The morning wind carried a chill through Blackridge's trenches, threading between the stacked slag bricks and half-forged glaives. Riku stood in the forge hall, fitting the final resonance ring onto the third prototype glaive. The metal sang softly beneath his hands—quiet confirmation that the build held, for now.
But his thoughts weren't on weapons. They were on the crater rim.
Two nights ago, his outer scouts—Sira's swift-wing patrols—had glimpsed distant banners in the high fog. Small, barely visible, but real. Someone was watching from beyond the obsidian flats. Sovereigns rarely scouted themselves. This meant territory wars would follow soon.
"Ready the cloaks," Riku said to Kael without looking up. "We're leaving before dusk."
Kael, always efficient, had already packed light armor, dry rations, and smoke-lanterns. Sira met them at the southern ridge, her gear already strapped tight, twin knives resting against her lower back. They traveled light, swift, moving across the cracked stone basin beneath the cover of evening mist.
The crater rim was a jagged ruin of basalt spires and ash drifts, sharp enough to cut leather boots and thick enough to swallow sound. Hours passed in silence except for the hiss of the venting earth beneath their feet. No enemy patrols, no beasts. Just the distant hum of geothermal veins.
When they reached the outer ridge, Riku crouched low. His eyes narrowed. Across the canyon, embedded against the far cliff face, sat a fortress unlike any they'd seen.
It was carved into the blackstone itself, its towers rising in angular ridges like volcanic teeth. Pillars of obsidian slag reinforced the gates, while streams of ventforge vapor hissed from the cracks between the walls—cooling systems, or perhaps power conduits. Sentinels patrolled the ramparts, their silhouettes lean and tall, armed with weapons that glimmered faintly under the rising Blood Moon.
This wasn't some cobbled-together monarch outpost. This was engineered. Efficient. Dangerous.
Kael's whisper broke the stillness. "Nightforge?"
Riku's brow furrowed. The name had surfaced briefly in global chat—a figure called Nightforge who spoke little but whose rare posts hinted at industrial mastery. He hadn't expected them to be this close.
He scanned for banners, insignias, anything personal. But the fortress was silent. No names marked the towers, no colors flew from the ramparts. Only a low mechanical hum filled the canyon air.
They couldn't afford to be spotted.
Riku gestured, and the three moved into the shadow of a broken pillar for cover. But as they adjusted position, Kael's boot scraped loose a shard of blackstone, and it tumbled down the slope.
Instantly, spotlights flared from the fortress towers, slicing through the fog. Automated crossbows shifted on swivels, scanning. Voices called orders from the walls, distorted and cold.
"Stay still," Riku hissed.
They froze beneath the pillar's jagged edge. The lights swept across the slope, missing them by a meter. Slowly, painfully, the beams turned away, the alarms silenced, and the fortress settled back into its eerie calm.
Kael exhaled slowly, wiping sweat from his brow.
"Too close," Sira muttered.
Riku picked up the shard Kael had dislodged, weighing it in his palm. It was dense, heavier than he expected, flecked with molten veins inside the stone. Later, in the safety of the forge, he'd study it.
They waited another hour to be sure no patrols followed, then retreated carefully, retracing their steps through the mist. Only when they crested the southern basin again did Riku breathe normally.
By dawn, they reached Blackridge. The fires were steady, the walls unbreached. No alarms. No distant banners. Still safe, for now.
In the forge hall, under the low hum of the resonance conduits, Riku placed the obsidian shard on his workbench. He turned away to remove his cloak, but when he turned back, his system whispered across his vision.
[Object Refined: Obsidian Slag → Slagblade (Compact Form) | Quality +1]
He stared at the small blade now resting where the shard had been. Short, sharp-edged, balanced for close combat. A tool for shadows, not warfronts.
He didn't smile. He simply picked it up and slid it into his belt sheath.
No one else in the camp noticed the change. And that was how it needed to stay.
That night, while the others slept, he recorded what he'd seen beyond the crater rim. Nightforge's fortress, its obsidian sentinels, its ventforge towers. A rival who could match his pace in innovation.
He didn't share the full details with Kael or Sira. Not yet. Their focus needed to remain on Blackridge's survival.
But the next Blood Moon was closing in, and now he knew—out there was a sovereign whose hands shaped stone and steam into dominion. A shadow waiting to strike.
For now, they would both wait.
But soon, one would have to step forward first.
And Riku intended to be ready.