The Echo of the Anvil

The Echo Of the Anvil

Part I: The Cold That Bites

The cold on the Widow-Maker Glacier did not simply freeze you; it tried to erase you. It was a patient, ancient malice that sought to scrub the heat from your blood and turn your bones into just another vein of the ice.

Bram shifted his weight, the leather of his boots creaking against the permafrost. He was an initiate of the Iron Bear Clan, broad-shouldered and thick-bearded even at his young age, but up here, under the bruised purple sky of the Iron-Pine Peaks, he felt small. He felt like a fleck of ash waiting to be swept away.

He stood on the ledge known as "The Razor," a jagged spur of black rock that jutted out over the pass leading toward the Quiet Grave. His task was the Mourning Watch. It was the final test for any initiate wishing to join the Vanguard—the elite shield-brothers of Hammerdeep. You stood alone for twenty-four hours in the worst weather the north could throw at you, with nothing but your pike, your furs, and your memories.

If you came back, you were Vanguard. If you didn't, you were a warning.

Bram gripped his heavy iron pike. The metal was wrapped in leather, but the cold still seeped through his gloves, aching in his knuckles. He closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the wind scream through the valley below.

"My blood for the stone, my soul for the forge," Bram whispered into his scarf.

It was the Silent Oath of the Mountain, the prayer every Vanguard took before battle. Bram wasn't in battle, but the glacier felt like an enemy all the same. He reached a hand inside his heavy bear-fur coat, his fingers brushing against the rough iron disc hanging around his neck.

It was a practice medallion—a simple slug of pig-iron stamped with the clan sigil. It was heavy, cold, and meaningless. It was a placeholder for the true relic he coveted: the Ember Vigil Medallion.

The elders spoke of the Ember Vigil with hushed reverence. It was said to be a disc of dark, cooled magma set in iron, containing the last ember from a hero’s Soulforge pyre. It wasn't just jewelry; it was a reliquary. The lore claimed it granted the wearer a "measure of the fallen's strength" in moments of great fear.

Bram had plenty of fear right now. He just didn't have the medal.

"Focus, Bram," he muttered, shaking the ice from his beard. "Watch the line. Hold the pass."

He looked down at the chain-line—the massive iron links bolted into the rock that marked the safe path back to the outpost. It was his lifeline. As long as he could see the chain, he wasn't lost.

But the weather in the Iron-Pine Peaks obeyed no laws of nature. The wind died suddenly. The screaming gale that had battered him for six hours vanished, replaced by a silence so profound it made his ears ring.

The Sky-Fire—the aurora—flared overhead. Usually, it was a comforting ribbon of green and violet, but tonight it dipped low, licking the tops of the ice spires with tongues of sickly yellow light.

The silence was wrong. It wasn't empty; it was heavy. It pressed against Bram’s chest.

Then he heard it. A wet, gurgling sound. Like water rushing through a choked drain.

Slush. Crunch. Slush.

Bram leveled his pike. "Who goes there? Identify!"

His voice sounded thin, swallowed instantly by the vastness of the glacier.

The shadows at the base of the Razor began to move. They didn't detach from the rock; they poured out of it. A mass of white and grey slush coalesced twenty yards down the trail. It churned and roiled, pulling chunks of ice and snow into itself until it formed a shape that triggered a primal alarm in Bram's hindbrain.

It looked vaguely like a wolf, if a wolf were the size of a siege wagon and made of living glacier ice.

A Glacier-Gheist.

Bram’s breath hitched. He had heard the stories from the logistics runners—old Yorik and the Ironkin warriors who spoke of monsters that ate magic and hated fire. He had thought they were exaggerating to scare the fresh recruits.

The beast finished forming. It stood on four massive legs of compacted ice. Its eyes were not biological; they were hollow pits of blue cold-fire that burned with a hateful intelligence. It opened its maw, revealing rows of jagged icicles for teeth, and let out a hiss that smelled of stagnant water and frozen graves.

It wasn't hunting for meat. It was hunting for heat. And on this frozen rock, Bram was the hottest thing for miles.

"Come on then!" Bram roared, the fear turning into the hot, sharp clarity of combat. "I am Iron Bear! I am the wall!"

The Gheist charged. It moved with a terrifying, fluid speed, flowing over the uneven ground like a landslide.

Bram braced the butt of his pike against a crack in the stone. He didn't try to dodge; you didn't dodge a landslide. You broke it.

The monster leaped. Bram thrust upward, aiming for the center of the chest where the blue light pulsed brightest.

CRACK.

The pike struck true. The iron tip punched through the ice-armor of the beast’s chest, burying itself a foot deep.

It should have killed it. It should have shattered the core.

Instead, the pike stuck. The ice around the wound instantly froze tighter, clamping onto the metal weapon. The Gheist didn't even slow down. It slammed into Bram with the force of a falling boulder.

Bram was thrown backward. The air left his lungs in a pained whoosh as he hit the rock wall of the ledge. His pike was ripped from his hands, left dangling from the chest of the monster.

The Gheist landed heavily, shaking the ledge. It looked at the pike sticking out of its chest, then looked at Bram. The ice around the weapon shifted, turning into liquid slush before hardening again, spitting the iron pike out onto the ground with a metallic clang.

The wound sealed itself in seconds.

"Right," Bram wheezed, scrambling to his feet. "Takes more than a poke."

He drew the heavy war-axe from his belt. It was a good weapon, forged in the deep fires of Hammerdeep, but against this... it felt like a toy.

The Gheist prowled closer. The cold radiating off it was intense enough to crack the leather of Bram's brigandine.

"My blood for the stone," Bram gritted out, stepping forward.

He swung. The axe bit into the creature’s foreleg, shattering ice. The Gheist roared—a sound of grinding glaciers—and swiped with a massive claw.

Bram caught the blow on his shield. The shield shattered. The impact lifted him off his feet and tossed him toward the edge of the Razor.

He flailed, his boots scraping against the ice, searching for purchase. His heel caught on a root of black rock, but his momentum was too great. He tipped backward over the lip of the crevasse.

Gravity took him.

Bram fell. The wind rushed past his ears. He didn't scream; he was too busy trying not to die. He slammed into a sloping wall of ice twenty feet down, slid, bounced off a protrusion of rock, and tumbled into the darkness.

He hit the bottom with a bone-jarring thud into a pile of deep, loose snow.

Black spots danced in his vision. He lay there for a moment, gasping, waiting for the pain to tell him what was broken. His left shoulder throbbed. His ribs felt like a bag of gravel. But he could move.

He sat up, coughing snow. He was in a fissure, a deep crack in the glacier’s skin. The walls rose up fifty feet on either side, sheer blue ice that glowed faintly with the filtered light of the aurora.

Above him, at the lip of the crevasse, the blue eyes of the Gheist appeared. It peered down, hungry and patient. It began to climb down, digging its claws into the ice wall. Crunch. Crunch.

Bram scrambled backward. He needed a weapon. He needed a way out.

His hand brushed against something hard in the snow. Not rock. Metal.

He dug it out. It was a helmet.

Bram froze. It wasn't just any helmet. It was an ancient Vanguard helm, the iron pitted and scarred, the crest sheared off by some long-forgotten blow.

He looked around. The bottom of the fissure wasn't empty.

He was in a graveyard.

Dozens of bodies lay half-buried in the ice and snow. They weren't recent. They were preserved by the cold, their armor dating back centuries. Some wore the crest of the Iron Bear, others the Wolf or the Raven. They were the fallen sentinels of the Mourning Watch, the ones who hadn't made it back to the chain-line.

Bram crawled toward the nearest figure. It was a dwarf seated against the ice wall, his arms folded over his chest in eternal repose. He looked peaceful, despite the frozen wound in his side.

"Ancestors preserve us," Bram whispered.

He saw a glint of gold on the fallen warrior’s chest.

Bram reached out, his hand trembling. He brushed the frost away from the warrior’s neck.

Hanging there, on a heavy iron chain, was a medallion.

It wasn't a practice slug of pig-iron. It was a disc of black, volcanic stone, rough and porous, set in a rim of battered steel. In the center of the black stone, a faint, rhythmic heat pulsed against Bram's glove.

It was warm. After a hundred years in the ice, it was warm.

An Ember Vigil Medallion.

The lore crashed into Bram's mind. Contains the last ember from a hero’s Soulforge pyre... grants the wearer a measure of the fallen's strength.

Above him, the Gheist let out a shriek. It was halfway down the wall. It had smelled the heat of the medallion.

Bram looked at the dead warrior. He looked at the monster descending to consume him.

"I am sorry, brother," Bram whispered to the corpse. "But I have need of your fire."

He unclasped the chain. The moment the medallion left the dead dwarf's neck, the body seemed to sigh, crumbling slightly into dust and snow, its vigil finally ended.

Bram didn't hesitate. He pulled the practice medallion from his own neck and threw it into the snow. He placed the Ember Vigil around his neck.

The stone settled against his chest, right over his heart.

THUMP.

It wasn't a sound; it was a sensation. A shockwave of heat kicked through Bram’s ribs. The cold vanished. The pain in his shoulder faded into a dull background noise.

His vision sharpened. The blue walls of the crevasse seemed to snap into high contrast. He didn't just feel his own fear anymore. He felt... something else.

He felt the memory of a thousand hammer strikes. He felt the grit of the forge. He felt the stubborn, immovable refusal to yield that defined the Vanguard.

"Get up," a voice seemed to whisper in his blood. It wasn't his voice. It was deep, gravelly, and amused. "Get up, initiate. We have work to do."

Bram stood. He grabbed his axe from where it had fallen in the snow. It felt light in his hand, weightless.

The Glacier-Gheist reached the bottom of the fissure. It dropped the last few feet, landing with a heavy whump in the snow. It reared up, towering over Bram, its blue eyes fixated on the glowing heat of the medallion.

It hissed, opening its jaws to snap Bram in half.

Bram didn't flinch. He didn't step back.

He stepped forward.

"You want the fire?" Bram growled. His voice echoed in the crevasse, deeper than before, carrying the resonance of the mountain itself.

He swung the axe. This time, he didn't just hack at the ice. He aimed with the precision of a master smith finding the flaw in the metal.

"Come and take it."

Part II: The Breaker's Rhythm

The Glacier-Gheist did not roar this time. It lunged with a silence that was far worse—a sudden, rushing vacuum of sound as a thousand pounds of living ice sought to crush the life from the small, warm thing standing in its way.

Bram should have been terrified. He was an initiate. He had barely mastered the shield wall, let alone the complex footwork of a duelist. But as the monster descended, the Ember Vigil Medallion against his chest pulsed with a hard, rhythmic thud. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

It wasn't just heat; it was a tempo.

"Step left, lad," the gravelly voice whispered in his mind. It sounded distinct now, echoing not in his ears but in the marrow of his bones. "Don't dance with it. You're a Bear, not a Raven."

Bram obeyed without thinking. He didn't scramble; he pivoted. He planted his back foot into the deep snow, driving his heel down until it hit the solid ice of the fissure floor, and swung his body out of the direct path of the Gheist’s jaws.

The creature’s head slammed into the snow where he had been standing a heartbeat before.

"Now," the voice commanded. "The neck. Between the plates. Strike true."

Bram brought the axe down. He didn't chop; he drove the heel of the blade into the junction where the Gheist’s massive shoulder met its neck. It was a miner’s strike, designed to split a seam, not sever a limb.

CRACK.

The sound was like a gunshot in the enclosed space. A massive slab of the creature’s ice-armor sheared off, sliding away to reveal the pulsing, translucent core beneath. The Gheist shrieked—a high, discordant vibration that rattled Bram’s teeth—and thrashed backward, spraying slush and acidic bile.

Bram raised his arm to shield his face, but the medallion flared hotter, projecting a subtle wave of warmth that vaporized the freezing bile before it could touch his skin.

"Good arm," the voice grunted. "A bit sloppy on the follow-through, but it has weight. You mine in the deep levels, boy?"

"I... I was a tunnel-runner," Bram gasped, backing up as the Gheist recovered. He watched in horror as the ice on the creature’s shoulder began to knit back together. The loose snow around them swirled upward, drawn by an invisible magnetism to patch the wound. "It’s healing! I can't kill it!"

"It’s ice," the voice scoffed. "Ice doesn't heal. It just changes shape. Stop trying to kill it and start trying to break it. It’s bad rock, initiate. Nothing more."

The Gheist shook itself, sending a spray of icicles clattering against the canyon walls. Its blue eyes flared brighter, fixated on the medallion. It understood now. The prey wasn't just meat; it was carrying a spark of the Soulforge.

The monster didn't charge this time. It slammed its massive front paws into the ground.

A shockwave of frost rippled through the floor of the crevasse. The snow beneath Bram’s boots turned instantly to slick, black ice.

Bram slipped, his arms windmilling.

The Gheist seized the moment. It opened its maw and unleashed a torrent of freezing vapor—the Breath of the Void. It was a cloud of absolute entropy, cold enough to snap steel.

"Anchor!" the voice roared.

Bram dropped to one knee. He didn't try to shield himself with his arms. Driven by an instinct that wasn't his own, he slammed the blade of his axe deep into the ice between his knees and hunkered down, pressing his chest—and the medallion—against the haft of the weapon.

Heat.

The medallion didn't just warm him; it erupted. A sphere of golden, radiant heat expanded from Bram’s chest. It wasn't fire—fire needed air. This was the heat of the deep earth, the stubborn, crushing warmth of the magma core.

The freezing vapor hit the golden sphere and hissed, dissipating into harmless steam. Bram peered through the fog, unharmed, though the leather of his boots was rimed with frost.

"You're burning bright, ancestor," Bram whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Who are you?"

The voice laughed. It was a deep, booming sound, full of mead and violence.

"I am the one who cracked the Widow-Maker the first time," the voice rumbled. "I am the Stonehowler who taught the Ravens that a pickaxe is louder than a song. I am Torv."

Bram’s eyes went wide. Torv. The legendary Stonehowler of the Iron Bear Clan. The stories said he had brought down a glacier to escape the Obsidian Serpents. They said he had fought a Frost Wurm with nothing but a mining pick and a bad attitude .

He was wearing Torv’s ember. The body in the snow wasn't just a sentry; it was a legend who had died on the watch.

"Torv the Breaker?" Bram stammered. "But... you died centuries ago."

"I stopped moving centuries ago," Torv corrected. "There is a difference. And right now, you are moving too slow. On your feet! It’s coming for the spark!"

The Gheist, frustrated by the failure of its breath weapon, lunged through the steam. It abandoned tactics for brute force, swinging a claw the size of a door.

Bram rolled. He was faster now, the phantom strength of the Stonehowler flooding his limbs. He didn't feel the fatigue of the fall or the bite of the cold. He felt invincible.

He scrambled up the side of the ice wall, his boots finding purchase on tiny imperfections in the surface that he wouldn't have noticed an hour ago. He was five feet off the ground when the Gheist slammed into the wall below him, shaking the entire crevasse.

"Drop on it!" Torv commanded.

Bram pushed off the wall. He fell, bringing the axe down in a two-handed overhead arc.

"STONE SONG!" Bram screamed, though he had never learned the technique.

The axe struck the Gheist’s skull. It didn't just cut; it rang. A massive, resonant CLANG vibrated through the creature’s body. The impact sent a spiderweb of fractures racing through the semi-translucent armor of the beast’s head.

The Gheist staggered, drunk on the concussion.

Bram landed in the snow, rolling to his feet.

"Hah!" Torv cheered in his head. "That’s the rhythm! Find the fault line! Hit it again!"

But the Gheist was learning. It didn't turn to face him. Instead, its tail—a heavy, serrated lash of ice—whipped around with blinding speed.

It caught Bram in the chest.

The impact was like being hit by a siege ram. The air left his lungs instantly. He flew backward, slamming into the opposite wall of the fissure. He slid down, gasping, tasting blood.

The medallion flared, sending a jolt of pain and adrenaline through his system to keep him conscious. But the blow had done damage. Bram could feel his ribs grating against each other.

"Get up," Torv growled, less amused now. "Pain is just information. It tells you you aren't dead yet."

Bram struggled to his knees. The Gheist had turned. It was limping slightly—the crack in its skull hadn't healed yet—but it was advancing. It loomed over him, blocking out the aurora.

"It’s too big," Bram wheezed. "I can't break it fast enough. It heals too fast."

"It’s drawing power from the ice," Torv observed. "It’s an elemental. As long as it touches the glacier, it has infinite armor. You have to sever the connection."

"How?" Bram asked, gripping his axe with trembling hands. "It is the glacier."

"Then you have to break the floor," Torv said. "When I fought the Wurm, I didn't kill it. I dropped the ceiling on it. Here... we drop the floor."

Bram looked down. The snow at the bottom of the fissure was deep, but beneath it was solid blue ice.

"This is the Quiet Grave," Torv said. "Deep beneath us is the hollow where the old meltwater runs. It’s a drum, boy. A hollow drum. If you hit it hard enough, in the right spot..."

"I'm an initiate," Bram said. "I don't know the High Note of Fracture. I can't sing the stone apart."

"I can," Torv said. "But I don't have a throat. I have yours. And I have that axe. It’s forged of star-metal alloy, isn't it? Good resonance."

The Gheist roared, rearing up for a final, crushing blow.

"Listen to me," Torv’s voice became sharp, commanding. "I am going to hum the frequency. You are going to channel it through the medallion into your arms. When I say strike, you hit the ground. Not the beast. The ground. You put everything you have, every drop of fear, every ounce of heat, into that strike."

"What happens then?"

"Then we fall," Torv said grimly. "And we hope you bounce."

The Gheist descended. The massive claws came down.

"NOW!"

Bram didn't look at the monster. He closed his eyes. He focused on the medallion burning against his skin. He let the foreign, ancient rhythm of the Stonehowler take over his muscles. He felt the vibration start in his chest, a low hum that matched the natural frequency of the ice beneath his feet.

Hummmmmmmmm.

He raised the axe. He screamed—not a word, but a note. A raw, guttural roar that harmonized with the medallion.

He drove the axe into the ice at his feet.

CRACK-BOOM.

It wasn't the sound of metal on ice. It was the sound of a cathedral collapsing.

The vibration traveled instantly from the axe head into the stress lines of the fissure floor. The latent energy of the glacier, held in tension for a thousand years, released all at once.

The floor of the crevasse didn't just crack; it disintegrated.

The Gheist’s claws were inches from Bram’s face when the world dropped out from under them.

The monster shrieked as its footing vanished. It scrambled, claws tearing uselessly at the air.

Bram fell with it.

He plummeted into the dark, surrounded by falling blocks of ice the size of houses. The wind roared. The light of the aurora vanished, replaced by the crushing black of the deep glacier.

"Hold on to the axe!" Torv shouted in the dark.

Bram clutched the weapon to his chest, curling into a ball as the debris of the Quiet Grave rained down around him. He fell past the howling Gheist, past the layers of history frozen in the walls, down into the crushing depths where the ice met the mountain's roots.

He hit something hard. Sloped.

He slid. He tumbled. He slammed into a wall of wet, slick rock and stopped.

Silence returned.

Bram lay in the dark. He was alive. He checked his limbs. Pain, everywhere, but everything moved. The air here was damp and smelled of ancient dust.

The medallion glowed softly, casting a weak orange light in the cavern.

Bram stood up, holding the axe.

"Torv?" he whispered.

"Still here," the voice grunted. "Good hit. A bit messy. But effective."

A sound echoed in the darkness above. A sliding, scraping sound. Then a heavy, wet thud nearby.

The Gheist had survived the fall.

Bram raised the medallion, using its light to scan the room.

They weren't just in a hole. They were in a cavern. The walls were smooth, carved not by nature, but by tools. Massive, geometric pillars rose up into the gloom.

"Where are we?" Bram breathed.

"Well," Torv said, his voice sounding surprisingly solemn. "If the legends are true... and I usually am... we just found the back door to the Hall of the Lost."

The Gheist roared from the shadows. It was broken, missing limbs, its ice-armor shattered, revealing a core of swirling, angry blue energy. But it was reforming fast, drawing moisture from the damp air.

And here, in the dark, Bram saw something else. The Gheist wasn't alone.

In the flickering light of the medallion, Bram saw rows of statues lining the walls. But as the Gheist’s blue light washed over them, the statues turned their heads.

They weren't statues.

They were the Hollow Legion. The failed experiments of the old necromancers, sealed away beneath the ice. And the Gheist’s presence—the sheer amount of Void energy it leaked—was waking them up.

"Torv," Bram said, his voice trembling. "There are dozens of them."

"Aye," Torv said. "And we have one axe. This is going to be a good story, lad. Assuming we live to tell it."

Part III: The Silence of the Stone

The Hall of the Lost was not silent. It was filled with the sound of grinding stone and the hiss of waking magic.

The statues—the Hollow Legion—stepped off their pedestals. They were crude things, carved from black basalt by necromancers who lacked the artistry of the Voidwalkers but possessed all of their malice. They were golems of dead stone, animated by the ambient Void energy pouring off the broken Glacier-Gheist.

There were fifty of them.

"Right," Torv said in Bram’s head. The old Stonehowler sounded terrifyingly calm. "Standard Vanguard odds. Two to one, if you count my spirit as a second dwarf."

"I count fifty to one!" Bram yelled, backing up until his boots hit the base of a massive pillar.

"Details," Torv scoffed. "Look at them, lad. They’re heavy. Top-heavy. Bad center of gravity. They aren't soldiers; they’re moving rocks. And what do we do with rocks?"

"We break them," Bram said, gripping the axe.

The first golem charged. It swung a stone fist capable of crushing a helmet like an eggshell.

Bram didn't block. The Ember Vigil Medallion flared, flooding his muscles with heat. He stepped inside the golem’s guard, moving faster than stone could react.

"Knee joint!" Torv barked.

Bram swung low. The star-metal axe bit into the stone knee. CRACK. The leg sheared off. The golem toppled forward, crashing into the floor with a sound like a collapsing wall.

Bram didn't stop to admire his work. He spun, using the momentum to drive the spike of his axe into the chest of the second golem.

"Heart-stone!" Torv guided him. "Twist and pull!"

Bram wrenched the axe. A chunk of glowing green crystal popped out of the golem’s chest. The magic died instantly, and the statue became just a statue again, freezing mid-swing.

But there were too many. They formed a circle, closing in with the relentless patience of the grave.

And behind them, the Glacier-Gheist was reforming. It had pulled moisture from the damp cavern air to rebuild its shattered limbs. It loomed over the golems, a king of ice commanding an army of stone. It roared, and the golems surged forward.

Bram fought. He fought with the fury of the Iron Bear and the skill of a veteran, borrowed from the medallion. But for every golem he shattered, two more took its place. He took a glancing blow to the shoulder that numbed his arm. A stone fist grazed his ribs, knocking the wind out of him.

The heat in the medallion was spiking. It wasn't a steady pulse anymore; it was a frantic hammering.

" The metal is getting too hot, lad," Torv warned. "The ember is waking up. It thinks it’s back in the Soulforge. If it cracks the casing, you’ll burn from the inside out."

"Better to burn than be crushed!" Bram grunted, ducking a stone sword.

"Debatable," Torv said. "I prefer neither. We need an exit strategy. Look at the ceiling."

Bram risked a glance upward. The cavern roof was lost in shadow, but he could see massive icicles hanging like chandeliers, glowing faintly with the blue light of the glacier above.

"We fell through a vent," Torv noted. "But this hall wasn't built without a door. Look at the air currents. The steam from the Gheist... it's drifting."

Bram watched the vapor rising from the monster. It was being pulled toward the far end of the hall, behind the Gheist.

"There's a draft," Bram realized. "A tunnel."

"Go!" Torv shouted.

Bram shoved a golem into its neighbor, creating a momentary gap. He sprinted. He didn't run away from the Gheist; he ran toward it.

The monster swiped at him. Bram slid on the slick floor, passing under the massive ice claw. He scrambled up the pile of debris behind the beast and saw it—a massive archway, blocked by a portcullis of rusted iron bars.

Beyond the bars, he could feel fresh air. The exit.

"It's sealed!" Bram yelled, rattling the bars. They were thick as his arm.

The Gheist turned. It ignored the golems—they were its servants now. It focused entirely on Bram. It opened its mouth to unleash the Breath of the Void again.

Bram was trapped against the gate.

"We can't break the iron," Torv said. "Not in time. But we don't need to break the gate, Bram. We need to break the room."

Bram looked at the massive stone pillars supporting the cavern roof. They were cracked, damaged by centuries of shifting ice.

"You want to bring the mountain down on us?" Bram asked, his voice trembling.

"Not on us," Torv corrected. "On them. The Gheist is made of ice. The golems are made of stone. They are heavy. But sound? Sound travels through everything."

The Gheist inhaled, gathering the freezing vapor.

"The Song of the Iron Spine," Torv said. "The Serpents used it to hold a tunnel up. But if you sing it backward... if you sing the Dissonance..."

"I don't know the song!" Bram screamed.

"I do!" Torv roared in his mind. "Put the axe against the gate. The iron will act as a tuning fork. I will push the rhythm through you. But Bram... this is going to hurt. The medallion can't handle this much power. It will shatter."

"If it shatters, the ember dies," Bram whispered. "You die."

"I'm already dead, boy!" Torv laughed. "I'm just an echo. A loud one. Now, do it! For the Vanguard!"

Bram pressed the blade of his axe against the rusted iron bars. He closed his eyes.

He surrendered to the presence in the medallion. He didn't just borrow Torv’s strength; he let the ancient Stonehowler take the wheel.

Bram’s mouth opened. A sound came out that no human throat should have been able to produce. It wasn't a scream. It was a low, grinding vibration that matched the resonant frequency of the cavern’s basalt pillars.

HUMMMMM-CRACK.

The sound amplified. The iron gate vibrated violently, turning Bram’s bones to jelly. The axe hummed like a plucked string.

The Gheist fired its breath weapon. The freezing cloud rushed toward Bram.

But the sound wave hit it first.

The sonic vibration shattered the cohesion of the vapor. The cloud dispersed instantly.

The sound wave kept going. It hit the pillars.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

Spiderwebs of light appeared on the stone columns. The golems stopped moving, their stone bodies vibrating until they simply fell apart, crumbling into piles of gravel.

The Gheist shrieked. Its ice body was rigid. The vibration tore through it.

SHATTER.

The monster exploded. It didn't melt; it detonated into a million shards of diamond-dust, blown apart by the sonic pressure.

Then the roof gave way.

Tons of ice and rock crashed down into the center of the hall, burying the remains of the Gheist and the Legion.

Bram didn't watch. He felt the medallion against his chest grow white-hot. The iron casing cracked.

"Hold the line, initiate," Torv whispered, his voice fading. "Hold..."

The axe blade, vibrating at impossible speeds, sheared through the rusted iron bars of the gate. The portcullis collapsed.

Bram fell backward into the tunnel beyond.

A cloud of dust and snow billowed out, sealing the Hall of the Lost behind him forever.

Bram lay on the cold stone floor of the tunnel. The silence returned.

He reached for his chest.

The medallion was gone. The chain had melted. In the snow beside him lay a broken circle of iron and a dull, grey stone. The heat was gone. The ember had burned itself out.

"Torv?" Bram whispered.

There was no answer. The echo was gone.

Bram was alone. He was bruised, bleeding, and freezing. But he was alive.

He looked up the tunnel. He saw a faint grey light. Daybreak.

"My blood for the stone," Bram rasped, forcing himself to his feet. He used the axe as a crutch. "My soul for the forge."

He began to walk.

The sun over the Iron-Pine Peaks was blindingly bright.

A relief patrol from the Iron Bear Clan crested the ridge of the Quiet Grave. Leading them was Haldor, a veteran warrior with a barrel chest and a scar running down his cheek.

"Check the chain-line!" Haldor shouted over the wind. "The storm was bad last night. If the initiate lost the path, we're digging for a body."

"Sergeant!" a scout yelled from the pass. "Movement!"

Haldor squinted against the glare.

A figure was walking up the trail from the lower glacier. He was covered in black dust and blue slime. His armor was shredded. He dragged a war-axe that looked like it had been used to chop through a mountain.

It was Bram.

He didn't wave. He didn't collapse. He walked to the chain-line, grabbed a link with his free hand, and stood there, swaying slightly.

Haldor ran down the slope. "Bram! By the ancestors, you look like you wrestled a troll!"

Bram looked at the sergeant. His eyes were haunted, older than they had been yesterday. But they were steady.

"Report," Haldor commanded, though his voice was gentle.

Bram reached into his pocket. He pulled out two things.

First, the practice medallion he had thrown away.

Second, the shattered remains of the Ember Vigil Medallion. The iron rim was twisted, and the stone in the center was grey and dead.

Haldor stared at the broken relic. He recognized it. He looked at the fissure in the glacier below, now filled with fresh avalanche debris.

"Where did you find this?" Haldor asked softly.

"In the ice," Bram rasped. "He was... loud."

Haldor looked at the initiate. He saw the way Bram held the axe—not like a recruit, but with the casual familiarity of a master. He saw the set of his jaw.

"The watch is ended, initiate," Haldor said. He placed a hand on Bram’s shoulder. "You held the line."

"No," Bram said. He looked back at the glacier, where the Hall of the Lost lay buried. "We held the line."

Bram collapsed.

They carried him back to Skaldenhold on a shield, the highest honor for a returning warrior.

He slept for three days. When he woke, the healers told him his ribs were knitting and his frostbite would heal, though he would always have a sensitivity to the cold in his left hand.

On the fourth day, he was summoned to the Great Hall.

Jarl Karn Torstein sat on the throne of ice. The Hall was full of Vanguard veterans.

Bram stood before them. He wore fresh leathers, but he felt naked without the heavy warmth of the medallion against his chest.

"Initiate Bram," the Jarl rumbled. "The scouts found the site of your battle. The Quiet Grave is gone. Collapsed. They say it looks like the mountain itself tried to swallow the valley."

"There was a Gheist, my Lord," Bram said. "And... others."

"We found the traces of the Void," Karn nodded. "You faced a nightmare alone."

"Not alone," Bram said.

He stepped forward and placed the broken medallion on the table in front of the Jarl.

Karn picked it up. He ran a thumb over the twisted iron.

"This belonged to Torv," Karn said, his voice filled with wonder. "Torv the Breaker. He was lost three centuries ago."

"He sends his regards," Bram said. "And he says the ale in the Hall of Honor better be cold."

A ripple of laughter went through the room. It was the laughter of relief, of respect.

"He earned his rest," Karn said. "And you have earned yours."

Karn stood. He reached into a wooden box held by a steward.

He pulled out a new medallion. It was pristine, the iron polished, the ember in the center glowing with a fresh, steady heat.

"Bram of the Iron Bears," Karn announced. "Kneel."

Bram knelt.

Karn placed the Ember Vigil Medallion around his neck.

"You went into the dark a boy," Karn said. "You return a Vanguard. Wear this. Let it remind you that you are never alone. The strength of the fallen is with you."

Bram felt the warmth of the new ember against his chest. It was different from Torv’s. It was quieter, steadier. It didn't roar; it hummed.

"My blood for the stone," Bram whispered.

"My soul for the forge," the gathered Vanguard roared in response.

Bram stood. He looked out the heavy ice windows of the fortress. The sun was setting over the Iron-Pine Peaks, turning the snow to gold.

He touched the medallion.

Somewhere, deep in the ice, the Hall of the Lost was silent. The Gheist was gone. The Legion was dust.

And Torv was finally quiet.

Bram smiled.

"Rest easy, Breaker," he thought. "I'll take the next watch."

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