of the First Men, power-infused glyphs of binding, of protection, of eternal vigilance.
Torrhen knew these runes. He had seen them in his dreams, etched into the roots of the world. They were the words of the Old Gods.
But the Words had been broken.
The monolith had been smashed.
It wasn't a clean break. A massive fist mark was indented in the center of the stone, pulverizing the basalt into gravel. The impact had been so violent that the top half of the slab had been blasted backward against the wall, shattering into a dozen pieces.
Torrhen approached it reverently. He reached out and touched a fragment of the black stone. It felt cold, inert. The magic that had once hummed inside it was gone, leaked out like water from a cracked cup.
Heavy footsteps approached from behind.
Braddon Stark stepped up beside him. The Guardian was a mess of scratches and dents, his armor coated in white dust, looking like a gargoyle that had walked through a flour mill.
"The Jailer," Braddon rumbled, looking at the broken stone.
Torrhen nodded, his eyes tracing the fractured runes. "This stone anchored the spirits. The Ghosts of the First Men—they were bound to this."
He picked up a shard of basalt.
"It acted as a focal point," Torrhen explained, his voice quiet in the gloom. "A magical tether. As long as this stone stood, the spirits of the warrior were forced to remain here, guarding the sleep of their kings."
"The Giant," Braddon said, looking back at the headless corpse.
"The magic woke the Giant first," Torrhen deduced. He dropped the shard. "When the Ripple hit this place... when the energy surged through the earth... the Giant absorbed the most. It was the strongest thing in here. "
"It woke up in a rage," Torrhen continued. "It thrashed. It sought a way out. But the Ghosts... the spectral guards... they tried to stop it. They tried to hold it back."
He pointed to the fist mark in the center of the pedestal.
"So it destroyed their anchor. It smashed the monolith."
"And when the stone broke," Braddon finished, the realization settling heavily on him, "the Ghosts vanished. The tether was cut. There was no one left to stop the wights."
"Exactly," Torrhen said. "The prisoners killed the warden."
Torrhen turned and looked back toward the entrance of the hall.
From this vantage point, the tragedy of the creature became clear. He measured the size of the distant tunnel mouth against the bulk of the headless Giant lying in the center of the room.
"It broke the seal," Torrhen said, pointing to the distant square of starlight at the top of the tunnel. "It shoved the stone out with brute strength. It dragged itself up that slope, clawing at the earth."
He paused, visualizing the scene.
"But look at the shoulders," Torrhen said. "Look at the width of the ribcage. It was too broad. The tunnel was built for men."
"It got stuck," Braddon said.
"It opened the door," Torrhen whispered, "but it couldn't fit through the opening it made."
"So it sent the little ones out to feed," Braddon said, his voice filled with a strange mixture of disgust and pity.
He looked at his brother. He looked at the dents in Braddon's breastplate, the deep gouges in the steel where the Giant's fingers had tried to crush the life out of him.
"We were lucky," Torrhen admitted, a shiver running down his spine.
He turned to Hallis, who was walking toward them. The captain looked aged. His face was grey with dust, and his sword arm hung limp at his side, exhausted.
"Report," Torrhen commanded.
"The hall is clear, my Prince," Hallis said, his voice raspy. "We checked every niche. Nothing moves."
"Casualties?"
Hallis swallowed hard. "Four dead"
Torrhen closed his eyes for a second. Four men. Four veterans who had survived the long winter, only to be crushed in a hole in the ground by a nightmare from the Age of Heroes.
"Where are they?"
"We laid them by the entrance," Hallis said. "Shall we... shall we prepare them for transport? To take them home?"
Torrhen looked at the damp, magical air of the tomb. He looked at the black slime coating the floor. He felt the lingering presence of the necromancy, even with the Giant dead.
"No," Torrhen said softly. "We cannot take them. If we take them back... they might not stay dead."
Hallis paled. "You mean..."
"This is not a clean war, Hallis. We do not get to bring our dead home." Torrhen said harshly.
"Burn the bodies," Torrhen ordered, his voice echoing in the silent hall. "Ours and theirs. Gather the wood from the old coffins. Pile it in the center. Put our men on top, with their swords in their hands. Burn it all."
"And the Giant?" Hallis asked, looking at the mountain of bone.
"Especially the Giant," Torrhen said. "I want nothing left but ash."
The men set to work. It was a grim, silent labor. They smashed the ancient wooden coffins to create a pyre. They dragged the shattered bones of the wights onto the heap.
Then, with gentle reverence, they lifted their four fallen comrades. They placed them high on the pyre, resting on the chest of the headless Giant, as if conquering the monster in death. They placed their swords in their cold hands and crossed them over their chests.
The fire roared up, hungry and bright. The orange light chased the shadows back into the niches. The smell of burning rot and ozone filled the chamber, choking and thick.
Torrhen watched the flames lick at the faces of his dead men. He whispered a silent prayer to the Old Gods, asking them to accept these souls before the cold could claim them.
"Let's go," Torrhen said, turning his back on the fire.
They marched out of the ossuary, up the steep stone tunnel. The air grew fresher as they climbed, the smell of the burning tomb fading behind them.
They emerged into the night. The stars were bright and cold. The wind of the Barrowlands hit them, biting and clean.
The soldiers waiting at the perimeter, their faces white with anxiety. When they saw the Prince emerge, a ripple of relief went through the ranks.
"Is it done?" asked, Kyle stepping forward.
"The nest is burned," Torrhen said. "But we are not finished."
He pointed to the entrance.
"Seal it," Torrhen commanded. "Permanently."
"We don't have the leverage to move the slab back," Kyle said, looking at the multi-ton block lying in the dirt.
"We don't need leverage," Torrhen said. He looked at Braddon.
Braddon nodded. He walked to the side of the entrance, where the earth formed a steep overhang above the lintel. He looked at the structural integrity of the archway.
"The keystone is cracked," Braddon observed.
He gripped his weirwood maul. He didn't swing at the door. He swung at the supporting stones of the entrance arch.
BOOM. BOOM.
The impact shook the hill. Braddon struck with the precision of a master builder dismantling a wall.
"Back!" Braddon shouted.
He delivered one final, thundering blow.
CRACK.
The stone arch gave way.
With a rumble that sounded like a rockslide, the hillside above the entrance collapsed. Tons of earth, rock, and turf poured down, burying the tunnel mouth completely. A cloud of dust rose into the night air.
When the dust settled, there was no door. There was only a raw scar of fresh earth on the side of the hill. The tomb was resealed, buried under the weight of the land itself.
Torrhen looked at the new mound. He thought of the fire burning deep inside, consuming the Giant and the four brave men.
"One down," Torrhen whispered, his voice lost in the wind.
He looked south, toward the horizon where the blue glow of Barrowton pulsed like a bruise on the night sky. He thought of the hundreds of other barrows they had passed. He thought of the thousands of potential giants, kings, and monsters waiting in the dark.
"Thousands to go."
----XXXX----
Please Drop some POWERSTONES.