`The hearth crackled low, not with hunger, but with warmth, the kind only stone could hold.

Stronric sat cross-legged on the floor, rolling a blank rune stone between his fingers. It was smooth and dense, cool despite the fire. Dovren hovered nearby, arms folded behind his back, his spectral form flickering gently in the firelight like a forgotten memory.

Between them sat a worn leather pack. Half-filled. Tools, rations, and the book.

Dovren motioned toward it with his chin. "You'll need to pack smart. These trials aren't far, but you won't be coming back between them. Not until you've finished the rune."

Stronric raised an eyebrow. "So I get no breaks?"

Dovren gave him a look.

"Aye," Stronric grunted, smirking. "Dumb question."

He placed the rune stone carefully in a small cloth pouch and added it to the pack. Then he reached for the book. It was thicker than he expected, bound in iron-cornered leather, its cover tooled with the runes for Teach and Remember. He opened the old tome and flipped through the first few pages.

Inside were diagrams that depicted not just basic runes and their line, but the complex layers of runes that combined meaning to form new combinations. He flipped a page and followed the curved strokes that spiraled around a core rune. There were annotations in old dwarven glyphs spread throughout the old book, marking key pressure points, carving order, and spiritual weight.

Dovren floated closer, eyes glowing faintly. "That book contains the framework for the three runes you'll need to escape this mountain."

Stronric looked up. "Three?"

Dovren nodded. "Stillness you've already touched, but what you have completed was just the shallow version. A whisper of the rune that holds you, now you'll learn its depth. The other two you've yet to shape Echo and Severance."

Stronric flipped to the next diagram that depicted the completed form of Echo. The lines looked jagged and precise, like the teeth of a mountain. It didn't look peaceful, instead it looked sharp and somehow responsive.

"What does it do?" Stronric gruffed.

"Echo is the rune of reply," Dovren said. "It listens. It reflects. It's used in wards, traps, and communication. But more importantly, it teaches the runesmith to understand resonance. To know the difference between silence and answer."

Stronric let that settle into his mind and he turned to the last rune. traced a finger along the outer ring of the design. "And Severance?"

Dovren's voice lowered. "That one cuts."

Stronric looked up.

"It breaks bonds, transcending all levels spiritual, magical, emotional," Dovren continued. "It's dangerous. If carved wrong, it won't just cut the rune, it'll cut those who try to form it. Unfortunately, it's the only way to sever the soul-bind that holds you here."

Stronric exhaled through his nose. "Stillness. Echo. Severance. Anchor, answer, and blade."

"Well said," Dovren murmured. "You'll need all three, balanced, to carve the counter-sigil and unlock the seal. Each rune must be earned, not drawn from memory, but shaped from experience."

Stronric snapped the book shut and tucked it into the satchel.

"So where do I start?" Stronic replied almost enthusiastically

Dovren turned and gestured toward a door, just beyond the hearthlight, that opened to some unknown place deeper into the earth. The door had remained closed since Stronic had arrived. He had assumed like his own home, the area was blocked by time and debris.

The ghost glided towards the door and replied. "There's an old tunnel, half-collapsed but passable. You'll find a rune gate at the end. I've already unlocked the first seal with my authority. You should be able to learn about Echo there. Once you have carved Echo, return here, and we will start your training on severance." He held out a small iron key. Stronric stood and took it. He turned it over in his hand, it was jagged and etched with a layered glyph and the metal pulsed faintly in his hand, warm with ancestral energy.

"Beyond the gate is a cavern," Dovren said. "A crystal hollow called Caruth-Vel. The miners who worked it said the walls spoke. The ones who listened… they changed."

Stronric slung the pack over his shoulder. "And that's where I'll find Echo?"

"No," Dovren said. "That's where you'll hear it. You'll only find it when you carve it and you'll only carve it when you understand what it means to answer."

Stronric adjusted the weight of the pack and reached for the splitting axe.

"I'm ready." Stronric said heavily.

Dovren nodded once. "Then go." The old stone door slid surprisingly quietly into the recessed opening, leaving a black wall just beyond.

Stronric turned and made for the exit, but before stepping through the threshold, he paused and looked back.

"You reckon I'll get all three?" Stronric asked.

Dovren tilted his head. "You've already got the hands, now we see if you've got the heart."

Then the dwarf stepped into the dark, alone. The world shifted into shades of grey, as his dwarven darkvision took in the narrowing hall.

Stronric ducked beneath a beam sagging with ash. The stone bore ancient chisel-marks, not clean mine lines, but the purposeful etchings of dwarves shaping halls for permanence. Every footstep echoed through a corridor that hadn't known breath in generations.

He approached a massive, abandoned gate at the edge of a cliff. Chunks of debris and shattered stone lay scattered near the brink, but the gate itself remained. The portcullis stood open, its metal bars warped inward, cracked and broken. It looked less like an entrance and more like a maw gaping, jagged, and eager to devour him. Beyond it stretched a bridge of crystal. Its sloping, curved angles gleamed like the throat of some great beast, ready to swallow him whole.

His satchel bumped against his side again, the sound of canvas brushing iron drawing three echoes behind him not at once, but staggered. The same scrape, three times, like a drunk choir repeating his every move.

He frowned, his pack was too loud. The clasps jingled, his waterskin sloshed, even his coat whispered against itself with every sway. It wasn't just sound—it was noise, layered and refracted by the walls into confusion. He reached a hand toward his pouch of holding. Piece by piece, he unbuckled gear and slid it into his pouch. It still amazed him how the pouch was able to swallow things larger than itself seemingly easily. His pack went next into the pouch.

He took one step, then paused.

He unlaced his hobnailed boots. The metal-studded soles had served him well for years. They were perfect for mountain stone, cliffside grip, and combat but here every step struck the crystal like a hammer on a bell. The echoes were so sharp they made his teeth ache. With a quiet grunt, he dropped them into the pouch too.

With the idea that he could always cover his skin in iron if he was going to hurt his feet.

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Now barefoot, shirt rolled to the elbow, Stronric stood at the arch that marked the cavern's threshold. The floor beyond shimmered faintly with quartz veins and polished crystal pink, grey, and ghost-white. The light here didn't come from fire or rune. It just was, bending along jagged spires like breath trapped in glass.

He looked to the axe at his side. It wasn't his original weapon.

He'd taken it from Dovren's old tool rack, a long-handled splitting axe, meant to cleave firewood or split dense stone slabs, not skulls. The edge had been chipped and blackened with age. Stronric had cleaned it. Honed it. Rewrapped the grip in boiled leather and carved the rune for Purpose beneath the haft.

It wasn't meant for war. But he wasn't going to war. Stronric had a hard time turning off that side of his mind. He was almost paranoid about what lay in the darkness. His hands ached when he thought of his axe, the axe of Hearth Fire, he hoped that his kinsmen had grabbed it for him. It still shamed him that he had dropped it. He shook his head, why was he thinking of that at this time. Focus Stronric.

He stepped through the threshold, and the cave listened.

His first footstep echoed once, then again, but not from behind.

The sound came from above.

Then to his left.

Then worse from directly in front of him, as if he'd stepped twice without meaning to.

He froze.

Even the sound of his breath rebounded wrong. It came back too fast, too close. It was as if it was one half-step off. He lowered himself to a crouch beside a jutting pillar of some kind of quartz and reached for his pouch. Slowly, he drew out the book Dovren had given him. He flipped to the first trial, Echo.

The diagrams showed a fractured rune, angled strokes spiraling around a central line, like a compass trying to face multiple directions at once. The notes in the margins were all Dovren's hand:

"Echo is not a mirror. It is a response." "Carve only when you have heard." "Do not act. Observe. Do not speak. Listen."

Stronric exhaled through his nose. The cave had no wind, no smell and no vibrations. It was all sound and stone, rippling with the ghosts of motion. He tucked the book carefully under one arm, took the blank rune stone from its pouch, and held it in his palm. It was still unmarked, but now, his footsteps were silent. His breathing was shallow. The only thing left was the world's reply. He stood and moved forward again. This time, he didn't watch the floor, he listened.

The cavern spread around him like a forgotten forest, but no roots grew here. The floor beneath his feet was stone, but not any stone he knew its surface shimmered with a crystalline sheen, pale grey with veins of deep blue, like frozen smoke caught in glass. Light filter from somewhere above. The small rays of light reflecting and casting long and awkward shadows. Crystal spirals twisted from the ground like trees, their branches curling into corkscrews that never touched the ceiling. Stalactites hung like fangs overhead, mirrored by dagger-like spires rising from the floor, so dense in places it felt like walking between the ribs of a dead god. Smaller shards, no thicker than a finger, jutted from the ground like brittle grass, each one humming faintly when his foot disturbed the air.

Then he heard it, soft and faint, but sharp enough to freeze the blood in his chest. Not footsteps exactly, nor like boots, but a sound more delicate, more precise. It was like the tapping of glass needles on polished stone. Click. Click. Click. Each one landed too cleanly, too perfectly spaced, the kind of rhythm no living footfall could maintain in a cavern like this. It wasn't movement it was punctuation.

He moved slower now, axe loose in one hand, rune stone tucked away. The echoes had started to unravel again, this time, with purpose. Every footstep gave back too many answers, each one sharper, closer, more confused than the last. It was not the cave's fault. There was something else speaking back.

The first one came from above. Not a sound, but a shadow.

Between the spiral towers of rose quartz, something shifted in the high air. It was not a bird or a bat. It was a silhouette, gliding slow and silent. It descended with the lazy stillness of a falling feather, spiraling downward disappearing from sight and coming back into view. A dark center seemed to flow and move down.

Was that a pickaxe? Stronric could swear he saw a pickaxe appear and vanish. Stronric rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was a dwarf floating, something was wrong as the light reflected a shine would cross Stronric's face and with his blink he was staring at nothing.

Stronric ducked behind a cluster of dagger-like crystals and watched.

The figure touched the ground with a soft click. It was revealed in parts as it crossed into the glowing light of the crystals. Its body was wrong hunched, narrow-waisted, and elongated, shaped like a man sculpted from smoky quartz. Its arms were too long. Its legs ended in thin, needled points that clicked precisely on the crystal floor. Stronric's breath caught as he noticed the thing hanging inside the shell. Suspended within the chest cavity of this crystal husk was the shriveled body of a dwarf. The dwarf was still holding a pickaxe. Its beard was matted and clumped with stone dust. His feet didn't reach the bottom of its crystal suit, instead they dangled limp, like a broken marionette inside a cage of glass. The crystal creature bore him like a parasite, or perhaps a host, his dead weight serving as an anchor for its growth.

The creature shifted, its needle-point legs moving and gliding in perfect balance, clicking softly as it walked across the stone. Each step threw off Stronric's sense of space. His own breath felt farther away. His heart sounded closer. The echoes lost order.

He didn't attack, not yet.

Another form dropped from a ledge across the chamber. Then another, crawling between two crystal spires. All the same, stone-crystal bodies, hollow and warped, wrapped around ancient dwarven corpses like armor. Tools still in hand, some missing pieces and some cracked and broken.

Stronric grimaced, I found your lost minder Dovren.

Now the creature held what remained of the dwarves. Stronric's fist clenched around his axe, slow and quiet. He stepped between the crystal trees and waited for the creature to come around a corner. He swung the splitting axe with all his strength. The weapon was longer than his normal axe and he clipped a crystal tree and sound exploded. Stronric almost dropped the axe as the sound reverbated through his skull. The crystal creature lunged aside, too fast for its size, and too silent for its weight. Stronric could see even in his mistake, he managed to catch the shoulder of the creature. It wasn't enough to kill, but a large crack splintered out from the site of impact.

The dwarf inside barely moved, but the golem reeled back. It was humming with pressure, its body ringing like a struck bell. Stronric head swam again as the sound overstimulated him. A wet drip slid down the side of Stronric's head. Stronric bared his teeth and forced his mind back under his control.

Another crystal golem came at Stronric from the side. The entombed dwarf was forced to fight his brother as the golem exoskeleton raised the crystal mining pick. Rage burned inside Stronric's chest. The very idea of slaying a dwarf, dead or not, burned at Stronric's very soul. Stronric raised his axe to counter and parry but at the last moment dodged underneath the crystal pickaxe. Stronric danced forward weaving around the entombed dwarf. He took off running as the creature he hit earlier had regained its sense and gave chase to him as well.

Stronric turned left down some trees when he ran straight into a dead end. Stronric turned to the clicking of the crystal golems pursuing him. The sound warped and echoed as the creature drew closure becoming more distorted and stretched. The first golem came around the corner and stopped in its tracks. It swung what could be called its head around as if looking for Stronric. Stronric didn't move, he even stopped breathing, trying to stay silent, as the creature walked forward. No eyes, Stronric saw the creatures had no eyes, and must be hunting for him a different way. Stronric remained still and silent as the creature loomed over him, its head twitching this way and that.

Stronric looked at the dwarf trapped within the golem's chest, suspended like a relic behind glass. His clothes were rough miner's garb thick-woven linen and hide, stained with old soot and blood, the kind worn by clanless diggers and deep-claim scavengers. His arms were locked around the haft of a pickaxe, knuckles fused to the grip by creeping crystal. The beard had grown brittle and uneven, tangled in the bed was a silver colored necklace with a crystal, like moss clinging to jewelry. His eyes were closed, seeming asleep. The dwarf, the miner looked content and at peace.

Suddenly the dwarf's eyes flashed open. The golem screamed a sound like crystals and rocks rubbing together. The echo vibrations from the wall bounced back hitting Stronric with a wave of sound. He fell backwards and his splitting axe slipped from his hand as he was forced to try and cover his ears. A second explosion of crystal and sound crushed into Stronric sending him ass over heel backwards.

It was not an explosion but a new crystal monster. Its body a warped shimmer of refracted light, perfectly still, perfectly smooth. Not fused with a dwarf. No bones inside. Just crystal and hunger and speed. It drove its claw forward in a straight, clean motion, aimed for his ribs. Stronric twisted, but not cleanly its limb grazed across his side, leaving a shallow gash. The pain was sudden, but dull. The shock sharper.

The creature crabbed, walked back desperately and rolled over backwards and back onto his feet.

Two entombed dwarves faced him, their weapons slowly warping into axes like his own splitting axe. There was a third crystal golem, without an entombed dwarf. The empty creature turned sideways and disappeared into the background of the crystal forest. Stronric knew he had throwing axes inside of his endless pouch. Stronric knew the small axes wouldn't have the durability needed to shatter the crystal creatures. They were simple throwing weapons, not a melee weapon.

Stronric feared another sound blast, so he tore cloth from his shirt, ripping the strip into two and jammed them into his ears. He needed to learn the echos but not for this battle.

Stronric Bowed his head slightly, never taking his eye off the golems in front of him. "Forgive me Thoranthana, I must commit a sin that will not come from my hands cleanly." Iron began to spread across skin, steam raising from his body. "I will try to spare ye children the worst of it, as these creatures so foul that even my lost cousins betray me."

The entombed dwarf's eyes bore at Stronric with such hatred that Stronric almost faltered in what he needed to do. There was a click as Stronric skin fully hardened. The sound of a boxer's bell rang out quietly, echoing from the walls, as Stronric ran forward arms raised in a fighting stance.

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