Jorn stared at the cleaved slate, copper dust caking his knuckles. Ritual sacrifice. The truth of his lineage lay laid open beneath the fractured runes. He ran a thumb over the carved notch, finding the deliberate chisel-stroke. His bloodline had never forged weapons for survival; they had engineered executions disguised as salvation. He leaned against the stone anvil-base, the air in the Hearth heavy with sulfur while the draft from the flue dragged across his neck. Far to the south, within the basalt needles of the High Reach, the God-Touched ruler sat upon his Sunken Throne. Carved from a pale slab of petrified marrow, the seat held an internal, amber glow. His gray irises twitched under pale lids. A pull through the marrow of the throne signaled an unbinding in the north. Not an iron pact, but raw marrow-work, distinct and unmistakable. “A spark,” he murmured, the sound scraping low across the floor flagstones. He lifted his shoulders, white wolf pelts sliding down his mantle. “A spark requires ash.” His attention settled on the six figures standing motionlessly along the pillared gallery, their wolf-visored helms coated in matte charcoal lacquer. Their leader stepped from the rank, knee striking the basalt. “My liege?” “The scent of old power,” the ruler said, leaning forward. “Follow the thread north. Extinguish it. Bring me the artisan or his hands.” The officer did not speak. He rose, gesturing his squad past the tall iron gates into the highland gale, iron spurs clicking once before the storm muffled them. *** High above the forge, across the windswept foothills of Mount Cinderheart, Brynja moved. The leg-guards fitted snugly over her boiled leather, cool against her shins yet unyielding. She tested them on loose shale; the pebbles gave way beneath her soles without the usual clatter or puff of dust. It was as if her weight was momentarily negated, her form a mere suggestion. She lengthened her stride, leaning into the thin mountain draft. A frost-hardened wolf carcass lay wedged between two jagged boulders. She cleared the obstruction with an easy leap, heels meeting the gravel without a dull thud. The steel plates absorbed the shock of the descent, bleeding the momentum into faint heat along her calves. Her mouth twitched upward. Jorn’s craft held no waste. The sharp pull of her cracked ribs, stiff from three weeks of mending, faded behind the balance of the leg-harness. The first tool for her blood-debt answered its forge-master. The wind died against the ridge, replaced by a dull rhythm beneath the crags, like muffled hammer-blows traveling through rock. She halted behind an outcropping of gray pumice. Six searchers climbed from a frozen ravine, charcoal cloaks pinned tight under iron wolf-visors. The Reach's hunters. They gripped notched spears tipped with glass blades that seeped a pale green light. They advanced in a wedge across the scree. Brynja pulled her back flat against a frost-rimmed boulder, fingers finding her bone-handled dagger. Her tread left no scrape, no footprint in the soot. Yet the spears pointed toward her bluff. Jorn's blood had quenched the metal. His essence clung to the bands, a beacon to the diviners of the capital. She spat into the gravel; the smith had wrapped her in a flare. “Hold the ridge,” an officer called from beneath an iron visor, his weapon's glass head brightening. “The tether pulls hard against the stone here.” They surged up the bank, hooked blades sweeping low. Brynja kicked off the basalt. The leg-guards flexed, launching her between two soldiers before their points crossed. She cut diagonally through the frost-crusted shale, sidestepping the reach of their steel. “She bears the smith-work!” one tracker barked, swinging his haft. “Close the circle!” the officer shouted. “Drive her down the ridge.” She felt the glass spearheads drawing against the marrow in her legs, a persistent drag like hook-lines set in water. West lay the sulfur flats: an acre of roiling mud caldrons, whistling steam-holes, and black volcanic glass. She cut left, driving her boots toward the sulfur steam. The officer yelled, “Hold back from the crust!” The trackers pressed hard, pulled forward by the green flare of their weapons. Brynja skipped over a hiss of white vapor, the metal plating distributing her weight so the thin sulfur crust held beneath her soles. The lead pursuer struck the yellow rim at full stride. The crust fractured under his iron boots; he dropped thigh-deep into a churning sink of gray slurry. A brief shriek choked into steam as the glass tip on his spear cracked and went dark. Brynja skirted a wider vent. A second tracker leaped to cut her off, landing squarely across a pressure fissure. A jet of boiling steam ruptured beneath his chest plate, throwing him onto the black glass crags where he lay motionless. “Back to the stone!” the officer shouted, his voice hoarse behind the visor. Yet the pull of the smith-work kept him advancing, boot by boot across the sulfur crust. She pulled up at the edge of a sulfur fissure, yellow fumes masking the bottom. She pivoted. Three remained. The officer thrust his spear toward her shins, aiming straight for the bands of soul-iron. She leaned beneath the thrust and brought her boot down on the overhanging lip of stone by his heel. The reinforced heel shattered the brittle calcified shelf. The ledge sheared away beneath him; he tipped backward with a shout, his iron plate carrying him down into the boiling murk. The remaining two turned toward the solid ridge. Brynja cut along their flank and drove a heavy kick into the central keystone of the ash-bridge they crossed. The fissure split open, dropping both into the steam. The vents resumed their steady, wet bubbling. Brynja rested both palms against her knees, breathing the acrid fumes. Jorn’s metal had protected her soles, but it had summoned this patrol straight to her throat. She looked toward the crest of Mount Cinderheart. Past the ash haze, the southern sky held an amber streak against the gray clouds. The beacon in her armor had not gone quiet. It was still ringing across the snow.

The Hounds of Divinity