Chapter 113 - The Surveyor’s Price

The South Forge was still breathing. It wasn't the rhythmic, healthy breath of a working workshop, but the labored, rattling rasp of a giant that had just survived a heart attack. Every time the winter wind whipped through the open vent-flues, the massive, ten-ton slag heap in the center of the room groaned. It was cooling at a rate that defied standard thermodynamics, the iron having been fused into a single, jagged monolith by a surge of energy that should have leveled the mountain.