Chapter 28: Tomas Carries the Shard to the Forge's Heart

The passage branched at a fault line in the basalt, exactly where Seraphine had said it would.

She stopped at the junction and held the lamp low, reading the rock face. The heat here was not the ambient warmth of the outer corridor but something pressurised and specific, the way a forge-room door feels when you open it — the air itself becoming a substance, pressing back.

"Here," she said.