Rugiel looked at the group as the second golem collapsed to the ground. The golem's body, unable to hold itself together, let the different creatures sewn into the horror slide away from one another freed from their grotesque embrace. Rugiel looked to her brother, who stood breathing heavily, sweat on his brow. He gave her a swift nod and together they scanned the battlefield. The rest of the group was in no better shape.

Dane supported Serene, her face chalk-white from overusing her magic. He reached into her pack, retrieved a bottle of some kind, and gently passed it to her trembling hands. Giles's sword tip rested on the floor, the edge dulled and bloodied. A moment later, his shield thudded to the ground beside him, slipping from limp fingers. The only one who didn't seem shaken was Kara. She stood upright, posture rigid, scanning the chamber with cold precision.

Frost still laced her fingertips, and her breath fogged the air in slow, practiced exhales. Her expression hadn't softened. If anything, she looked more alert now than during the fight. She stood as if not watching for enemies, but for witnesses.

Bauru knelt to one side as he braced one hand against the stone and drew deep steadying breaths. His runes dimmed to faint embers, and his machetes hung loose in tired fingers. He caught Rugiel's eye and gave a slow nod. He was spent, but still here.

Lirian leaned against a broken column, one hand pressed to a wound he hadn't realized he'd taken. Blood darkened his sleeve, but his attention was on the mist beyond the chamber. His eyes didn't blink. He didn't speak. The same chill that clung to Kara now touched them all.

Armand stood with his sword sheathed, one hand resting on the hilt. His surcoat was shredded at the shoulder, but his posture was still noble, still knightly. Only his eyes betrayed his exhaustion as he turned toward the wellspring, narrowing at the crimson light that pulsed like a living wound.

The mist had retreated, but not vanished. It clung to the stones like breath on cold glass, swirling low along the floor. A hush hung over the battlefield—thick, waiting, final. Even the corpses didn't seem to settle.

No one spoke.

No one cheered.

Only Kara stood ready.

Rugiel turned sharply toward the dais.

Stronric stood in the red light of the corrupted wellspring, his axe buried deep in the necromancer's chest. She saw the blade bite to the center, wedged between ribs. The gnoll staggered back, blood pouring in dark rivers down the grotesque robe stitched from stolen flesh.

Stronric didn't wait. He planted his boot squarely against the necromancer's gut and kicked. The body tore free with a sickening crack, flung backward like scrap across the dais. It skidded along the stone, blood smearing in its wake, until it finally lay still.

Bauru whooped. "That's how ye do it!"

Rugiel exhaled hard, heart pounding. "Well struck, my thane!"

But the silence that followed was wrong. The gnoll lay gasping, still alive. Then came the sound. A wet, gurgling laugh. Low. Ragged. Mocking. It echoed strangely, as though coming from every corner of the chamber at once.

"Forged well…" the necromancer rasped, voice shredded and slick with blood. "But not... finished."

The necromancer's hand twitched. Stronric advanced, axe raised for the killing blow.

Too late.

The gnoll drove his claw into his own chest. Blood erupted, thick and black. The wound pulsed, warped, spreading like a split seam in cursed metal. His ribs cracked open. His spine convulsed. Flesh spilled outward, folding and knitting itself into something massive.

Rugiel's eyes widened. "Stronric, fall back!"

The gnoll did not rise.

He transformed.

Muscle surged across his body, layer after layer wrapping around a growing frame. His horns split and grew, curling outward in jagged arcs. His robe burst apart, revealing raw, living sinew that pulsed with infernal energy. His legs reshaped into bestial limbs. Talons gouged into the stone. The staff he once held now fused to his arm, twisting into his bone like a second spine.

Bauru's breath hitched. "By Itshal… that ain't no gnoll."

Rugiel gripped her warhammer tighter, the flame along its haft flaring to life. Her voice was quiet, but iron.

"No," she said. "That's a demon. And Stronric stands alone."

The necromancer's scream, now twisted into something, had rung out hanging in the air like a summons. The hair on the back of Rugiel's neck rose as looked away from the dais, scanning the edges of the chamber.

From the far tunnels, from the vents in the earth, from cracks in the corrupted stone, new demons slithered and roared into the light. Clawed limbs, winged torsos, eyeless things with too many teeth. The battlefield shifted. The odds worsened.

The party looked desperately at Stronric, but he was focused on his own battle. Rugiel, exhausted, watched him too, silently begging him to come save them. A prayer left her lips.

"Dearest of Morgal, help us. The enemy are at the gates. They pound their drums and sing their chants. Send your fire to cleanse this corruption and guide us."

A hand touched her shoulder and pulled her from the moment. Bauru held up a potion, one of the few they'd been given by Stronric.

"Drink it," he said, voice low but firm. "I got my crossbow. Ye need the energy."

He shoved it into her hands.

As her fingers closed around the bottle, her head began to pound. Each movement of her hand caused an echo to ring through hher mind like the strike of an anvil. Boom. Boom. Boom. The world around her stayed the same, yet it felt as if an invisible wall of warmth passed over her. It was as if she opened the door to the forge on a cold mountain day. Then she heard a voice, his voice, Morgal's voice.

"One step, Forgekeeper," Morgal's voice echoed like hammerfall in a cathedral of flame, low and ragged, trembling with heat. "Just one. That's all I ask. Ye can take one more, can't ye?"

She nodded, heart pounding like a drum upon the anvil, and moved.

"Aye… good," he whispered, with the reverence of a priest before the coals. "Now one more. Always one more. That's the secret. That's the truth the weak never grasp." The voice deepened, cracked with madness and molten wonder. "Ye are the steel, Rugiel. Ye are the fire and the hammer both. So strike again! Bleed if ye must! Scream if ye need! But do not stop." The forge god laughed softly then, a sound like iron breaking. "Ye just need to fight a little longer. The worthy always do."

Morgal's voice faded drifting off into the wind as the veil around her lifted as well, but the warmth is gifted, that stayed and with that gift she pocketed the potion and looked at her brother with a new light in her eyes.

Bauru blinked, surprised, then gave a sharp exhale and shook his head. "One more step?" he asked, almost smiling. "I can hear him too."

Rugiel took a deep breath and raised her warhammer high overhead.

"Close ranks!" she called. "We just need to buy Stronric enough time to finish this fight!"

The others, stunned at first, sprang into motion. Weapons lifted. Backs straightened. They ran toward the siblings, forming up with blades drawn and jaws clenched. There was no cheer. No call to glory. Only the will to stand one more time.

Rugiel turned back toward the dais.

The demon loomed, and Stronric stood before it, axe in hand, unmoved.

Stronric

The creature loomed over him.

It no longer resembled anything Stronric could name. Not gnoll. Not necromancer. This was something forged in torment and triumph, in pain and ritual—wrath made flesh. Its body pulsed with muscle bound in coils of blackened sinew. Its veins glowed red, as if magma ran beneath its skin. The horns curled wide, casting long shadows across the dais.

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And in its hand, the staff began to move.

Not as a weapon, not anymore. The bone warped and twisted, pulling back through the creature's fused arm with a sick, wet grind. Flesh reshaped. Veins coiled. Stronric watched as the muscle around the staff thickened, hardened, darkened. The flesh itself turned to black scale, jagged and sharp, reshaping until the staff was no longer a staff but a massive, brutal axe, curved and serrated, forged from living obsidian.

The demon flexed its hand around the new weapon. The axe hissed with heat and power.

It stepped forward, slow and deliberate. The floor cracking beneath its talons. It looked down on Stronric, who remained still, hunched slightly, head lowered.

"Small," the demon said, voice a tremor through stone. "Shaking. You understand, then. You fear what you face."

Stronric's shoulders trembled.

Then he laughed.

Low at first, like the cracking of coal in a hot forge. Then louder, rising like hammer on anvil. It echoed across the chamber, silencing even the battle beyond.

Stronric looked up.

His eyes burned with fury. With joy.

"Aye," he said. "I'm shakin'. Not from fear… from excitement."

The demon tilted its head.

Stronric rolled his shoulders, let the laughter die into a tooth-baring grin.

"Name's Stronric. Wraith-Thane o' the Grudge bearer clans."

He stepped forward, his ironhide ability still pulsed along his skin.

"The family business is killin' demons."

The demon growled low.

"I've waited my whole life to take up the mantle. Every strike I've thrown, every beast I've felled, every time I've bled on stone, it's all of it's been for this. Ancestors, I hope ye do not find me wanting."

He inhaled.

The air around him rippled.

From the blood and the screams, the divine sparks still clung to the wellspring's edge and Stronric could feel it. The small remnants of power left from those passed. Just like in the forest, not too long ago, when he learned to pull in those fragments and forge something harder and stronger. Stronric breathed it in, rage, fire, and the fury of the battle. The echoes of dwarven chants and the agony of corrupted stone. It flowed through him, down into the Inner Forge buried deep in his soul.

He felt it light. The coals of his will blazing to life, and the heat surged. Strength filled his limbs. His blood sang like molten silver. His grip tightened around his axe. Stronric straightened, a mountain rising.

"You are the first true cursed bastard I've faced. And ye won't be the last. But I swear by every honored dead... I'll be the last thing ye see."

The demon roared and raised its axe.

Stronric lunged, his own blade burning with fresh heat.

The second round began.

The demon's axe came down like a collapsing mountain, its obsidian edge cutting the air with a sound like tearing bone. Stronric dove to the side, boots grinding sparks off stone, and rolled just beneath the blow. The impact split the ground where he'd stood, carving a crater with a flash of black flame and broken rock.

Stronric came up in a sprint, low and tight, his grip sure on the haft of his axe. He swung upward in a rising arc, the edge of his weapon carving into the demon's side with a wet crunch. Black ichor sprayed across his face, steaming as it hit his skin.

The demon snarled and twisted. A massive, clawed hand whipped through the air at almost impossible speed and backhanded him mid-strike. Stronric's feet left the ground. He slammed into a cracked column, stone giving way behind him. His ribs screamed. His vision blurred.

He got up anyway.

The demon stomped forward, each step a quake. Its axe dragged behind it, cutting deep grooves in the floor, obsidian shards peeling off and reforming with every motion. Its mouth split too wide, a jagged grin of fangs and fire.

"You bleed. You fall. You lose," it said with a guttural rumble.

Stronric grinned through bloodied teeth. "Ye mistake bleedin' for losin'. That's a manling way of thinkin'."

The demon rushed him.

Stronric dropped low again, boots pounding stone, and darted under the first swing. The axe shrieked past, missing by inches. He rose into a spin and chopped across the demon's hamstring. It howled. The leg buckled slightly, just enough.

Stronric followed through with a shoulder charge, slamming into the beast's side. He might as well have run into a wall of iron. The force rebounded through his body, but the demon staggered half a step. That was all he needed.

He hacked again, and again, at the back of the knee. Bone cracked.

The demon reared back and slammed its foot down.

Stronric wasn't there.

He rolled, kicked off a broken ribcage embedded in the floor, and vaulted behind the monster. His axe arced upward in a clean, punishing blow that buried deep into the demon's lower back. The creature roared and spun, its tail, ridged with blades, sweeping across the dais. It caught Stronric in the hip and hurled him like a stone. He crashed into the far wall, armor splitting at the seam. The breath fled his chest, blood leaking from his nose. But as the dust settled, he rose.

Shaking.

Burning.

Alive.

The forge inside him blazed hotter now, the pain feeding it like bellows.

"Is that all ye got?" he called, voice ragged but steady. "I thought ye were a proper Demon."

The demon roared again, its rage boiling over. It charged, still fast but Stronric could still see the limp caused by his hack job earlier.

Its axe struck in a flurry, one, two, three sweeping arcs of deadly strength. Stronric met them all. His axe clashed against the obsidian titan again and again. Sparks flew. The air warped from the heat of impact. Each blow knocked Stronric back, boots sliding, bones rattling.

But he held.

On the fourth swing, he twisted his grip and parried wide. The demon's arm overextended. Stronric surged forward and head butted the creature's shin.

It staggered.

Stronric planted a boot on the demon's foot and drove his axe up into the groin seam of its armor-like scales.

The scream that followed shattered one of the bone pillars nearby.

Stronric tore the weapon free and ducked as the demon lashed wildly, claws swiping in blind fury. A talon clipped Stronric's side. His vision went white. Blood gushed down his leg, but he refused to fall.

The Inner Forge pulsed.

The runes across Stronric's face glowed faintly beneath torn flesh and blood. Not bright. Not blazing. But steady, like the coals of a fire that refused to die. The iron in his veins thrummed in answer. He breathed deep, slower now, stronger. Pain dulled into background heat, folded into his will.

Then he moved. Not fast, not clean, but like a landslide rolling downhill.

The demon raised its axe to meet him, towering above. The Demon's obsidian blade lifted in triumph. Stronric didn't slow. He hurled himself forward and drove his full weight into the demon's knee. Something snapped, bone or tendon, it didn't matter, and the beast buckled, roaring as it crashed down onto one leg.

Before it could recover, Stronric was climbing.

Stronric hacked into the demon's thick meaty leg, using each buried blow as leverage to pull himself upward. Flesh tore and black blood sprayed, hissing as the liquid made contact his iron skin. The creature thrashed, claws raking the air, but Stronric pressed his body closer to the demons. Its arms slapped at the dwarf wildly, but it could not reach him around its own mass. Stronric's boots found purchase along the cords of muscle and ridges of exposed bone. His axe struck again and again, dragging him higher with every brutal step.

The demon roared, rising to its feet and reeling backward, arms swinging in fury. But Stronric held on, slamming the haft of his axe into the base of its spine and wrenching himself onto the beast's back. The horns loomed above him like twisted towers. From this high, the ground was a distant blur.

Stronric steadied himself and raised his axe.

The first swing struck the side of the demon's neck, but glanced off the hardened scales. The second dug deeper, cracking the flesh. The third strike opened a ragged wound that poured black blood in thick, steaming ropes. Still not enough.

He shifted positions, bracing himself again, and found the gap between collarbone and spine, where the demon's armor had been stretched too thin over too much power. Gritting his teeth, Stronric drove the axe home.

The blade sank deep with a sickening grind. The demon screamed, its entire frame convulsing as the wound tore open. In a fit of pain and fury the demon sent a massive hand clawed aiming for the dwarf with his axe still plunged into its neck, but

Stronric ripped his axe free and leapt.

He twisted in the air, boots smashing into the back of the demon's head, as he rode the beast down as it collapsed. They crashed together onto the cracked stone beside the corrupted wellspring in a storm of dust and splintered bone.

For a long moment, there was only silence.

Stronric rolled clear of the wreckage, coughing blood, his limbs shaking. His ribs burned and his legs barely held, but yet he stood.

The demon twitched.

It dragged one claw toward the stone, trying to rise. Trying to flee.

Stronric walked.

Each step was agony. Each breath felt like fire.

But he didn't stop.

He came to stand beside the monster's head. It tilted toward him, one eye still flickering faint red.

"You... are only... dwarf," it hissed.

Stronric stared down, his face unreadable. "Aye, and I told you." he said, his voice low and rough. "Every strike I've thrown, every beast I've felled, every time I've bled on stone, its all been for this."

Stronric lifted his axe and, without another word, brought it down.

The final blow split the back of the demon's skull. The sound was not of bone breaking, but of something greater unraveling, like metal giving way after too much strain. The body spasmed once, then stilled. The light in its eye guttered and died.

The obsidian scales dulled.

The blood stopped flowing.

The forge-fire in Stronric's chest dimmed, banked but not extinguished.

He stood over the corpse, chest heaving, arms heavy, but unbowed.

Behind him, the battle still raged. Demons still howled. But here, at the heart of the corruption, Stronric Wraith-Thane had faced the impossible. Stronric Wraith-Thane, son of the thanes of the Dragon Ridge, born of fire and war, had stood alone against the darkness.

And won.

He planted his feet beside the fallen demon and raised his axe high overhead. His bloodied arms trembled, not from weakness, but from the weight of what had passed. The runes along his skin still flickered faintly with molten red light.

He tilted his head back and roared, not to the enemy, not to his kin but to the heavens themselves.

"Hear me, Thoranthana!"

The cry echoed across the chamber, rising through the cracked stone, through the red-lit mist, into the high vault of the corrupted mountain.

"I am Stronric Wraith-Thane!"

His voice rang like iron across an anvil, each word sharp and true.

"Son of Thornmere and Marbella Wraith-Thane, clansmen of the Grudge Bearers!"

The ground beneath his feet vibrated, as if the mountain itself listened.

"Leader of the Free Kinsmen! Thane of Hearth Fire!"

His axe trembled in his grip, the steel ringing faintly with resonance. His breath came hard, but his voice did not waver.

"Hear me, Thoranthana, I give to you this victory!"

He slammed the head of his axe against the stone, the echo cracking outward like a hammer strike on a god's forge.

"I give to you my blood…"

It dripped from his hands, from his wounds, pooling beside the corpse of the demon.

"…and my oath."

The final words left him not as a shout, but as something deeper. A vow. A forge-sealed truth.

Silence followed.

The air around him pulsed.

Not with noise, but with presence.

Whether the others heard it or not, Stronric did, a low, rolling hum, like the breathing of the mountain. Like the slow heartbeat of the forge-father himself.

Thoranthana had heard.

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