Chapter 31

I didn't rise like a hero.

I rose like stone—slow, heavy, inevitable.

Karvek leaned near the forge wall, watching.

Felix crouched beside the rafter again, his blades whispering into place with the quiet of a killer. Lisett, journal half-closed in her lap, watched me with something I hadn't seen in a long while.

Not hope.

Faith.

"We've got steel," Karvek said. "And a name that's started to echo."

"Not enough," I muttered, flexing my bruised fingers. "The Path doesn't flinch at whispers. But maybe Vraknheim's leaders will."

Lisett tilted her head. "You mean to speak to the Council?"

"No," I said, pulling Skarnvalk into my grip. The runes flared—soft, like breath before battle. "I mean to make them listen."

We didn't walk through Vraknheim's upper tiers like guests.

We marched like a storm coming home.

Through soot-choked streets, up the brass stair of Mournhold Rise, past the silver-etched sigils of house barons too fat to fight but too scared to ignore. The Syndicate knew my name now—Thargrimm. And behind me walked a ghost (Felix), a red-eyed spellblade (Lisett), and a axe and sword backed warborn (Karvek) whose armour made enforcers step aside without a word.

At the gates of the Grand Spire, the guards raised their halberds.

I raised Skarnvalk.

They hesitated.

Then let us in.

Inside, the Forge Council sat in their ivory circle, mouths full of old laws and colder wine.

Thane Borlund of Ironreach spoke first. "We heard rumor you were dead."

"Then your sources are as soft as your hands," I said.

He bristled. "You enter here with weapons drawn—"

"I've bled for this city. Fought the Path in the lands to the east. I didn't come for permission. I came for unity."

"You came for power," one of the others said—Lady Vorra, silver-haired and serpent-eyed.

I looked her dead in the eye.

"No," I said. "I came to offer it."

I laid the broken Path relic on their polished table—still humming with ruin energy. Then the ledger from Thorin's trade circle, inked in names who now fund the war from the shadows. Then the coin seal of the dead baron I'd unmasked two nights before.

"You think the Path is far," I said. "They sit beneath your homes. Feed on your fear. I can stop them. But only if I can forge freely. Rally others. Build weapons and people strong enough to stop what's coming."

"And what do you want in return?" Borlund asked.

I held up Skarnvalk.

"Vraknheim."

The silence hit like a dropped blade.

I let them stew in it. Let their fear simmer beside their pride.

Lady Vorra's smile was slow, dangerous. "You seek the Anvil Throne, dwarf?"

I nodded once. "Not for glory. For war. For the world."

"And if we refuse?"

Karvek cracked his knuckles.

Lisett stood.

Felix smiled.

"I hope," I said softly, "you don't."

I've always hated marble floors.

Too clean. Too perfect. They don't hold weight right. Steel sings on them wrong. There's no give, no grit—just cold, polished silence that tells you everything about the people who walk on it. People who've never bled for the things they hold.

The Council chambers echoed with that same hollow elegance as I returned.

Not invited. Summoned.

There was a difference.

Lisett walked beside me, cloak draped low over her shoulders. Her boots scuffed the tiles with deliberate disrespect. Felix ghosted just behind, too quiet to be noticed, too dangerous to be ignored. Karvek didn't come. He didn't trust himself not to break something expensive.

Didn't trust me not to let him.

We entered through the outer arch, and the guards flinched again. Good. That meant they remembered.

Inside, the Forge Syndicate was already waiting—Thane Borlund of Ironreach, Lord Vanthar of Smokejaw Holdings, and Lady Vorra of Deepstone... who smiled at me like a snake coiled beside a hearth.

I didn't smile back.

"We discussed your offer," Vorra said, tone silky, fake as polished brass. "And found it... provocative."

I shrugged. "Good. Provocation's how you shake sleeping stone."

Borlund's jowls trembled. "You don't understand the mechanisms of rule, Thargrimm. You've no lineage. No clan ties to the upper tier. You forged your name in blood and off-ledger contracts."

"You say that like it's a weakness," I replied, "but it's the only reason anyone still breathes past the Eastern Marshes."

Felix stepped forward, laid down the sealed dossier from the Hollowfront raids—signed by syndicate names now mysteriously "missing." Vorra's eyes flicked to it, then back to me.

"Rumors," she said. "We don't rule from rumors."

"No," Lisett said dryly, "you just drown in them."

Silence.

It broke slowly, like a thaw. Vorra leaned back, drumming fingers against her armrest.

"So," she said. "Let's say we give you a trial command. A symbolic vote of confidence. A test of leadership—nothing binding."

"And if I pass?" I asked.

"Then we talk. Titles. Land. Maybe even the Anvil Throne itself."

"And if I fail?"

"Then we bury you under that same marble you scuff with your boots."

Later, in the undercroft tunnels that fed heat to the lower forge districts, I paced alone.

The walls sweated steam and soot. The air was thick with copper and burnt oil. It smelled like memory.

They think I'm playing their game.

But this isn't a game.

Not for me.

Not after what I've seen—what I've lost.

I leaned against the old brass pipe, letting the heat soak through the backplate of my armor. My reflection shimmered in the surface—older now. Scarred. And behind it, faint and flickering, I could swear I saw the runes on Skarnvalk glowing of their own accord.

A reminder.

A warning.

Maybe both.

Doran's Journal – Entry Scorched Into Blank Parchment

They offered me power like it was something clean. Like it wasn't born in the cracks of this city, where I bled and nearly broke. But power in Vraknheim isn't gifted—it's taken, hammered out between deals and dead men.

I won't lead like them. I'll forge something different. Or I'll break the damned anvil trying.

Scene Shift – Council Chamber, Later That Night

Lady Vorra met privately with Lord Vanthar beneath the high crypts.

"The dwarf means it," she said.

Vanthar nodded, chewing the inside of his cheek. "Then we either crown him... or kill him."

Her smile was slow and dangerous. "Let's see what the city thinks first. Let him command. Let him win."

She turned toward the brazier, watching the coals stir like old ghosts.

"And when he does... Vraknheim won't ask if he should rule."

She tossed a coin into the flame.

"They'll demand it."