The tremor in the settlement faded, leaving the stench of iron and split flesh across the dirt. Pale lines on the iron block pulsed with steady light. Borin stared at the severed limbs of his comrades, his mouth hanging slack. Ma Jianzhou stood motionless over the dead raiders. “Master… the iron…” Ma rasped. His palms, spotted with liver spots, bore no scratches from the iron broadswords he had shattered. Borin dropped his notched curved sword into the dirt. The enforcer's leather tunic, dyed copper-red and stamped with the foundry's crest, hung loose across his shaking chest. Nie Ruhai lifted a scarred hand, pointing past Borin toward the mountain road. The raider scrambled backward over dead limbs, caught his balance on a shattered scabbard, and bolted. Nie Ruhai knelt beside the iron block. Blood soaked into the chiseled runes, feeding the pale grooves until they hummed against his thumb. The initial ignition held. In the upper terraces of the mountain redoubt, Elder Pei Lingshuang sat on basalt flags over the sulfur flue. Heat rippled from the depths, reeking of yellow ash and refined brimstone. A courier collapsed to the stone before her. “Elder! Borin has returned alone.” Pei Lingshuang tilted her chin. “Speak.” She had registered the snap of the tribute squad’s life talismans an hour prior. The loss of eight low-tier hounds meant little, but their shattered bone fragments in the divination basin warranted an answer. “Borin claims a septuagenarian churl tore through the vanguard barehanded,” the messenger stammered. “He claims the smithy's anvil drank the corpses' marrow.” Pei Lingshuang’s jaw remained set, her fingernails biting through her silk sleeves into the stone armrest. “An old peasant crushing forged iron,” she said, rising. “The serfs fancy themselves warriors because they found a stray talisman. Strike the bronze alarm. Every throat in those huts will be slit across the magma vats unless the smith drags his apprentice to our gates before sunrise.” The brazen toll echoed off the soot cliffs, vibrating down the valley into the huts. Mud walls shuddered under the acoustic pressure. Ma Jianzhou stared toward the sulfur plume, his knuckles graying around his mallet. Nie Ruhai did not glance up from the floor. He eyed the sulfur plume rising above the caldera. The lines in the iron flared white, demanding heat that mundane coal could never reach. Nie Ruhai unbolted the six-hundred-jin block from the stump. Grabbing oiled hide straps bound with iron staples, he hauled the mass across the shop. Before Ma could step aside, Nie Ruhai lashed the block against the old man's shoulders. The load drove Ma down onto both knees, cracking the clay beneath his boots. “Master!” Ma wheezed. The heat of the inscribed iron scorched through his hemp tunic, blistering his shoulder blades. Nie Ruhai tightened the girth strap with a single jerk, his gaze flat and pitiless. Nie Ruhai pointed toward the ash road climbing the crag. Ma drove his heels into the grit and forced his spine straight. The etched lines seared his skin, but the heat sank into his sinews, knitting his torn muscles with strange, cold density. He took a dragging step forward, boots sinking two inches into the dirt, and began the ascent toward the smoking peak. Far above the smoke canopy, a pale slit parted in the sky. The tear showed neither stars nor cloud, only blinding gold. A golden iris unfolded within the seam, cold and unblinking, scouring the world below. The aperture drifted slowly over the crags, drawn by a single displaced ripple in the lower firmament. It watched the slopes for any ember of the monarch who had once broken the sky.

The Volcano's Shadow