Shadows Below

The dim torches lining the keep's eastern corridor flickered low, casting unsteady shadows across stone walls carved with sigils of protection. Ruvan moved quietly, each footstep muffled against the worn carpets laid for noble guests. He glanced back once to make sure Kellan and Elion hadn't woken to follow him, then slipped around the corner towards the narrow stairway he'd noticed earlier that evening.

He didn't fully understand why he was drawn here.

Part of it was curiosity. Another part was fear—fear of what secrets Lord Maeven kept hidden below the grandeur of Iron Hold's halls. But deeper still was the restless whisper in his chest, a tension that refused to let him sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw chains. Broken children. Flames devouring innocence.

He needed to know what darkness lay at the root of Maeven's power.

⸻

The stair spiralled down steeply, the air cooling with each turn. Moisture dripped from the ceiling in slow rhythms, echoing against old stone. At the bottom, he paused before a thick oak door reinforced with black iron bands.

He pressed his ear against it. Faint groans filtered through, and the scraping drag of chains.

His stomach clenched. Still, he pushed the door open just enough to slip through.

The dungeon corridor stretched before him, lit by oil lamps set high along the walls. Shadows pooled thick behind iron bars. The smell hit him instantly: rot, unwashed bodies, rust, and the sharp metallic bite of old blood.

He moved forward cautiously, keeping to the edge of the torchlight. Each cell held figures, some huddled under lice-ridden blankets, others sprawled in shackles against cold stone. At first glance they looked like any prisoners—ragged, defeated, silent with despair.

Then he saw the boy.

He couldn't have been older than eight or nine, but his arms were gone from the elbows down. In their place jutted jagged metal blades fused into his flesh with riveted plates and darkened stitches. He sat against the wall, staring at nothing, lips moving soundlessly in prayer or madness.

Ruvan clutched the bars, nausea rising in his throat. Beside the boy lay a girl curled in on herself, bronze grafts running across her ribs, her chest moving with ragged, wheezing breaths. Black veins crawled outward from where metal met skin.

He stumbled back from the cell, bile burning in his mouth. Further along, more cells revealed horrors that twisted his gut: a man with melted steel claws instead of hands; a woman with iron plates bolted to her skull, her eyes rolled back in fever. Children with twisted spines braced by bone-piercing wires. Old men fused into wooden frames like meat grown around iron roots.

"What is this…" he whispered, voice trembling.

A faint chuckle answered him from the darkness.

⸻

Ruvan spun around, hand dropping to Solrend's hilt.

An old man stood half-hidden in a cell doorway, robes smeared with rust-brown stains. Thick goggles magnified his eyes into bulbous, watery orbs. His beard was stained yellow from pipe smoke and something darker near the ends.

"You shouldn't be here," the man rasped, voice wheezing as if pulled from a dying bellows. "Visitors don't come to see the Forge's raw ore."

Ruvan swallowed hard. "Forge…? What are you doing to them?"

The old man grinned, revealing blackened teeth. "Making them useful."

He gestured down the corridor. "The strong will become enforcers. Steel-boned, iron-hearted, unbreakable. The weak will feed the crucibles with blood for tempering. All serve Lord Maeven's purpose in the end."

Ruvan felt his knees weaken. He forced himself to stand tall, though his legs trembled under him.

"They're people," he said hoarsely. "Children."

"Children grow into rebels," the old man shrugged. "Better to shape them young before they think they own themselves."

Ruvan's hand clenched so hard around Solrend's hilt that the leather wrap bit into his palm.

"I will end this," he whispered, more to himself than the old man.

But the old man only chuckled again. "Perhaps, little prince of ash. Perhaps. But today is not that day. Now leave, before your pretty face ends up behind bars for reforging."

Ruvan backed away, heart hammering. His breath came fast and shallow as he turned and fled up the stairs, leaving the old man's laughter echoing behind him.

⸻

He burst back into the dim hallway above, collapsing against a cold stone column. He retched onto the floor, the taste of bile bitter on his tongue. Tears burned his eyes as images of metal-fused children seared into his mind.

Solrend pulsed hot against his hip, whispering along his bones:

Feed me your rage. I will burn their chains to ash.

"No," Ruvan whispered, pressing trembling fingers to his temples. "Not as your puppet. Not as your weapon."

But still the sword pulsed, its voice curling in his mind like hot smoke:

They will keep suffering until you become strong enough to end them.

He slammed his fist into the wall, pain lancing up his arm. His chest heaved with silent sobs. He didn't care about being heard anymore. The horror he'd seen eclipsed any fear of exposure.

"I will end it," he whispered again, this time a vow burned into his soul. "But I will not lose myself to do it."

The sword said nothing, only pulsed again – approving or mocking, he could not tell.

⸻

Ruvan forced himself upright, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He stumbled back to their guest chamber where Kellan lay snoring lightly, one arm draped protectively over his pack. Elion sat cross-legged near the window, staring into the moonlit streets below, lost in thought.

Neither saw the tears streaking down Ruvan's face. Neither saw the resolve hardening behind his tired eyes.

He curled up on his mattress and lay staring into the cracked ceiling beams above.

Tonight, his nightmares would not come from dreams.

They would come from memory.

And in those memories, he found a single spark of purpose to cling to:

I will come back for them.

I will break these chains.

No matter what it costs me.