Chapter 4: The Blacksmith's Rage
The whisper was an ice pick in Kael's ear, curling like smoke and threading cold fire down his spine. "Kael…"
The name was barely more than an ancient, silken breath—yet it struck him like physical thunder. The Rift's violet glow pulsed brighter, its edges fracturing like cheap, brittle glass under pressure. The Shattered Crown groaned beneath their feet, its ancient stones echoing a deep, guttural tremor that rose, not from an earthquake, but from the Vault below.
Kael's hand tightened around the obsidian shard, its glacial bite the only thing anchoring him to the swirling reality. The runes on its surface flickered erratically, buzzing with a nervous energy, reacting to the conscious malevolence stirring below.
Toren turned sharply, his face set in a grim mask, the memory of his own near-loss clearly driving him. He quickly herded Lirien and Jessa toward the forge's doorway with protective urgency.
"We need to move," Toren barked, his voice low and edged with raw steel. His eyes, usually calm and measured, were now shimmered with tension. "Whatever's down there, it's not waiting for a bloody invitation. If it can talk now, it can walk soon."
Mara's gnarled hand clamped down hard on Kael's arm, her cane stabbing into the cracked earth beside them. She leaned on it as if trying to physically hold back the very weight of the impending collapse. Her knuckles were white.
"He's right," she said, her voice tight, strained. "The Vault is stirring. It knows you're the one cutting the tether. Every second of hesitation gives it time to organize its defense."
Kael nodded grimly. His left shoulder flared in pain—Jessa's dream had left a very real, jagged cut beneath his tattered cloak. Warm blood wept from the wound, a constant reminder that the lines between a physical life and psychic warfare were rapidly thinning.
"How do we even find this legendary death-hole?" he asked, his eyes scanning the fractured plaza, looking for a sign that wasn't covered in fifty feet of rubble. "Are we supposed to dig?"
"There's an old passage." Mara pointed, her finger trembling as she gestured toward the southern edge of the ruins, beyond the crumbling steps of the plaza. "Beneath the Weaver statue—or what sad remains of it are left. It was sealed by the Weavers themselves. But the shard should unlock it. If it still remembers how, after all the recent excitement."
Before Kael could respond with an appropriately sardonic comment about unreliable ancient technology, Toren grunted sharply and stumbled violently to his knees. His broad frame shook, both hands instantly clutching his head as if trying to wrench something agonizing out of his skull. His breath came in ragged, desperate gasps.
"Toren?" Lirien cried, yanking at his arm, her small voice sharp with fresh fear.
But Toren didn't respond. His eyes rolled back—white, empty—and Kael's heart lurched sickeningly.
"Not again," Kael muttered, the weariness overriding the fear. Seriously? We just saved two. Can we get a fifteen-minute coffee break? He dropped beside his friend, pressing a steadying hand against Toren's shoulder. The shard in his other hand flared violently, its runes a panicked, stuttering strobe light. "Toren! Stay with me, damn it! Not today!"
Toren's lips moved, and what came out was not his voice. It was deeper, hollow, and distorted—like someone else speaking through a broken drum, slow and cruel.
"Fire… blood… they're coming…"
Mara's expression darkened instantly as she knelt beside them, her cane forgotten.
"No," she whispered, terror tightening her voice. "It's pulling him back again. But it's stronger now—whatever dream he's caught in, it's no longer just memory. It's feeding. It's hunting you inside his deepest pain."
Kael's fists clenched, the adrenaline returning with brutal clarity. "Then I'm going in again." His voice was flat, hard as steel. This was officially his job now.
He reached for Toren's chest with the shard, but Mara's hand shot out with surprising speed and caught his wrist.
"Wait," she hissed. Her eyes bored into his, intense and unyielding. "This isn't like the others. His dream—it's deeper, older. It's tied to something primal. Ashen Ridge. You'll need more than courage this time. You'll need an anchor."
Kael wrenched his hand free, jaw tight with impatience and frustration. "I don't have time for your ancient, cryptic riddles, Mara! He's dying right here!"
She hesitated—just a breath—and then, with a sound of deep resignation, reached beneath her shawl. She pulled forth a small, cloudy glass vial. Inside, thick black liquid swirled slowly, flecked with shimmering gold dust. The glow it gave off was entirely wrong—neither holy nor infernal, but something ancient, measured, and cold.
"Drink this," she commanded, her voice lowered, almost reverent. "It'll anchor you. Keep the dream from swallowing you whole. But know this—it comes from my past."
Kael froze, the tiny, opaque vial heavy in his palm. "Your past?" he echoed, suspicion instantly knitting his brow. "And what precisely am I drinking? Distilled malice? What aren't you telling me about your hobbies, Mara?"
"There's no time for that," she snapped back, her voice raw with urgency. "Just trust me—or lose him forever to the fire."
Toren's trembling became violent. A massive, primal roar burst from his chest, pained and corrupted. Shadows writhed faintly beneath his skin.
Kael cursed under his breath. He uncorked the vial, deciding that the certainty of being poisoned was a preferable risk to the certainty of failure. He threw the liquid back. It burned like molten iron, a searing path down his throat, tasting of earth and forgotten power. He gagged—but then, miraculously, the world cleared. His mind felt like a perfectly still pool. His heartbeat stabilized, his limbs no longer felt like they floated in fog. The shard's erratic glow synced with his pulse, creating a strange, steady, measured rhythm.
He pressed it to Toren's chest—and the world shattered.
Heat hit Kael like a battering ram. He staggered as he landed on a battlefield scorched utterly black by flame. Ash swirled in the air, stinging his eyes and clinging to his damp face. Sulfur choked his lungs. Rivers of molten lava snaked through the blackened stone like agonizing, bright orange scars. The sky above was no sky at all—just a churning, black-red mass of smoke and fire.
This was no soft dream.
This was war.
Weapons littered the ground—some snapped in half, others melted into slag. Skeletal remains clung to shattered shields, locked forever in their death throes. The air shimmered with unbearable heat, but beneath it all, Kael sensed the same deep, cold malice that clung to the rift outside.
A figure stood atop a mound of black rubble.
Toren.
But not the man Kael knew.
The blacksmith was clad in jagged, black armor that pulsed with a malevolent red light. His hammer was enormous—twice its normal, massive size—and molten cracks ran along its length. His eyes blazed with fury. Not fear. Not confusion. Rage. Pure, undiluted, all-consuming rage.
And he wasn't alone.
Shadow Soldiers circled him, humanoid in form but utterly faceless, their crude, black weapons dripping molten steel. Their movements were coordinated, synchronized like an army—yet entirely alien, driven by a single, dark will.
"Toren!" Kael called out, taking a cautious step forward.
A Shadow Soldier lunged from his flank, silent and swift. Kael ducked, but the razor-sharp blade grazed his left arm—a searing, acidic pain flared across his skin, a wound that immediately wept blood. He twisted and retaliated, the shard flashing. A thread of white light lashed out, cleaving the creature into ash.
"It's me—Kael! Snap out of it, you idiot!"
Toren's head turned slowly, his eyes glowing brighter, consuming his face. His roar shook the ground, scattering ash.
"TRAITOR!" he thundered, the word vibrating with catastrophic pain.
The massive hammer swung, not at Kael, but at the ground. A blast of heat and kinetic force slammed into Kael's chest, flinging him backward. He crashed against the blackened stone, the air ripped from his lungs. Pain flared across his ribs—the injury from the last chapter's wall slam was now violently aggravated. The vial's power kept his mind perfectly steady, but the consuming fury radiating from Toren was a storm threatening to rip the dream—and Kael's consciousness—to shreds.
Kael staggered up, narrowly dodging another hammer strike that left a crater in the ground, causing lava to bubble up like blood from a massive wound.
"Ashen Ridge," Kael muttered to himself, finally placing the location. "This is it, isn't it? This… this was the battle where he was abandoned. Great. Now I'm the villain in his trauma fantasy."
Toren charged, fueled by years of repressed guilt and pain.
"You left us!" he roared. "The ridge fell—and you ran! You ran, Kael, you ran!"
Kael dodged again, vaulting desperately over a half-buried anvil scorched black by fire. His mind raced. This wasn't a puzzle lock; it was a corrupting mirror. The curse was strong because it was feeding off real pain. That made the memory real, but it also meant the memory had an emotional anchor that was also real.
"I didn't leave you!" Kael screamed, vaulting over the anvil and slashing at another Shadow Soldier that was flanking him. "This isn't real, Toren! That rage isn't yours! You're not alone!"
He thrust the shard forward, light whipping out to ensnare Toren's arm. The strike slowed the blacksmith—hesitated him. For a split heartbeat, Kael saw a flicker of doubt, of fear, in the blacksmith's glowing eyes.
Then—a final, violent charge.
Kael ducked and rolled, the hammer barely missing his head.
"Lirien's waiting for you," Kael panted, dodging to the side. "She's here—alive. You think I'd be here, pulling you from hell, if I had left you behind?"
Toren hesitated. Just a fraction.
"Lirien…?"
The name rippled through the dream like a dropped stone in water. The Shadow Soldiers froze. Their movements stuttered, the corruption momentarily defeated by genuine love.
Kael didn't waste the moment. He sprinted back to the half-buried anvil and drove the obsidian shard deep into its scorched surface.
The runes carved into the metal sparked—ancient Weaver marks. Light burst forth, wrapping Toren's limbs, his hammer, his chest. Threads of silver and white—the threads of truth and memory—bound him in place, not with chains, but with the painful, necessary realization of what was real.
"You're not in Ashen Ridge," Kael said through clenched teeth, pouring every ounce of the vial's anchoring will into the shard. "You're in the Shattered Crown. With us. With her. You didn't run."
Toren screamed, a sound of pure agony as the corrupted memory was violently expelled. The dream cracked wide open.
The Shadow Soldiers lunged one final time, dissolving into pure malice. Kael twisted the shard—and the anvil exploded in pure white fire, cleansing the battlefield, dissolving the darkness and the lingering evil.
The dream shattered.
Kael gasped awake, sweat dripping from his brow, his body aching violently. The cold, dusty stone of the plaza greeted him. Toren lay beside him, coughing violently, chest heaving with renewed, frantic breathing.
"Kael…" His voice was hoarse, cracked, filled with the raw emotion of the memory. "What the hells was that?"
Kael exhaled, relief soaking through him like sudden, cold rain. He grabbed Toren's shoulder, steadying the massive man. "You're back."
Toren blinked, dazed. "Ashen Ridge. I saw it again… I felt the fire. The screams. I thought—" He swallowed hard, his eyes dark with residual fear. "I thought you left me there to die."
"It wasn't me, Toren," Kael said softly, his gaze steady. "It's the curse. It found the deepest cut and twisted it into a weapon."
Lirien rushed forward, tears streaming down her face, and flung her small arms around Toren, sobbing into his chest.
"You were gone again…"
"I'm here, lass," he murmured, wrapping a massive, protective arm around her. But his eyes, still filled with the lingering horror of Ashen Ridge, locked onto Kael. "You pulled me back, son. Twice."
Kael stood, groaning as every bruise and injury flared across his body. The shard in his hand dimmed—it was heavier now, cold and burdened by the power it had expended.
Mara approached, her face weary and grim, her eyes on the trembling Toren. "He's right," she said. "The shadow—it's learning. It's feeding off old wounds now, memories, not just fear. And Toren won't be the last it tries to consume."
Kael turned to her, his voice hard, pushing past the pain. "That vial. What was it, Mara?"
She hesitated, her gaze dropping to the cracked stone. Then, quietly, she spoke, giving away only the bare minimum. "A remnant of who I once was. Before the Sundering. I served something greater. Something I thought was sealed. Forgotten."
Kael stepped closer, demanding the final link. "The shadow? The Vault Guardian? Is that what you served?"
She didn't answer. She didn't need to.
Toren's grip tightened around Lirien, his eyes shifting from Mara to Kael, the betrayal of the memory still fresh. "You knew this thing?"
"I didn't know it would wake!" Mara snapped, a raw, ancient emotion slipping through her calm façade. "The Rift changed everything! It's bleeding through, connecting to its original masters!"
The ground trembled violently, silencing them all. The Rift pulsed again, darker, more solid than before.
And then—the voice returned. Silken. Ancient. A cold, hungry whisper from a mouth that had never breathed air. It wrapped around Kael like a shroud.
"Kael…"
He froze. The shard burned ice-cold in his palm.
Mara grabbed his arm, her grip iron-hard despite her age. "The Vault. Now. Before it finds you first and finishes what it started."