The coals in the hearth had burned low, casting long, amber streaks across the floor. Stronric sat at the stone table, arms braced against his knees, staring into the fire as if it might offer an answer.

"You said Rune Smithing," Stronric finally murmured. Not a question, not a protest, just a quiet acknowledgment of something weighty.

The fire that raged in Stronric's heart earlier had begun to dim. When the ghost had first spoken of runes, Stronric had thrashed against the cage that held him, fists clenched, jaw locked. He hadn't listened, not truly. He'd been too focused on escape, on the injustice of being penned in while his kin faced the dark without him.

But now, with food in his belly and silence to think, that heat was cooling into something steadier. Something he could shape.

Behind him, Dovren moved with quiet efficiency, sorting through a bundle of brittle old journals.

"That's not something ye say lightly," Stronric said. "Not to a dwarf."

Dovren looked up.

Stronric didn't turn to face him, but his voice sharpened slightly repeating himself. "That's not something ye say lightly. Not to a dwarf."

The ghost nodded once. "I know."

"I'm no Runesmith," Stronric said, softer now. "Never was. Never tried. I know what I am. A herald. A warrior. A shield for my kin. But if you're serious..."

"I am." Dovren replied instantly.

Stronric drew a slow breath. The idea didn't frighten him. It humbled him though he felt some shame for his actions. There were crafts among dwarves that could not be taken lightly, and Rune Smithing was one of them. It wasn't just shaping stone or metal it was binding meaning into the bones of the world. Words that outlived the hand that wrote them.

To be told he might learn it?

It was an honor.

And a burden.

He finally stood, slowly, as if rising from the weight of his thoughts more than the bench. His ribs still ached. His muscles still remembered the demon's fists and the necromancer's wrath. But none of that mattered now.

"I need to get back to them," he said.

"I know," Dovren replied. "But you can't. Not yet. And until then, you can choose to wait and hope they find you… or to work."

Stronric's jaw tightened. He turned and met the ghost's eyes. "Then I'll work."

Dovren gave a small nod and gestured toward the door. "Then start with this. Gather stone. The call of the Rune is not as simple as one might think. A rune's power can change dramatically depending on the material it's forged in. A halite can be fortified, but that would be a waste. Halite is better for preserving water, for keeping food safe. Simple, yes, but valuable. A goat farmer might prize it more than a king prizes gold."

Stronric raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

Dovren opened a thick leatherbound book and slid it across the table. Its pages were etched with diagrams of different stones, from rugged granite to soft chalk, each annotated in fine script.

"If you wanted to craft a gate that could withstand an army, halite's not your friend, but granite is. Try using granite to salt your food, though, and you'll die with dry meat and no teeth. No stone is valueless. Each has a purpose."

He looked back up at Stronric, eyes gleaming faintly behind ghostly spectacles.

"Just like dwarves. Every Rune Smith has a preference for what speaks best to their hands, their minds. Isn't that right, master of the axe and not the spear?"

Stronric gave a faint grunt of acknowledgment. He closed the book gently and lifted the empty satchel beside the door.

"I'll find the right ones." Stronric grumbled.

"Not find," Dovren corrected. "Recognize."

The mist still clung to the branches by the time Stronric stepped outside, satchel slung over one shoulder, boots treading a path already familiar but now seen through different eyes.

He wasn't pacing a prison any longer. He was walking a forge. Dovren had stayed behind in the doorway, arms crossed as if watching an apprentice step into his first smithy. "Choose with care," he had said. "The stone remembers."

Stronric hadn't asked what that meant. He suspected he would learn it soon enough. The trees parted gradually, opening to a glade he'd passed before. Now he moved slower, his eyes lingering on stone outcrops, boulders, even the crumbled remains of an old low wall. He crouched beside a half-buried slab and ran his hand along the surface, felt the weight, the grain, the cold. Although it felt fine, he did not pick it up.

He stood and moved on. This was no mere collection. He wasn't gathering rocks like a child on a riverbank. He was seeking something meant, a vessel worthy of rune-craft, a piece of the world that would hold not just words, but truth. The first stone he did take was narrow and jagged, veined with silver-like lichen. Heavy. Old. He turned it in his hand and nodded. Then he came upon a rounded one, like a smoothed jawbone, firm and cool. The third stone was darker than pitch, rough in texture, the kind of stone that broke steel if shaped wrong. He placed them carefully in his satchel and kept walking.

An hour passed, then another.

By the time the sun had reached its muted peak above the mist, his satchel held a dozen stones, each chosen by eye, by touch, by instinct. Each one felt right, solid, clean, and yet, as he sat on a mossy stump and laid them out on the grass, a frown crept across his face.

They were too perfect, symmetrical or polished by nature or time. Worn smooth like coins passed through countless hands. They lacked bite. They lacked story.

Stronric picked one up and rolled it in his palm, testing its edges, its weight. "Ye ever carve words into a stone like this," he muttered, "ye're not engravin' a rune. Ye're signin' yer name on a bar tab."

Stronric set it down and picked up another. This one was also too round and too soft. He lifted another and found it too brittle. One by one, he tested and rejected the lot. When he was finished, he sat in silence, surrounded by a halo of stones that didn't know him, not one.

He rubbed a hand across his brow and glanced at the tree line. "What am I missin'?"

A soft hiss answered him. Stronric turned his head to see the Mountain Canary perched atop a fallen log, talons gripping the wood, tail flicking like a flame in slow wind.

"You again," he said.

The beast blinked slowly, then hopped down and stalked toward one of the discarded stones. It sniffed it once. Then tapped it lightly with its beak. Crack. The stone split cleanly in two. The Canary examined it, snorted, if such a beast could snort, and walked away. Stronric watched it go, then looked back at the broken stone. The inside was hollowed slightly, like a pocket of rot had formed within. It would never have held a rune, not without crumbling. He closed his eyes and let his breath slow.

The ghost had said each dwarf chose different stones. That the choice mattered, but what if he wasn't meant to choose from what was already shaped? What if the stone that would hold his rune had to be pulled from the mountain raw?

He stood slowly, not in frustration, but instead with understanding. Back at the homestead, Dovren barely looked up as Stronric entered, empty satchel over one shoulder.

"No stones?" the ghost asked, voice calm.

"They were wrong," Stronric replied.

Dovren folded his hands behind his back. "Wrong how?"

"Shaped already. Polished by time, not by will. I could carve 'em, aye, but they wouldn't speak."

The scholar tilted his head. "So what will you do?"

"I'll pull stone from the earth meself. Same as any proper forge. If I'm to shape truth into it, then I need to know the shape I start with."

Dovren's mouth twitched faintly. "Now you're thinking like a smith."

Stronric strode across the room to the old chest he'd seen days ago. Within it lay rusted tools, forgotten, but not ruined. He lifted out a miner's chisel, tested the edge, and set it beside a heavy headed pick. Then he added an oil lantern, a wedge set, and a narrow iron prybar to his collection.

"I'll take these," Stronric said.

"They're yours now," Dovren replied.

Stronric slung the tools over his shoulder and made for the door. Just before stepping out, he turned.

"Dovren."

"Yes?"

"What would ye call the type of stone that resists yer first strike? The kind ye have to fight to shape?"

The ghost considered. "A challenge."

Stronric nodded. "Good."

And then he stepped back into the mist. The Mountain Canary was already waiting. The mists had not lifted.

Stronric's boots sank slightly into the soft loam as he stepped off the stone path and into the glade beyond the homestead. A fine sheen of dew clung to every blade of grass, every fern, every moss wrapped stone. The air was cool and heavy with the scent of root and earth. But the weight on his shoulders was not the fog.

He moved with slow, deliberate steps. Not because of his wounds, though they tugged at his side and barked in his ribs, but because this work demanded care. Reverence. The satchel at his hip was empty. The old miner's pick hung from a leather loop, unused. He passed a boulder carved by time into the shape of a resting bear and laid his hand across its flank. It was cold and felt steady. The stone felt like it had been waiting for centuries, yet it said nothing to him.

Dovren's words echoed again in his mind.

"The stone will speak itself into power. The task of the Runesmith is to listen."

Stronric kept walking.

He paused by a narrow creek that trickled out from beneath a tree root. He crouched, and fished a flat, grey stone from its bank. It was smooth and broad. Its surface could easily hold a rune, and its texture was suitable for carving. He turned it in his hand. It was practical.

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But it's still not right.

Stronric set it back with care and stood again.

The forest slowly narrowed as he moved, and with each new step, he found another stone. A green streaked slab, a triangular flake of obsidian, a red banded chunk of iron rich sediment, all plucked from the land just to be returned.

Each one he picked up he tested and considered. Each one he rejected. Not because they were flawed, but because they weren't his.

He tried not to grow frustrated. He reminded himself of the smith's way: patience, precision, presence. But still, something gnawed at him. It wasn't anger or pride, but something almost guiding in its urge to satiate the feeling of absence.

After hours of slow work and searching, Stronric found himself in a shallow ravine beneath the hanging roots of an old pine. He sat against its gnarled trunk, the satchel still empty at his side. His hands rested in his lap, scarred fingers curling slightly with quiet tension.

This is no place for stone that carries me, he thought.

Not here, on the surface. Not shaped by rain and time and animals that passed overhead.

What I need is buried.

He closed his eyes. At first, there was only breath. Then the feel of damp bark against his back gave way to the quiet chitter of a squirrel above. Then far-off hiss of the Mountain Canary somewhere in the trees, added to the sounds of life around him. But he was not interested in the sounds of the forest. Beneath it all, under the loam, under the frost line, under the skin of the world, he felt it.

Weight.

It wasn't mystical, not yet. It was just that dwarven sense, unspoken and generational. It told of the layers beneath the crust of the land and between layers strength could be found. He understood then that good stone, fitting to a dwarf like Stronric, didn't rest in plain view. It had to be earned, carved from the layers below and brought into the light.

And even as that thought formed, something deeper stirred.

It wasn't a voice, not exactly. It was more like the faint hum of air in the lungs before a forge bellows, a pull ancient and slow.

And Stronric's breath caught slightly.

His left hand twitched, thumb brushing across a scar on his palm that he hadn't thought about in years. One he didn't remember getting.

Something old moved inside him, not memory, but inheritance. A rhythm, a thrum, like distant drums could be heard through the rock.

He opened his eyes.

The Mountain Canary stood just down the ravine, staring at him.

Its claws gripped the rock in silence. Its head tilted as if in though. Its feathers were sparse and sharp edged, catching the faintest light, and its eyes appeared like glowing coals. It seemed to be waiting. Stronric stood, his joints popping softly in protest.

"No more polished scraps," he said. "No more surface stones." Stronric said calmly to the bird.

Stronric set his hand on the haft of the old pick and turned toward the ridge. The Canary followed without sound, stalking at his flank like a hunting hound. The slope narrowed to a wind carved ledge, its spine veined with patches of exposed shale and dark, fractured granite. Stronric climbed carefully, boots grinding against gravel slick with moss, the weight of the pick steady against his shoulder.

The Mountain Canary followed in silence, weaving between roots and stone outcroppings with the patience of something ancient. It did not lead, but it watched.

As if guarding a ritual.

Stronric reached a half-buried seam near the base of an overhang, where the rock changed color. He saw this was where grey met ochre, and the lines in the stone grew jagged. He crouched, brushing away debris, testing the seam with his fingers.

This was no polished creek-stone. it was no wind worn boulder. This was the skeleton of the mountain.

He planted his boots, adjusted the lantern, and raised the pick.

The first strike rang hollow.

The second sparked.

The third drove home.

Stone fractured with a sharp crack, and dust lifted into the air like breath from the mountain's chest. Stronric grunted and worked the edge loose, prying at the vein. Chips flew, revealing denser layers beneath.

His shoulders ached. His ribs pulled, but he didn't stop.

Not until a single, jagged shard broke free, longer than his hand. He lifted the stone a saw it was streaked with blue and dark silver. It was sharp edged like a tooth and warm to the touch despite the chill.

Stronric turned it over in his palm.

Unlike the other he found on the ground, this one had never been touched by sun or river. It smelled of old fire and buried pressure. It felt of time locked deep inside the bones of the world.

It didn't feel right.

It felt necessary.

He stood, turning the stone slowly as the lantern's light caught its ridges. The Mountain Canary approached, claws clicking softly on the rock. Then without warning it bowed its head. The gesture was small. But deliberate.

Stronric blinked. "Ye see it too?" He said with a hint of disbelief.

The Canary did not respond, it only exhaled, a low slow breath like bellows cooling after long work.

Stronric ran his thumb across the edge of the stone. As he did, the hair on his arm rose, not from the cold but from something deeper.

From resonance.

It was as if the shard hummed faintly in his hand, not with sound, but with presence. Like holding a key to a lock he'd never seen but always felt pressing behind his eyes.

He gently tucked the shard into the satchel, placing it separate from the rest of the tools.

Then he drove the pick back into the seam, breaking loose another and another.

Each stone fought him. Each one resisted leaving the embrace of the earth, but each one, when free, settled into his hand like it had been waiting. By the time the sun dipped low through the mist, his satchel held four shards, all sharp, unshaped, whispering beneath his skin. Every one of the stones came from a place beneath the surface. They were not just of the earth, but of him.

The door to the homestead creaked open on stiff hinges as Stronric stepped inside, the smell of herbs and ash still clinging faintly to the air. Dust trailed from his boots. A bundle of greens hung over one shoulder, wild carrots and bitterroot tied with fraying twine. A pair of rabbits dangled from his belt, ready for dressing.

The satchel at his side thudded gently as he set it down on the stone table. Dovren looked up from his journals.

"You were gone longer than I expected," the ghost said.

Stronric shrugged off his outer coat. "Took some time. Found a seam under a ridge and broke it open. Pulled four stones from the vein."

"Four?" Dovren stepped forward as Stronric unlatched the satchel. The dwarf laid the stones out carefully, jagged shards of deep grey and blue, lined with mineral threads that shimmered faintly in the hearth-light.

Each one was untouched by sun or stream. They were raw and unshaped and waiting.

Dovren hovered his translucent hand over the largest shard and blinked.

"These are… not what I expected." The ghost said curiously.

Stronric didn't look up as he began to clean the rabbits at the counter. "Not what I expected either." Stronric chuckled in response. "I was hoping to just nick up some stones by the door and be done with it."

Dovren ignored his quip, his focus remained on the stones before him. "They're not just strong. They're resonant. Stones like this doesn't end up near the surface. It's pulled from deep places, older than most vaults, older than some Holds. You chose well."

Stronric grunted, blade flashing through tendon and hide. "Didn't feel like choosin'."

"Oh?" Dovren said, turning to Stronric.

Stronric just shrugged and continued to clean the rabbit. "Felt like diggin' out a memory I never made. Like the mountain had been holdin' 'em for me, waitin'."

Dovren was silent for a moment.

"And what made you stop there?" he asked softly.

Stronric paused, wiping the blade on a rag, thinking for a moment. "I sat and listened, and I heard them. The sound, not one I heard really, but one I felt. It was Deep in the ribs. Like a hammer hittin' stone far off. It was quiet, but certain."

Dovren nodded slowly. "That's how the old ones described it. The Wyrm bound rune casters. They called it the deep drum."

Stronric hung the rabbits on the hearth hook, washed his hands, and looked to the stones again. "They weren't comfortable and they weren't easy. They felt true. The other rocks I found? They looked right, but felt wrong. While these were just right."

Stronric paused, then added, "And the Canary… bowed. When I pulled the first one."

Dovren seemed stunned by this revelation. "Bowed?"

Stronric didn't elaborate. He didn't need to.

The ghost's gaze lingered on the stones for a long time, then he stepped back. "You're farther along than most beardlings who spend years chasing this path." Dovren said.

Stronric gave a dry snort. "I don't have years."

"No," Dovren said, turning toward the fire, "but you have the right stone."

They ate quietly that night, rabbit meat seasoned with mountain sage and a handful of sourroot, cooked in a cracked iron pan while the wind whispered against the shutters.

And beneath the meal, beneath the words, beneath even the silence, something stirred in the stones.

Waiting.

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