The mountain did not welcome the living.
Arthur could feel it in the stone. Cold, dense, older than any living thing in the Imperium. Stormgrave's underhalls were not halls at all—they were veins carved into the mountain's heart, lined with braziers that never quite chased away the chill.
Two guards marched ahead of him, their boots echoing off obsidian walls. Behind, Warden Rila walked in silence, hood drawn. The passage narrowed. The light dimmed.
Arthur did not speak. He knew the tradition. After the Trial, there were no words until the vault door opened.
A final test, some said. A ritual, said others. But Arthur knew better.
It was to remind him that this was not a reward.
It was inheritance.
The door came into view.
No wood. No metal. Just a slab of stormstone, twenty feet high and engraved with countless names and sigils—generations of knights, some known, most forgotten. At its center, the sigil of House Vaelstrom: a blade splitting a thundercloud.
Warden Rila stepped forward and placed her palm on the stone.
Nothing happened.
Then she whispered. Not in Common, but in the Old Tongue.
The stone shifted. Cracks flared with pale white light. The door groaned open.
Arthur stepped through.
---
The Vault was not what he expected.
It was not filled with swords. Not with armor. No treasures piled high or relics on display.
It was a library.
Or perhaps a chapel. Scrolls lined the walls in sealed alcoves. Statues of knights in full plate watched from above, each with no face—only mirrored steel where the face should be.
And at the far end, a single pedestal. Upon it, an iron-bound book, closed by a chain of darksteel.
Rila spoke, finally. "This is the Codex Vaelstrom. It holds our line's disciplines, oaths, techniques, and burdens."
Arthur approached. The pedestal seemed unremarkable, but the air around it was... heavier.
Not magical. Not exactly.
It was memory. Weight pressed into stone over generations.
"You are not the first to stand here," she said. "But you may be the last."
He turned toward her.
She didn't flinch. "There are stirrings beyond the frontier. Movements even your father hasn't spoken of. The old oaths are watching again. And the Codex knows it."
Arthur placed his hand on the book.
Pain lanced through his palm.
The chain uncoiled. The book opened.
And he saw—
Not words. Not ink.
But memory.
A knight bleeding in the snow, refusing to kneel before a warlock-king. A woman carving runes into her blade with her own blood. A child raising a banner alone atop a ruined keep.
And then—
A battlefield. Not of this world.
Sky split. Ground burning. Ten thousand knights locked in battle with things that should not exist. Fire that screamed. Shadows that devoured.
At the center stood a single knight. No name. No banner. But the storm answered his sword.
The vision snapped.
Arthur stumbled, breathing hard.
Rila caught him.
"The Codex remembers only those worth remembering. Now it remembers you."
She looked toward the statues. For a moment, he thought one had moved.
"Come, Arthur," she said. "Your father waits. The Imperium stirs. And war does not wait for boys to catch their breath."
He followed her into the light.
And behind them, the Vault closed once more.