The walk back through Emberkeep was an ordeal in itself.

  Every time Elias thought his adrenaline had bottomed out, the floor seemed to drop out from under him again. His sword belt dug a groove into his hip, and his sleeve—stiff with someone else's dried blood—scratched at his wrist until the skin was raw.

  They passed under the arch, and the heat hit them like a physical shove. It wasn't just warm air; it was a soup of sulphur, old sweat, and the copper tang of pennies.

  The pace Harth set threatened to buckle Elias’s knees. The old man’s staff hit the flagstones with a rhythmic clack-clack that fought for dominance against the hammering deep below.

  "Keep moving," Harth muttered, not looking back. "The Forge is in a foul mood. If I bring you in late, it’s going to spend the night spitting sparks at my shins."

  Thorne let out a jagged laugh, leaning on her staff like a crutch. "Hear that, Elias? You were missed. Or your repair bill was."

  "I bet it missed the stabbing most," Elias spat out, rolling the cramp from his shoulder.

  "Probably." Thorne wiped a smudge of grease off her forehead. "It’s not exactly a sentimental piece of stone."

  Cindersnarl bumped into Elias’s leg, a heavy, hairy reminder that everyone was hurting. The warg’s ember-glow was dim, greying out in the cracks of his fur. He looked ready to sleep for a week.

  They bypassed the sealed archways. The Hollow Loom pulsed behind its barrier, a weird, heavy hum that Elias felt in his teeth. He hated that place. It always felt like it was waiting for him to screw up.

  The corridor emptied them into the main forge hall, and the chaos took over. The heat was enough to turn the moisture in Elias’s eyes to steam. Molten metal roiled in the central crucible, popping with wet thuds, spraying its orange glow high into the air.

  Harth jerked his chin towards the centre. The Black Anvil. It looked scarred, ancient, and covered in rusty-orange runes Elias didn’t trust.

  "Right then," Harth said, his voice flat. "Let’s see if the Anvil thinks that blade is still a sword or just scrap metal. Stick it on the plate."

  Elias tried to set the weapon down, but his hand refused to open. Hours of white-knuckle tension had locked his fingers into a claw, the leather grip pasted to his skin by dried sweat. He had to pry his fingers loose, wincing as tendons popped, before the blade finally clattered onto the iron.

  Clink.

  For a second, the room stayed normal. Someone dropped tongs near the secondary anvils and swore. Elias exhaled, his shoulders dropping an inch.

  Then the runes woke up.

  A vibration crawled from the stone, through the blade, and straight into Elias’s marrow. Not a hum; it was a visceral, low-voltage shock that made his elbows twitch. He yanked his hand back, his heart leaping.

  "Like the look of it," Thorne muttered, squinting at the glow. "I think. Hard to tell with rocks."

  Harth didn’t answer, looking tense and annoyed.

  The vibration deepened, ceasing to be a sound and instead becoming a memory.

  The smell hit Elias first: damp, rotting mulch and that cloying, sweet incense used at funerals. Then the hall vanished.

  He was back in the clearing, the Leshei—the Rootsinger—kneeling in the dirt, moss in their hair, skin like aged oak. They looked so tired. The Crimson Fyre knights stood around like red iron statues.

  A high, clear voice sliced through the smoke: "Flame claims the faithless."

  Elias’s arm moved. Not his arm—the memory of a movement. He felt the cold weight of the blade rising. The Rootsinger looked at him, with no hate, just quiet, sad recognition.

  Their mouth moved. Remember.

  The sword went in: the sickening crunch of bone, the wet spray of sap.

  Snap.

  The forge rushed back: the hammering, the stinging sweat. Cindersnarl was snarling, claws scraping sparks off the floor.

  The runes under the blade had turned a nasty, bruised purple. And a black crack, thin as a hair, was crawling across the face of the Black Anvil.

  [WARNING: CORRUPTION DETECTED]

  Harth slammed his staff down. The crack of wood on stone made the whole hall jump. The purple light flickered and died, retreating into a sulking orange.

  Silence followed, heavy. Elias found he couldn’t catch his breath. He wiped his mouth, tasting smoke and copper.

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  "You dragged it home," Harth growled, not sounding scared, just like a man looking at a flooded cellar. "A wounded memory. And now it’s bleeding into my floor."

  Thorne gripped her staff until her knuckles whitened. "Was that the Hollow?"

  "The leader," Harth said. "Rootsinger. Your Order butchered them to make a point, Elias. And that blade did more than watch."

  Elias looked at the black fracture on the Anvil. It was still growing, slow as a dying breath. His skin crawled.

  "I didn’t do that," he whispered.

  "The blade did," Harth said. "It remembers. And now the Keep has to foot the bill."

  Thorne pressed her palm into her temple, eyes shut tight. "That should have been a burial," she muttered, her voice gravelly from the smoke, "or a pyre. Not… that."

  "The Order doesn’t do ‘clean’," Harth said, kicking at a loose flagstone. He looked distracted, checking if the world was still solid enough to stand on. "They wanted a spectacle. They wanted everyone to see what happens when you try to hoard a soul they’ve already claimed."

  Elias swallowed against a throat like sandpaper. He could still feel the Rootsinger’s eyes on him—a hook under his ribs.

  "So, what's the move?" Elias asked. "Do we just… let it sit? Patch the stone and act like the Hollow isn't our problem?"

  Harth scratched the bridge of his nose, leaving a soot mark. "If we do that, the rot crawls. Starts in the Anvil, gets into the foundations. Memory isn't just decoration here, Elias—it shapes the world. Leave rot in the bones, and the house sags."

  The fracture on the Anvil twitched, growing another millimetre. Elias's stomach rolled. Cindersnarl let out a sharp grunt, pacing in tight circles, ears pinned back. Every time he passed, he shoved his weight against Elias's thigh. He hated the smell.

  Iron and mouldy stone.

  "We go to the Hollow then," Elias said, the realisation settling like a weight.

  "You give that memory back to the dirt," Harth nodded, looking older than he had five minutes ago. "Finish the burial. Quiet the scream before it cracks the Citadel's teeth."

  Thorne set her jaw. "The Leshei aren't exactly going to roll out the red carpet for an Order boy carrying a cursed blade, Harth."

  "They hate the people who butchered their leaders more." Harth shrugged, eyes hard. "Fair play. Just… don't go in swinging. Keep your hands visible."

  Elias wiped grit from his forehead. The heat was making his pulse thud behind his eyes. "And the Citadel? You mentioned it muttering earlier."

  Harth sighed—the sound of a man realising his dinner was going to be cold. "Right. The Loom's been twitching since dawn. Might as well see what it's found to complain about."

  He wrapped a gnarled hand around the hilt of Elias's sword, lifting it like live ordnance. The crack in the Anvil flared purple once, then went dark. He handed it back.

  "Keep it in the scabbard," Harth warned. "I'm too old for any more magic shows today."

  Elias slid the blade home. The grip caught on a smear of tacky gore. He wiped his hand on his trousers.

  They left the heat behind. Elias's boot squeaked on spilt oil, and he stumbled, catching himself on the cold wall. Thorne didn't laugh; she just gave him a look. Keep it together.

  As they walked, the roar of the forge died away, replaced by a strange scuffing sound. The Loom. Like paper being shuffled by a thousand invisible hands.

  Cindersnarl clicked unevenly on the stone, looking back at every shadow. He didn't trust the quiet.

  "Do you think we need backup to keep it from spreading?" Thorne asked, scratching where her armour chafed.

  "If it gets past the ring, I'll yell," Harth muttered. "Louder than usual."

  They stopped at the woven-root archway. The stone was scarred with grooves that looked like fingernail marks. The Citadel didn't hide its history; it just let it scab over.

  Harth rapped his staff against the arch. The stone groaned and slid aside.

  "Welcome to the Loom," Harth grunted. "I wouldn't even sneeze if I were you. It's touchy."

  The Hollow Loom was a vault of suspended radiance. Stone columns rose along the walls like massive bobbins, but they held no physical thread. Instead, they anchored streams of pure data – filaments of copper, pale green, and sickly yellow light that stretched across the dark ceiling. This was the warp and weft of memory, a metaphysical tapestry humming with the vibration of information pulled to its breaking point. In the centre, a ring of black iron hung like a stalled shuttle, waiting to weave the code back into reality.

  The floor was bare stone, polished by age or stubbornness. In the centre sat a carved circle – knot-patterns that looked like a drunk spider’s web.

  Cindersnarl hesitated at the threshold, nose working. A soft whine escaped him before he clamped his jaws shut, tail low, ready to leave.

  "Right," Harth said, rubbing his forehead. "Stick the sword in the knot. Don’t overthink it. It wants to look."

  Elias stepped forward. His left boot pinched; he made a mental note to loosen it later. With a dusty sigh, he lowered the sword into the centre.

  The reaction was instant. The threads overhead straightened. A ripple of pale green passed through them – curious, cautious.

  That sickly purple crawled up the blade again. Elias clenched his jaw, forcing down the memory of the Rootsinger. The Loom caught it anyway.

  A handful of threads dropped, hovering a hand’s width above Elias’s head. They pulsed dark violet – not anger, just sorrow, old and tired. The room grew colder.

  "Yeah," Elias muttered. "Not my favourite moment either."

  Cindersnarl pressed against Elias’s leg once more, grounding, not guarding.

  The threads regrouped, moving faster. One strand darted down, flicking the scabbard like a cat testing a mouse. Elias shot it a look. It pulsed yellow. Apology? Sarcasm?

  More strands gathered, weaving rough, jagged outlines above him. A circle formed, splitting into six segments.

  One segment pulsed a sickly, grey-green – fungal.

  A thin yellow line threaded the circle, linking to a tiny spark representing the Gate room.

  [REALM THREAD SET: WEEPING HOLLOW] [CORRUPTION: ACTIVE]

  The Loom let the map hang, then sent a green thread to tap the knot at Elias’s boots before pulling back.

  Thorne shifted, scratching her shoulder surreptitiously. "That’s a map, then. Or a threat dressed as one."

  "It’s a request," Harth said, leaning heavily on his staff. "It wants the wrong put back in the ground, before the rot redecorates the Keep."

  Elias stared at the sword. The Rootsinger’s eyes were still a phantom in the back of his mind. "And if we don’t?"

  The threads answered. A red spike shot through the circle. The shapes turned dark – not explosive, just inevitable. Tendrils crept towards the hub spark. The spark dimmed.

  The display snapped apart with a pulse of ice blue, as if the Loom was annoyed at having to explain the obvious.

  "So that’s a no," Elias murmured.

  A green thread tapped the sword hilt twice. Well?

  Cindersnarl growled, low and embarrassed. Elias scratched behind the creature’s ear, then pinched the bridge of his nose, sweat making his fingers slip.

  "Right. We go. Fix the ending they didn’t get."

  Thorne exhaled. "You realise they might take one look at that blade and decide finishing the job is justice."

  Elias shrugged, his shoulders cracking. "Then it’ll be a short trip."

  Harth glared, though it was half-hearted. "Don’t get poetic about dying. It’s irritating."

  The Loom pulsed yellow—amusement—then stilled. Harth pushed off his staff, rubbing his knees.

  "Enough staring. The Gate’s ready. You need rest before stepping into that place."

  Elias stepped out of the circle, tugging at his boot. The threads relaxed into a quiet, analytical blue. Cindersnarl padded backwards the whole way out, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  "Come find me in the morning," Harth said at the archway. "The Forge might have forgiven us by then. I’d like to not be explaining this mess to it again tonight."

  The wall slid shut with a gritty sigh.

  The corridor’s silence wasn’t restful – too much air, too little sound. Elias rubbed his neck, trying to scrub the ghost of the Rootsinger’s stare from his skin.

  Thorne nudged him lightly. “Find me before you leave. I’ve got questions, and you’re awful at talking when you’re half-dead.”

  He managed a tired smile. "Fair."

  Cindersnarl snorted, tail wagging once. Elias scratched the Warg’s shoulder, feeling the warmth under his glove.

  He let the sword rest against his hip. It didn’t feel any heavier – he just understood it a bit better now. Tomorrow he’d head into the Hollow anyway. There was a broken forge to sort out and a forest that wouldn’t stop yelling.

  Sleep was going to be rough.