Raine's mind still hummed with the dark vortex's whisper, like water echoing in a cave at midnight:
"Come in… your fate… awaits…"
Color drained from his cheeks. His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. This was no hallucination—it was Marcos, his voice dripping from that twisting void.
"He's waiting," Raine's voice cracked. "He knew we'd come."
"That's the trap," Karrion growled, eyes narrowing. The dwarf circled the vortex's lip, every inch of his burly frame taut with caution. "Marcos only beckons once the snare is fully set."
Thalia's voice rose, faint as distant bells. "Or he knows you'd come anyway."
She stirred, sweat beading on her pale skin. When she opened her eyes, they held the depth of an ancient well, fixed on the black swirl as if lost in a memory no one else could see.
"Are you… all right?" Raine hurried forward.
She shook her head. "Not dead yet."
Her gaze never wavered from the void. It was as if she saw beyond the chaos—into a homeland torn away, or a refuge she dared not name.
Karrion didn't press her. Instead, he knelt, pulling from his pack chunks of raw, gray-blue ore and a length of starlight-etched parchment. With broad fingers, he traced sigils in the air.
"We'll forge here," he said, voice low and urgent. "No refined metal, no proper forge, and barely time. A breach-hammer is unforgiving—it either holds or it shatters."
Raine fell silent, picturing the yawning black maw, Marcos's mocking invitation.
"Do it," he said quietly, his tone a blade slicing through the stillness.
He shrugged off his cloak and rolled up his sleeve high.
"If this is the only way to break that door… I stake everything."
Karrion surveyed him. "You sure?"
"I am." Raine's nod was resolute. "If I fall, carry on. My blood… It's the key."
The dwarf snorted. "You're impossible." He struck flints, coaxing a flicker of flame from the battered furnace. "Let's begin."
Karrion arranged the ore in a rough forge circle. Raine settled inside and sliced his palm with deliberate calm. Blood welled and dropped onto the runic pulp of corrupted starmetal dust, hissing like scalded iron. The glyphs flared with painful urgency.
"Channel your starlight into your blood!" Karrion barked. Each hammer strike rang like a war drum in the hollow chamber.
Thalia hovered at the edge, her gauntlet useless, but her eyes unwavering. Every hitch in Raine's breath made her fingertips tremble.
At last, the hammer took shape: a warhammer etched with twin veins of starlight and shadow, runes flickering like trapped comets about to burst.
"One more strike!" Karrion roared.
Raine's vision blurred, starblood rebelling beneath his skin. Memories—his sister's laughter, his mother's lullabies, his master's quiet pride—and Marcos's cruel grin surged in his mind.
"I am not the key…" he gasped with each blow. "I… am the door."
At that moment, every rune ignited in violet-silver conflagration, like a dying star reborn. Karrion drove the molten hammerhead into stone. The forge shrieked its last, and the air filled with ash and the metallic tang of fresh blood.
Raine sank to his knees, spent, a faint smile on his lips. The breach-hammer quivered in the rock, its runes silent yet humming with promise.
"It's done," Karrion rasped, wiping sweat and soot from his brow. "But this alone won't pry open that gate."
Raine's lungs burned. "Not now?"
Karrion hefted the hammer onto his shoulder with a grunt. "You can't even stand, let alone swing it. Marcos has felt our hammering. If we return too soon… we won't get the chance."
Raine's heart sank, but he nodded.
Thalia stepped forward, fragile but firm. "We should withdraw."
"Withdraw?" Raine echoed, voice raw.
"For now," she said. "We must slip away unseen—heal, recover… and I need time to think."
Grief flickered in her gaze. Raine bowed his head. Karrion set off, breach-hammer balanced across his shoulder.
"Under cover of darkness," he ordered. "No lingering."
The vortex loomed behind them, a breath of icy wind spilling from its depths, whispering old horrors.
Together, they turned away, carrying the first key to doors still unsealed.