“The old mine?” Ignis squeaked, his voice cracking so hard his crooked horn wobbled.
“Nobody goes in there!
That place is cursed!”
“Everything down here is cursed according to you,” Kiran said, bending down to tie his cloth-wrapped shoes tighter around his ankles.
“You said the river was cursed, and all we found was a fat fish and an angry lizard with an iron collar.”
“Gorr isn’t a curse, he’s just mean,” Ignis argued, trotting after Kiran like an anxious dog.
“The mine is different.
Old drakes say the humans who dug those tunnels didn’t just dig for red stone.
They dug so deep they found things sleeping in the black rock.
When the ceilings caved in, the King didn’t even send guards down to pull out the tools.
He just sealed the gates with hot lead and left them.”
Vaelgor gave a low, rumbling snort that kicked up dried leaves around their feet.
“The King sealed the gates because he is a coward who fears what he cannot burn,” the Red-Iron drake said, pushing himself up onto his feet.
His scarred wing stayed tucked tight against his ribs, but his heavy steps were surer now.
“The mine has what we need.
Deep underground, where the rock meets the fire-veins, heat gathers in the stone.
If we stay out in this damp ditch, my bones will rot before the winter winds drop.”
“Can you even fit inside?” Kiran asked, looking up at Vaelgor’s broad shoulders.
“If humans built it, the doors won’t be made for a forty-foot dragon.”
“The outer halls were built wide enough for ore wagons and the draft drakes that pulled them,” Vaelgor replied.
“The inner tunnels are for rats and apes.
That is why you are coming.”
“Lucky me,” Kiran muttered.
He reached down, tapped the cold steel wrench tucked safely against his hip, and took a deep breath.
The air down here was getting cooler as they moved away from the river.
They walked toward the northern wall of the gorge, leaving behind the glowing green mushrooms and the noisy squabbles of the exile camp.
The further they went, the darker it became.
The soft green light faded into a murky, grey gloom, swallowed up by colossal, petrified tree roots that arched out of the cliff face like the ribs of buried monsters.
Under the shadow of the largest root, half-buried under piles of black slate and dry dirt, sat a massive square opening cut directly into the mountain stone.
Kiran stopped.
The entrance was easily twenty feet high, framed by heavy blocks of squared granite.
It wasn’t rough or natural like the caves they had slept in.
The stone had been chiseled flat, fitted together so tightly that after hundreds of years, not even a blade of grass grew in the seams.
Carved across the massive stone lintel above the doorway were lines of deep, angular script.
“Human work,” Vaelgor muttered, his golden eye reflecting the dark opening.
“Dragons melt stone to make caves.
Only humans waste years chipping away at rock to make sharp corners.”
Kiran walked up to the stone frame, running his soot-stained fingers over the cold granite.
The chisel marks were crisp.
The stone felt strangely dry, almost warm, compared to the damp chill of the gorge behind them.
Right in the center of the archway, half-covered in dried moss, was the same symbol Kiran had seen on the pillar in the upper shelter: a circle split by a jagged line, with three dots on either side.
[JYOTI]
Location Confirmed: Iron-Vein Mine (Sector 4).
Ambient Fire Qi: Rising.
Toxicity: Negligible.
Structural Integrity: 68%.
Can you read the words on the top?
Kiran asked in his mind.
[JYOTI]
Translation:
“The deep fire belongs to those who carry the hammer.”
Authority Level: Insufficient for author identity.
“What does it say, Kiran?” Ignis asked quietly, peering around Vaelgor’s hind leg.
The young drake looked terrified, his orange eyes darting between the dark tunnel and the shadows of the giant roots above.
“It says the fire belongs to whoever holds the hammer,” Kiran said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ignis mumbled.
“Hammers don’t have fire.
Only dragons make fire.”
“My dad used to say tools are just extensions of your hands,” Kiran said softly, staring into the dark corridor.
“If you don’t know how to build, you don’t get to keep what you make.”
“Your father talked too much,” Vaelgor grunted, though his voice lacked its usual sharp edge.
He lowered his horned head, squeezing his massive bulk through the square stone opening.
“Stay close.
“I have my own light,” Ignis whispered, opening his jaws slightly.
A tiny orange ember glowed in the back of his throat, casting a warm, flickering light across the tunnel floor.
They stepped inside.
The air changed instantly.
The wet, swampy smell of the gorge vanished, replaced by the clean, dry scent of hot stone, old dust, and oxidized metal.
The floor was flat, carved from solid bedrock.
Running down the center of the passage were two parallel grooves cut into the stone—tracks where heavy wooden carts with iron wheels had rolled centuries ago.
Scattered along the walls were broken wooden crates, piles of rusted chain links, and empty stone racks where miners had once hung lanterns.
“It’s quiet,” Kiran whispered.
His voice barely echoed; the stone walls seemed to soak up the sound.
“Too quiet,” Ignis whined, staying pressed against Vaelgor’s flank.
They walked deeper into the mountain for ten minutes, the floor sloping steadily downward.
The ceiling stayed high enough for Vaelgor to walk without scraping his back, but the passage gradually narrowed until the dragon’s sides brushed against the rough stone walls.
Finally, the tunnel opened into a large, circular chamber.
It was an old underground forge.
In the center of the room stood a colossal anvil carved from a single block of dark, metallic stone, cold and silent.
Around it were dry stone troughs, shattered clay crucibles, and tall chimneys carved directly into the high ceiling to vent smoke.
Against the far wall of the chamber, a deep fracture split the rock from floor to ceiling.
Inside the crack, glowing with a steady, pulsing orange light, was a thick vein of raw ember stone.
It wasn’t dead like the pebble Kiran had found earlier.
It radiated a clean, throbbing heat that filled the entire room with a dry, pleasant warmth, driving away the chill from their bones.
Vaelgor stopped.
He let out a long, shuddering breath, his chest plates rising and falling as he smelled the dry heat.
“An active seam,” Vaelgor murmured, his bronze eye shining.
“The mountain’s blood is still hot here.”
The big drake walked over to the glowing crack, dropped onto his belly, and pressed his injured left wing directly against the warm rock face.
The black scales over his wound hissed softly as they absorbed the heat, and Vaelgor closed his eye with a deep, rumbling purr that shook the dust from the ceiling.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Ignis breathed, trotting over and curling up near Vaelgor’s tail, soaking in the warmth.
“No mud.
No damp moss.
Just good, dry rock.”
Kiran walked to the center of the room, standing beside the massive stone anvil.
He placed his hand on the flat top of the stone.
It was smooth, worn down by countless strikes from heavy tools that had vanished long ago.
[JYOTI]
Environment: High concentration of pure elemental heat.
Optimal condition for Iron Breath cultivation.
Manual: [Iron Breath – First Stanza].
Objective: Temper the bones.
Temper the bones?
Kiran thought.
Like cooling hot steel?
[JYOTI]
Correct.
Human bones are porous and brittle.
By pulling the heat from the seam through your breath, you compress the inner structure.
It will be painful.
Kiran pulled out his steel wrench, setting it carefully on the edge of the anvil.
He looked at Vaelgor resting by the glowing rock.
He thought about King Morvath’s hunters flying over the ridges, looking down at the earth like they owned every inch of stone and sky.
He thought about Gorr trying to rip him apart for half a fish.
He didn’t want to hide behind a dragon’s leg forever.
Kiran sat cross-legged on the stone floor right in front of the glowing vein, only a few feet from Vaelgor’s head.
“Vaelgor,” Kiran said.
The dragon opened one heavy eyelid.
“What, ape?”
“Show me how to temper the marrow.”
Vaelgor stared at him in silence for a few seconds.
The heat from the seam reflected off the sharp ridges of his broken horn, making him look older, harder, and ancient. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“It will feel like someone is driving iron needles into your arms,” Vaelgor warned.
“I’ve burned myself on engine headers before,” Kiran said.
“I can take it.”
“Engine headers,” the dragon grunted, closing his eye again.
“More madman words.
Fine.
Pull the heat through your nose.
Do not hold it in your lungs; drag it straight to your belly.
When the knot gets too hot to hold, push it down through your hips into your legs, and up through your collarbones into your arms.”
Vaelgor’s deep voice was slow and rhythmic.
“Do not let the heat escape through your skin as sweat.
Lock your pores.
Trap the fire inside the bone.
Let the heat chew on the marrow until the bone stops crying.”
Kiran closed his eyes.
He drew his first breath.
The air coming off the glowing seam was intensely hot, smelling of clean iron and sun-baked granite.
It rushed down his throat like a drink of steaming tea.
He didn’t let it sit in his chest.
He shoved it down, hard, straight into the space three inches below his navel.
The small spark inside him flared.
One.
The knot expanded, burning bright red behind his belly button.
Two.
Kiran clamped his teeth together and pushed.
He drove the heat outward, forcing the burning energy down his thighs, into his knees, and down his shins toward his wrapped feet.
At the same time, he channeled the heat up through his spine, splitting it across his shoulders and driving it down both arms into his fingers.
The pain hit him instantly.
It felt like his bones were being wrapped in boiling oil.
His forearms throbbed with a deep, agonizing ache that made his knuckles twitch.
Sweat broke out across his forehead, but remembering Vaelgor’s words, he forced his breath to stay slow and locked his jaw, refusing to pant.
Inside his mind, the blue text flickered rapidly.
[JYOTI]
Bone Tempering: Active.
Lesser Fire Energy: Absorbed into marrow.
Bone Density: +12%
Micro-fractures from mountain fall: Sealing.
Iron Breath Progress: 6.5%…
7.8%…
9.0%…
For half an hour, Kiran sat completely still.
The heat inside his limbs stopped burning like fire and began to feel heavy, dense, and solid.
The sharp ache faded into a dull, deep hum, like a metal bell that had been struck and was vibrating in the dark.
When Kiran finally opened his eyes and exhaled, a thick plume of grey smoke puffed from his lips, rising into the chimney above.
He looked down at his arms.
His skin wasn’t burned.
Underneath the soot and dirt, his forearms looked slightly thicker, the veins along his wrists sitting firm and tight against the muscle.
When he closed his fist, his grip tightened with a sharp, heavy snap that felt twice as strong as before.
“Not bad,” Vaelgor murmured from the shadows by the rock.
The dragon hadn’t moved, but his single eye was watching Kiran with quiet approval.
“Most hatchlings cry on their first tempering.”
“I cried on the inside,” Kiran muttered, wiping the sweat from his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
Before Vaelgor could answer, a soft, scraping sound came from the far side of the forge chamber.
It wasn’t the sound of stone cracking from heat.
It was the metallic, hollow rattle of an iron chain being dragged slowly across the floor.
Ignis jumped to his feet, his crooked horn smacking against a low shelf of rock.
“What was that?!”
Kiran grabbed his wrench off the anvil, scrambling to his feet.
From the dark tunnel opening on the opposite side of the chamber—a passage leading even deeper into the mountain—two pale, glowing green eyes opened in the blackness.
A dry, rattling voice scraped through the quiet room.
“Who…
lights the forge…
in the dark?”