Morning came too swiftly—like it knew where we were headed and wanted us gone.
Legends whispered of this tier devouring entire crews when the mountain stirred. Every step felt like a trespass against Tharnak. It was old, patient, and hungry.
We made our final preparations in silence. Boots scraped ash from blackened stone, packs cinched tight across sweat-slicked backs. The air thickened as if warning us away.
Alythiel checked her gear with practiced grace. Torglel swung his hammer in slow arcs, its weight humming with fire. I flexed my grip on Celerius and Mors. Their weight grounded me—steel as promise.
The Smeltfire Deeps waited in the fourth tier of Thoringard—a realm of molten dark and breathless heat. Few dared. Fewer returned. Somewhere below, the Deepfire Drake slept—a myth given scale and fang.
Some said it wasn't a beast at all, but Tharnak's anger given shape. Fire pretending at skin.
None of us spoke. The silence wasn't reverence. It was the kind of quiet you keep when the world might hear.
Each descent coiled tighter. The air reeked of sulfur and old war. Heat wrapped around us—not a cloak, but a warning.
It was the kind of warmth that didn't comfort—it accused. As if the mountain itself remembered what had been forged here, and who paid the price.
We stopped at the threshold.
The entrance loomed—an arch of molten-black stone, runes etched deep and glowing like coals banked but not dead. The door rose tall enough to swallow giants, its surface shimmering like obsidian caught mid-melt.
Alythiel stepped forward, her silver hair catching the light like liquid metal. She traced a rune with one gloved fingertip.
"'Abandon hope, all who dare to enter,'" she read softly.
Her voice didn't waver, but something in it carried—like even she knew the weight behind the words.
The warning was old, carved by the Emberguard of King Thromrik Emberforge—the last to seal the Deeps.
I blinked. "You can read Dwarven?"
She smiled—rare, brief, and sharp as flint. "Elvish, Dwarvish, Orcish... even Draconic."
She shrugged like it was nothing. Like knowing how monsters speak didn't mean you understood what they meant.
Torglel snorted, fingers crackling with fir
"Perfect. You can translate while I insult his mother, his forge, and his tail placement—right before I kick his arsati so hard it echoes in the
Deeps."
I sighed, both palms pressed to the stone.
The door groaned open like the mountain exhaling in protest. Heat slammed into us—a wall of furnace air that made even Torglel's flames feel tame. Sweat bloomed instantly. Breathing became a labor of fire.
We stepped through.
No turning back now.
The heat behind us felt tame—because fire, at least, doesn't pretend not to burn.
I exhaled and pressed both hands to the door.
It groaned open like a giant shifting in its sleep, the mountain itself displeased by our trespass. A blast of furnace heat slammed into us—raw and brutal. Even Torglel's inner fire seemed to flinch.
My breath caught. The air tasted like scorched metal and old blood. Breathing felt like swallowing sparks.
We stepped through.
No turning back now.
Behind us, the heat suddenly seemed tame—because fire, at least, doesn't pretend not to burn.
The air shimmered ahead, distorting the stone like a mirage. With every step, the temperature rose until even thoughts felt sluggish—melting in my skull.
The mountain wasn't just hot.
It was angry.
Each breath was a battle. Sulfur stung our throats. Ash danced in the air like the ghosts of long-dead miners. The walls around us radiated with ancient warmth—as if a god's forge had cooled here, and the stone refused to forget.
A low vibration rumbled underfoot—subtle but steady. Not footsteps. Not tremors.
A heartbeat.
I wasn't sure this place was abandoned.
I was starting to wonder if it ever had been.
Once, this place had been alive.
A thriving dwarven mining hub. Voices echoing through the stone. Tools ringing against ore. Lanterns strung like constellations through the dark.
Now it was a tomb.
A scorched, silent graveyard where even echoes had turned to ash.
The ground beneath us split with old, jagged scars. Rivers of lava hissed between broken stone like veins still pumping through a corpse. The beams spanning the gaps groaned under our weight—half-charred, half-forgotten.
Flames spat from random fissures, roaring skyward without warning. One blast flared inches from my face, blistering the air.
Torglel didn't flinch.
Because of course he didn't.
He just smirked, wings of flame bursting from his back. With a single sweep, he soared across the gap like it was made for him.
I followed. Lightning surged through me, my body a streak of white-hot motion as I danced across the beams. Timing mattered. One misstep meant lava.
Alythiel was last.
She waited a heartbeat longer. Calculating. Then moved—graceful and infuriating. She flipped through the rising heat just as a geyser of flame erupted below, the blast trailing her like a comet tail. The fire missed her by inches, catching only the shimmer of her cloak.
She landed in a crouch—silent, perfect, not even winded.
Torglel gave a low whistle. I just scowled and kept walking.
Show off.
The hall widened into a cavern veined with untouched ore—silver and gold glinting faintly in the walls like buried starlight. It should've looked rich. Instead, it looked like a wound.
Magma-flies buzzed overhead—thumb-sized, their wings humming with a frequency just annoying enough to count as psychological warfare. They cast flickering shadows, jittering across the walls like ghosts that didn't know they were dead.
At the far end stretched a bridge. Not majestic. Not welcoming. Just narrow, worn, and entirely too quiet.
It crossed a chasm so deep the bottom didn't echo.
We moved single file.
Our boots struck the stone too loud. The silence around us pushed back, heavier with every step. Somewhere above, a rock cracked.
There was no wind down here. Just pressure. Like the mountain was holding its breath.
Torglel gripped his hammer tighter. Alythiel's eyes never left the ceiling—watching like it owed her money.
Halfway across, the bridge trembled.
A dusting of stone sifted down like snow. A low thrum rose from the deep—too steady to be wind, too rhythmic to be random.
Alythiel's voice was a whisper wrapped in warning:
"Watch the ceiling."
We froze. Listening.
The grinding sound came next—metal on stone, slow and rasping, like a blade being drawn across the bones of the mountain.
I groaned and rubbed my temple. "Please don't be another golem."
Then it emerged. Like a terror in the night.
A dwarven sentinel—stone and iron fused into a hulking silhouette. Ancient. Massive. Wrong.
Its limbs moved with deliberate slowness, every motion powered by something that had no business still running. Runes flickered across its chest—dim, angry red, pulsing like a dying star.
Torglel stiffened. "That's not supposed to be awake."
His voice was small. Not something I was used to
hearing from him.
"They were mining protectors," he muttered. "My dad said they got decommissioned after the Deepfire got loose."
The sentinel raised a hammer the size of a horse.
"Protect... threat... destroy," it groaned, voice like rusted cogs chewing on themselves.
Alythiel's daggers were already drawn. "It's running on wild magic. That's what's keeping it alive."
I flexed my grip on my swords. "Ideas?"
Torglel grinned. "Recklessly attack it as usual."
I smirked. "High and low?"
He nodded.
Alythiel rolled her eyes, but there was no stopping us now.
The sentinel's head tracked us. Stone eyes glowing faintly. "Threat... identified," it rumbled.
The sentinel's hammer came down.
The bridge exploded where we'd been standing—not cracked, obliterated—stone shards whistling past as we dove. The shockwave hit like a mountain's exhale.
Torglel was already moving, flames erupting from his boots as he launched low, hammer blazing. He collided with the sentinel's knee in a burst of fire—stone cracking, the golem staggering backward with a groan that shook the cavern.
I followed—ran straight up its shield, lightning racing across my limbs. My swords gleamed black and white as I leapt, bringing them down in a crossing arc.
Steel met ancient iron with a thunderclap. The air cracked. I was thrown backward like a kicked drumstick, ribs aching, breath torn away.
The sentinel reeled—sparks vomiting from its joints. The rune in its chest flared bright red... then flickered.
Then went out.
The bridge moaned beneath it—a sound like dying mountains. Chunks of stone sheared off, tumbling into the glow below.
A final shudder.
The sentinel fell.
It dropped into the chasm like a cursed monument, vanishing into lava and shadow. The crash below was swallowed by molten light.
The bridge kept crumbling.
I staggered to my feet, the glow of lava reflected in Alythiel's wide eyes.
Chunks of stone skittered into the chasm like dying applause. The bridge—what was left of it—groaned beneath our boots, cracked and hanging on to gravity by a prayer and a grudge.
When the dust settled, the silence was worse than the noise.
I pushed myself up, chest heaving. "Great," I muttered. "That's not going to be a problem at all."
Torglel staggered upright, brushing ash from his beard like he was just finishing lunch. "Well," he panted, "that went exactly as planned."
Alythiel glared, brushing soot off her cloak with short, furious strokes. "You call this planned? Half the bridge is gone!"
Torglel shrugged. "That bridge had it coming. Built soft."
Alythiel's brow twitched. "You are a danger to infrastructure."
"I prefer the term stress test."
She groaned. "Three languages... and somehow I still can't find one strong enough to describe dwarf brain damage."
Torglel grinned like she'd just paid him a compliment.
Then I felt it—that whisper behind my thoughts, sliding in like oil in water. The voice I never invited but couldn't seem to keep out.
You could've ended it in one strike... if you just gave in.
The runes under my skin flared faintly—lightning itching behind my eyes.
I clenched my jaw. Shoved it down.
Every time I said no, it learned something new. And one day, it would stop asking.
The sentinel was just the threshold.
The real fire still waited below.
And as we stood at the edge of that shattered bridge—heat rising like breath from the mountain's lungs. I couldn't help but glance at the others.
Torglel, flicking ash from his beard like he was cleaning breakfast crumbs, not walking away from near-death. Alythiel, blade still drawn, her gaze not on the dark ahead—but on me. Always on me.
We'd crossed a line here.
Not just a chasm, not just a door—but something older, deeper.
Which was probably fine. We were due for a catastrophic life choice.
The Smeltfire Deeps weren't just dangerous. They were a death sentence disguised as a mission.
This mountain remembered every scream birthed in its caves, every ember spat from its throat. It wasn't testing us. It was reminding us that it still thirsted—for fire and blood.
And beneath the shattered bridge, that thirst waited for us.