The forest opened into the basin like a bowl set into the earth. The air here kept to itself, cool and a little sour, with that strange mix of wet stone, iron, and a sweetness that did not belong. The Mountain Canary padded at Stronric's side, head low, crest laid flat, talons silent in the soft rot. Stronric had not slowed. He had slept, eaten, and let the heat of his inner forge settle, just long enough to travel. No ache shadowed his steps now. He moved the way a smith returns to a project he understands, not with hurry, but with a line already drawn in his mind.

A breath before the basin's heart he paused and opened the page that hung behind his eyes. The script had stopped flickering since the shower. The numbers stood where he put them last, clean and steady. Experience hummed through the frame of him, not loud, but present, like a bell you still feel in your palm after the strike.

"Right," he murmured. "Let's get this out of the way first."

Stronric opened his level screen and pushed the new strength where it would serve best. Endurance, so his forge would not gutter when the stone began to drink his Ruhan. Agility, so his hands would stay quick when the rune lines slipped and he needed to replace them before the whole binding collapsed. Wisdom, so he could hear what the stone meant, not only what it said. The shift was small, but deep, settling into the bones rather than muscle.

"Level forty then," he said under his breath. Not for bravado, only to mark the measure. "Hopefully it's enough."

The Mountain Canary turned its head at his tone. It clicked its beak once, a sound like chisel to iron. Stronric scratched the ridge above its eye with two knuckles. It leaned into the touch without taking its gaze from the basin.

The slab waited where he had left it. Tilted, half sunk, its face scarred with crude cuts. The ground around it still refused to grow. Moss peeled back in a pale ring. The weak light that filtered through the canopy thinned at its edge, as if the day itself had learned to step lightly here.

Stronric set his palm against the stone. Cold bled into his skin. It wasn't an honest chill, it was the kind that lives in old promises kept too long. "Hold, beast," he told the canary. "If I pass out, bite me and scream."

The creature did not chirr. It crouched low, tail stiff, claws dug in, ready as if the slab might strike back.

Stronric drew a deep breath until the taste of iron filled his mouth. The forge inside opened for him. The main hearth glowed in banked coals, the vents steady, the channels smooth. He left them untouched, pulling only what he needed. Ruhan ran down his arms until his forearms tingled and his palms felt thick with strength. He pressed it into the gap between flesh and stone.

From his pouch he drew the tools Dovren had given him. He centered himself, set chalk to the slab, and began to mark.

"Stillness," he said, and meant it.

The chalk lines were not decoration but measured guides. The placements were where the weight would carry best, where the brace could hold. Stronric now understood what Dovren meant when he said changing runes was difficult on many levels. There was only so much space to add runes too, and if he wasn't careful, they would bleed into the original idea of the piece. When the frame was set, he raised the chisel and began to cut.

The rune of Stillness formed slowly. Chips of stone curled away, each flake a small surrender. Stronric had learned that Stillness was not silence, but patience with weight. It wasn't the absence, but the brace that endures until the beam can be changed. As the rune deepened, the slab steadied, like lungs filling and refusing to tremble. The quiver sank to a dull, contained tremor.

"Good," he murmured. "Now you'll stand."

With the brace in place, he turned to the gouges crowding the slab. He did not yet inscribe new purpose. That would come later. Now he cut away the rot. Jagged lines were pared back, crooked channels trued. Each time a section threatened to unravel, he pressed his palm to the carved rune of Stillness, and the stone bore it. It was slow work. Cut, brace, replace. A rhythm as steady as hammer and bellows. Some lines changed beneath his touch—marks of hate softened to desperation, desperation tempered into grief. He noted the difference but did not linger. The slab hummed under his hands. No longer the foul wrongness he had felt before, but the tight vibration of steel waiting for the hammer.

His breath fell into step with the labor. Lift. Tap. Hold. Set. Echo answered. He matched the mountain's slow pulse, each strike timed to the beat beneath the earth. On the fourth correction, sound scraped the inside of his skull. Stone on stone. Not a voice, not yet. He kept working, one cut and then the next, letting the scrape widen until it carried shape.

A hand came into view in the corner of his thoughts not here in the basin, but where his work and the slab met. Square through the palm, scarred across the knuckles by years of craft. It held a chisel. Each strike on the vision's stone rang with a promise spoken low, careful not to break.

"Keep the outside out," a voice murmured. "Not to cage, but to spare."

Stronric did not look up. He did not answer. He kept his rhythm. Lift. Tap. Hold. Set. When he cut without giving back, nothing showed but the slab's threat to collapse. When he gave it a line that carried weight, the stone gave him memory in return.

The unknown dwarf worked quickly, not carelessly. His breath came fast, shoulders trembling in small ways that did not belong to fatigue. Stronric felt the truth in his cuts the same lines he now corrected, but done first by another hand. The dwarf's sleeve was smudged with blood near the elbow. Around him stood other stones, smaller, set in a shallow ring like teeth.

"Keep them out," the voice said, more desperate this time. "Keep them out and leave the rest to be. Work, and be quick."

The vision faded as Stronric moved to the next section. The slab twitched against his palms, threatening to peel apart. He fed more Ruhan into the brace, steady as a smith shoring a gate beam, and trimmed a crooked cluster back into line.

He made no attempt to change the meaning yet. The structure had to stand first. Three more corrections, and the slab's hum eased from strain into a tighter, sharper vibration. The sickly floral stench lifted for a breath, then returned weaker.

At the seventh correction the scrape returned, widening into another vision. A second hand appeared, younger. The same shape, but smooth at the knuckles, without the nicks of long years. It wavered. The chisel slipped shallow where it should have gone deep. The first hand reached, too late to correct.

Stronric's chest clenched though his body held Stillness. He sealed the correction in his own work, then pressed Ruhan harder into the rune until the slab steadied.

"Easy," he told it, his voice carried into his arms. "I'll not pull you apart."

He shifted higher, where three lines were scored across the grain. One he trimmed, one he braced, the last he replaced in a single breath. The vision swelled again on the second strike. The younger hand faltered, nails dark with blood where they had been gripped too tightly. The chisel hung slack. The older hand lifted it gently away, no scold, only a moment's hold, then pressed the shoulder and turned back to the stone.

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Stronric blinked slowly, forcing wetness back. He whispered once, so the stone and whatever lingered in it might hear.

"I see."

He kept going. Stillness held, but the slab drank Ruhan without pause. His shoulders burned with the steady pour, arms humming with clean fatigue. The Canary circled twice, then crouched again, eyes sharp on his hands. It made a grinding sound in its throat, the comfort it gave itself before swallowing sharp ore.

At the ninth correction the vision shifted again. The light was thinner, blue and cold. The hand that lifted the chisel was the same, but the knuckles carried another scar and a tremor born of grief. The second hand did not appear. The older hand carved alone. The voice that had whispered hope before came at last, but worn thin, cracked with loss.

"If ye cannot finish," the voice said, and Stronric heard his own kinship in that word, "I will my son."

He did not stop. He could not. He swapped a wedge, held the brace, and set the next line. Now, at last, he prepared for Severance. Not to strike all at once, not yet, but to clear the slag of grief without breaking the heart beneath it. He cut with care, and with respect. He did not curse the hand that had bound too tightly. He honored the reason a man might bind in grief.

His breath synced with the mountain. Echo thrummed through him. He whispered, low, a promise:

"Severance next. When ye are ready to carry it."

The slab's wrongness thinned to almost nothing. Its hum steadied into a tone he could bear. Stronric set the chisel where the new meaning would take root. He raised his other hand high, Stillness braced like a beam beneath a sagging roof.

"Now," he said, drawing breath until his chest filled. "We cut, and we leave the heart."

Stronric's chisel bit deep. Severance was not fury. It was precision, the edge that divided what must remain from what must be cast aside. He carved it into the slab one stroke at a time, each line meant to cut grief away without touching the core beneath.

The slab bucked against him. The moment Severance entered its surface, the old runes writhed. Lines pulled at their neighbors, tugging free like stitches unraveling in rotten cloth. The whole anchor threatened to tear itself apart.

"Hold," Stronric growled, pressing his other palm flat against the rune of Stillness. Ruhan poured from him in a steady torrent, bracing the slab like a smith's arm locked under a beam about to drop. His shoulders burned, but the rune held.

Stroke by stroke, he cut. Each curl of stone was a chain's link snapping loose. His breath fell into Echo's rhythm, hammer and bellows in his chest. Lift. Tap. Hold. Set. The mountain beat carried him, steadied him, kept his hand true.

The visions flared again, brighter than before. The younger hand flickered once, then vanished for good. The older hand carved alone, grief etched into every line. Then the vision shifted, and Stronric saw the truth. Not just a craftsman. Not just a dwarf. A father. Dovren, younger, jaw clenched, his chisel biting too deep because his son was gone. The stone was all he had left to finish.

Stronric's chest ached with the weight of it. He did not curse the man for binding too tightly. He honored the reason.

"Ye carved out of love," he said through clenched teeth. "I'll not let it rot for that."

He struck the final cut. Severance carried through the slab like a bell tolling underground.

For one breath the slab held still. Then it screamed.

It was not a sound heard by the ear, but a wrenching inside the skull, a raw tearing of meaning and memory. The corrupted gouges burst apart in a shower of shards. From each ruined mark poured black vapor, thick and clinging, as if ink had been boiled into smoke. It writhed upward, then whipped outward in a violent rush.

The basin shook. Trees bent back. Moss peeled from stone in strips. The Mountain Canary shrieked and flared its crest, talons raking at the ground as it fought to stay upright.

Stronric held his ground. He poured every ounce of Ruhan he could into Stillness. The rune flared beneath his palm, glowing faintly, the brace against collapse. Echo steadied his breath, lift, tap, hold, set while Severance split the rot away. The last thing Stronric had to do was to carve echo into the stone. Reflect and bounce the energy off of itself and help balance the slab.

The energy pushed against him, it was like trying to carve while submerged in rapids. Stronric pulled the chalk from his pouch and the chalk snapped and flung away. Stronric grunted. He would have to carve this without help.

Stronric spat grit from his teeth and reached for his chisel. Steel, dwarven-forged, unyielding. The haft rattled in his grip from the anchor's fury, but he drove it against the stone all the same. Sparks leapt where the edge met rune-line, but the tool held true.

He set his mallet and struck. The slab screamed back. Foul light bled through the crack, red and black, like veins breaking under the skin of the world. The Mountain Canary shrieked louder, crest flaring wide, wings beating the air as if to scatter the corruption.

Stronric struck again. Each impact had to be exact. Too shallow, the rune would not take. Too deep, and the whole anchor would split. Stillness burned bright under his palm, holding what should have collapsed a hundred times already. Severance cut each corrupted line free, bleeding it out in strips. Now, Echo had to bind the space left behind, to fold the sound of his hammer back into itself, to teach the anchor how to answer rather than devour.

The third strike landed. A line carved, faint but steady. He whispered through his beard, breath steadying to the rhythm of the rune. "Lift, tap, hold, set." The words were not spellcraft, but memory, echo of forgework. Echo flared at the sound, as if the rune itself recognized his cadence.

The stone quaked harder and the old runes buckled. One collapsed in a burst of red sparks, but Stillness flared white where he had braced it. Another line crumbled, and Severance snuffed its rot before it spread. Stronric's arms shook, his shoulders screaming from the strain, but his strokes did not falter.

He dragged the chisel across the final arc of Echo. The rune snapped into place with a low, resonant hum, deep as a drum struck in the heart of the mountain. That hum rolled outward, caught on itself, folded, and then rang back again, stronger. The anchor stopped quaking.

For a breath, all was silent.

Then the slab exhaled. Not stone, not wind, something older, fouler. Black vapor burst free, oily and thick, rushing up like smoke from a forge gone wrong. It reeked of blood, bile, and iron left to rust. The Mountain Canary leapt into the air with a scream, circling Stronric as the foulness poured skyward.

Stronric slammed the chisel into the ground and braced, half-expecting the slab to shatter. Instead, the new runes flared in sequence: Stillness white, Severance orange, Echo blue. They caught the black surge and bent it upward, away, funneling the corruption into the sky where it scattered like ash on the wind.

When the last trace was gone, the anchor slab lay quiet. Not healed, not whole, but balanced. The runes glowed faintly, his marks among them, steadying what had been failing.

Stronric sagged to one knee, chest heaving. The Mountain Canary stopped beside him, crest slick with sweat and ore-dust. Its head pressed against his shoulder, a steadying weight.

He looked at the runes once more. The old lines bore the memories he had seen flickering as he worked, shards of another's hands, another's grief. He knew Dovren had finished the carving, but behind it all had been someone else, someone closer to the ghost than Stronric had guessed.

"Yer son," he muttered, eyes narrowing on the faintest groove beneath the others. "It was yer lad who started this."

The anchor did not answer. But the air no longer stank of rot, and for the first time since he had entered this place, Stronric felt the weight lift.

He rose, wiped stone dust from his beard, and shouldered his tools. "Come on then," he said to the Canary. "We've a road back to find."

The bird shrieked once, sharp and bright, and the two of them turned from the anchor's basin. Behind them, the runes glowed steady, guardians once more but different now, changed by his hand.

The basin exhaled with him. Where moss had peeled away, pale shoots already pushed forward, tentative but alive. The sour sweetness in the air thinned until it was nothing more than the scent of wet earth after rain. Light poured through the canopy in brighter shafts, no longer dimmed, as though the trees themselves had lifted their heads again.

Stronric turned once more to the slab. The glow of the runes held steady, each cut sharp and clean, but above them drifted something faint. A shimmer, no more than a wisp, but shaped like a man's shoulders, a man's jaw. The figure did not linger. It looked toward Stronric only long enough for him to see the quiet there was no grief, no burden, only release. Then it rose, thinning into the sky, until it was gone.

He let out a breath he had not known he was holding. "Free, then," he said softly. "Good. That's as it should be."

The Mountain Canary clicked its beak, a small sound after all the shrieking. It stretched its wings once, then folded them tight, waiting.

Stronric set his hand on the slab one final time. He thought of Dovren's son, of the lines carved in haste and in love, and of his own hand finishing them. Not to overwrite, not to erase, but to steady, brace, and let the work stand as it was meant. "Every mark tells its truth." He muttered. "Mine just had to answer."

Only then did he turn his back to the anchor. The Canary chirred low and started forward. Stronric followed, each step lighter than the last. Behind him, the slab no longer groaned, no longer poisoned. It hummed with balance, a steady note like iron cooling in oil. A sound meant to last.

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