The circle of pale sky at the top of the chimney suddenly went black.
A shadow had landed directly over the opening, forty feet above their heads.
The clean, freezing draft stopped in an instant, cut off as if someone had dropped a heavy lid over a pot.
A second later, loose gravel and bits of dried moss rained down the pipe, clicking against Kiran’s bracers.
“Get under the arch,” Vaelgor hissed.
The big drake didn’t roar.
He dropped his belly to the stone floor, his tail curling tight against his hind legs.
He reached out with his snout and shoved Ignis hard, sliding the skinny young dragon under the stone overhang of the old tool rack.
Torven didn’t move from his spot by the glowing seam, but his neck went completely stiff.
His pale green eyes locked onto the dark hole in the ceiling.
“The fool saw the steam,” Torven whispered, his voice dry as cracked leather.
“You let the hot air out into the freezing mountain wind.
Up there, that warm air looks like a white pillar rising out of the snow.
A blind bat could see it from five leagues away.”
From far up the dark pipe came a deep, muffled sound.
Sniiiiiiff.
It was a slow, wet breath that echoed down the stone chimney, vibrating the rock around Kiran’s boots.
Then came a voice—high, cold, and clear, ringing down the stone shaft like a metal bell.
“An open vent in the fourth sector,” the imperial hunter said.
The sound was faint, but every word carried clearly through the hollow stone.
“The seals were broken.
Smells like sulfur…
and something fresh.”
A second voice, rougher and further away, called out from the upper rocks.
“Is it an air pocket from the deep fault?”
“Too hot for an old pocket,” the first dragon answered.
“The heat is fresh.
If an exile crawled up from the gorge to hide in the old chimneys, he will be sitting right at the bottom.”
Down in the forge, Ignis clamped his front paws over his mouth, his crooked horn trembling against the stone wall.
“They’re going to purge it,” Vaelgor growled softly, his golden eye wide with dread.
“Sky-Guards don’t climb down holes.
If they find a suspicious vent, they blow fire down the throat until the bottom turns into glass.”
Kiran looked up at the dark chimney.
The shaft was a straight stone pipe, four feet wide.
If a full-grown dragon dumped a breath of fire down that opening, the blast would hit the forge floor like water shooting out of a fire hose.
The flames would fill the entire room, cooking everything inside before venting out the side tunnel.
“Can we plug it?” Kiran asked, his heart hammering against his ribs.
“With what?” Vaelgor snarled.
“You just pried the plug loose, ape!
The rock is sitting in that trough!”
[JYOTI]
Warning: High-intensity thermal buildup detected at shaft summit.
Estimated time to discharge: 15 seconds.
Survival probability in open forge: 3.2%.
“The flue door!” Torven suddenly rasped, rattling his rusted leg chains against the floor.
He pointed a crooked claw toward the wall right beside the anvil.
“The iron damper!
The miners built a shut-off plate to keep smoke from backing up into the deep shafts!”
Kiran spun around, his eyes scanning the dark granite wall.
Bolted into the stone five feet off the ground was a heavy, square iron box.
Coming out of the bottom of the box was a thick iron chain, covered in orange rust, hanging down to the floor.
Attached to the chain was an iron ring the size of a dinner plate.
“Pull the ring!” Torven wheezed. Get faster updates on g.com.
“It drops the stone slab across the pipe!”
Kiran sprinted across the forge floor, his cloth-wrapped shoes kicking up grey dust.
He grabbed the heavy iron ring with both hands, planted his feet against the stone floor, and pulled with all his weight.
The chain didn’t move.
It didn’t even rattle.
Two hundred years of damp air and sulfur had fused the iron links into a solid red bar.
The internal gears inside the wall box were frozen solid.
“It’s rusted stuck!” Kiran yelled, veins bulging in his neck.
From forty feet above, a blinding, white-hot glow lit up the top of the chimney.
The darkness vanished.
The air inside the pipe began to shriek as a dragon drew a massive breath of air, pulling the heat together in the back of its throat.
The temperature inside the forge jumped ten degrees in three seconds.
“Nine seconds,” Kiran muttered through clenched teeth.
He didn’t waste time panicking.
He remembered the cold-iron bracers strapped tight to his forearms.
He remembered the soothing, icy grease he had rubbed into his bones.
Breathe.
Kiran drew a sharp breath through his nose.
He didn’t just let the air drop to his belly; he drove it down hard, compressing the heat three inches below his navel until it felt like a coiled spring.
Then he released it.
He drove the fire outward along his spine, through his shoulders, and straight into his forearms.
The bones in his arms didn’t burn.
The cold-iron splints strapped to his leather bracers seemed to hum, absorbing the shock of the power surging through his flesh.
His hands clamped around the iron ring with a grip so tight his knuckles clicked.
He reached into his waistband with his right hand, whipped out the steel wrench, and jammed the flat handle between two rusted links right where the chain entered the wall box.
“Move, you piece of junk!” Kiran roared.
He twisted the wrench like a pry bar while throwing his entire body weight backward off the ground.
CRACK-SNAP!
The rusted rust-crust exploded into red powder.
The gear inside the stone box sheared free with a screech of grinding teeth, and the heavy chain dropped four feet in an instant, dragging Kiran down onto his knees.
Above their heads, deep inside the dark chimney, a massive iron plate slammed shut with a deafening CLANG.
Half a second later, the mountain shook.
BOOOOOOM!
The sky didn’t fall, but the fire did.
A torrent of blinding, roaring yellow-white flame crashed into the top of the chimney, slamming into the closed iron plate with the force of a train hitting a brick wall.
The heat was terrifying.
Even through four inches of solid iron and stone, the metal plate glowed cherry-red in an instant.
The stone around the ceiling cracked with loud, popping snaps, showering the anvil with hot chips of rock.
A wash of scorching air blasted out through the tiny seams around the flue, blowing Kiran’s hair back and searing his face with dry heat.
Kiran held the chain tight, his teeth clenched, his bracers smoking against his skin.
The roar continued for five long seconds—a continuous, furious torrent of dragon flame meant to incinerate anything hiding at the bottom of the hole.
Then, the roar cut off.
The chimney went quiet again.
The cherry-red glow on the iron plate slowly faded back to dull black, though waves of shimmering heat still rolled off the ceiling.
Down in the forge, nobody moved.
Ignis was whimpering under the rack.
Vaelgor was still pressed flat against the floor, his bronze eye fixed on the ceiling.
Far up the pipe, the rough voice called out again.
“Did you clear it?”
“The shaft is blocked,” the first dragon said, his voice sounding slightly out of breath.
“An old iron damper held.
The fire didn’t reach the bottom.”
“Then leave it,” the rough voice replied, fading with the wind.
“If there was an exile down there, the heat baked him like a clay pot anyway. The source of this chapter is g.com.
We have three more ridges to check before the sun drops behind the peaks.
Move.”
A heavy beat of wings shook the stones above the chimney.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
The sound grew fainter and fainter, until there was only the quiet whistle of the cold mountain wind blowing over the open rocks far above.
Silence returned to the forge.
Kiran slowly let go of the iron ring.
His fingers were stiff, cramping into tight claws, and his hands were black with soot and red rust.
He sat back on the stone floor, his back resting against the base of the anvil, his chest heaving as he pulled in lungfuls of the warm, dry air.
A soft chime rang in his head.
[JYOTI]
Hazard resolved: Thermal Purge survived.
Iron Breath Progress: 13.5%
Cold-Iron Bracers: Integrated with bone structure under stress.
Result: Forearm resilience increased.
Note: You are very stubborn for an ape.
Kiran gave a faint, exhausted smirk.
“I told you.
Old machines just need a little leverage.”
Vaelgor slowly pushed himself up from the floor, shaking dust off his scarred wings.
He limped over to the anvil, looking up at the scorched iron plate in the ceiling, then looked down at Kiran sitting in the dirt.
The big drake didn’t say anything for a long time.
His single bronze eye held a look that was hard to read—a mix of old pride, raw shock, and something that looked suspiciously like respect.
“You didn’t drop the chain,” Vaelgor said quietly.
“If I dropped the chain, I would have been roasted,” Kiran said, rubbing his sore forearms.
Underneath the leather bracers, his skin was red and sweating, but the deep bone ache was gone, soothed by the salve and the steady flow of his breath.
“Self-preservation is a great motivator.”
“An ape who holds against dragon fire is either very brave or completely broken in the head,” Torven rasped from the corner.
The old, wingless drake dragged his chained legs across the floor, stopping two feet from Kiran.
He reached down with his snout and nudged the steel wrench lying in the dust.
“You saved the room, boy,” Torven muttered, his pale green eyes clear and serious.
“But they will remember this chimney.
When the patrol returns to the high fort tonight, they will tell their commander that an old vent in Sector 4 is still warm.
Tomorrow, they won’t send two fliers with fire.
They will send a dig-team with iron bars to pry that plate open from the top.”
Vaelgor’s lips curled back, showing his teeth.
“Then we cannot stay here.”
“No,” Torven agreed.
He turned his heavy, scarred head toward the dark tunnel at the back of the forge—the passage that sloped steeply down into the roots of the mountain.
“You have to go down.”
Kiran picked up his wrench and stood up.
His knees were steady.
The heavy bracers on his forearms felt like part of his own body now.
He pulled the folded copper map out of his pocket and looked down at the dark square at the very bottom.
Sector 7.
The Threshold.
“What is waiting down there, Torven?” Kiran asked quietly.
Torven closed his cloudy eyes, letting out a low, shuddering breath.
“The things that took my wings,” the old dragon whispered.
“And the door that was never meant to be opened.”