The last time the forges of Stonefang roared was the day the Ironveins uncovered the tomb.
Now, the halls are silent. No hammer rings on anvil. No chant rises with the smoke. Only ash, and silence.
Thrain Ironvein crouched behind a collapsed archway, clutching a shard of obsidian wrapped in scorched linen. His hands trembled—not from fear, but from the burn beneath his skin.
The Kindling had begun. Orange light throbbed faintly from the veins in his arms, pulsing like a forge bellows.
Around him, the lower halls flickered with residual heat, lit only by the dim glow of rune-wards hastily scrawled across the walls. They were failing. He could feel the fire pushing outward. Testing the seals. Whispering.
“Feed the flame,” they hissed in his mind. “Become the blaze.”
Thrain shoved the voices back. He had no time. His family was gone—burned in the final hours of the Smoldering—and now he bore the last burden: the relic shard, the curse, and a prophecy.
Stone of Quenched Flame. His great-uncle had whispered it before combusting in a pillar of fire. A sapphire buried in the Frostvault Peaks, colder than death. Said to extinguish even godfire.
Thrain had fled the mountain two days before the sealers could trap him with the rest. His boots smoked as he walked; snow hissed to steam under each step. But he kept moving.
He had to find the sapphire.
He had to end the Emberblight.
Three nights into his journey, Thrain collapsed near the edge of the Silvergrove Forest. Trees, long turned gray from centuries of soot and embers, watched him with hollow limbs.
When he awoke, it was to cool hands on his forehead. Elven hands.
“You burn from within,” said a soft voice. “But the fire hasn’t claimed you yet.”
Thrain opened his eyes. A silver-robed elf stood over him, her gaze like storm clouds. Around her neck hung a black vial—the glint of obsidian dust dancing within.
“Phoenix tears,” she added, “mixed with the bones of volcanoes.”
Thrain tried to speak, but a cough of ash escaped instead.
“You carry it,” she said, noticing the bundle at his side. “A shard of the Heart-Furnace.”
He nodded.
The elf stared at the shard for a long time, then back at him.
“There is still time,” she said. “But not much.”
The trek to Frostvault Peaks was agony. Even with the elven salve slowing the Blight, every step stirred the fire inside Thrain. His veins glowed brighter. The whispers grew louder.
Once, in a fever dream, he saw Thôrum himself—wreathed in flame, weeping fire.
“Prove yourself, son of stone,” the god intoned. “Or let the world burn with you.”
At last, atop a glacier spire shaped like a shattered crown, Thrain found it: the Stone of Quenched Flame.
It was unassuming—no bigger than a clenched fist—but it pulsed with a cold so pure that frost feathered the air around it.
As he reached for it, the Blight surged. Flames erupted from his eyes. Smoke hissed from his mouth.
He screamed—and thrust the obsidian shard into the sapphire’s heart.
There was silence.
Then, a shudder.
Then, a sound like steam escaping a thousand cracks at once.
The shard hissed, cracked—and turned black.
The fire dimmed.
Thrain collapsed, his body smoking but not aflame. The light beneath his skin faded to dull embers.
He breathed.
He lived.
And the mountain behind him… stopped burning.
To this day, dwarves tell the tale of Thrain Emberwake—last Ironvein, bearer of the Blight, and breaker of its curse.
The frost-shard he left behind rests beneath the Stonefang Stronghold, now rechristened the Andarag Stronghold.
The forges there burn once more—but beside every flame lies a basin of glacial water. A reminder:
The fire god gives.
The fire god tests.
But it is mortals who must choose what they become:
The forge—
Or the fire.