The path narrowed two days west of the ridge, where the pines gave way to jagged hills and brittle stone, their edges sharp enough to cut the wind. Snow swirled in lazy spirals overhead, but the ground here bore less of it—as if something beneath the surface radiated just enough heat to keep the frost from fully claiming it.
Lysa was the first to notice.
Her step slowed. Her breath stilled. She crouched, brushing aside a patch of snow with callused fingers, revealing black stone beneath. Smooth. Cold. Polished like glass, yet broken in places, as though a larger form had shattered long ago.
Dragonglass.
Obsidian.
It shouldn't have been here—not this far north, not buried under forgotten hills. And yet the lines in the rock ran deep, not just cracks, but runes. Lines of power etched by hand, shaped not by natural formation, but by intent.
Kieran knelt beside her, one hand hovering over the surface. The pendant against his chest pulsed sharply, resonating with the markings.
There was no question now. This wasn't just a pocket of old weapon stockpile.
This was a vault.
Hidden.
Deliberately.
And it had not been touched in a long time.
The two of them spent the better part of the morning uncovering the slab. Snow scraped away. Ice chipped carefully. Beneath the crust, a circular emblem was revealed—seven arrows pointed inward toward a spiral eye, each etched with fragments of an older language neither of them recognized. Kieran didn't speak. He only pressed his hand against it.
The stone responded.
A surge of mana leapt up his arm, hot and bright, threading through his veins with such force that he nearly blacked out. His mind flared with images—fractured pieces of knowledge. Forging tables surrounded by cloaked figures. Blades black as night. Glyphs floating over fire. Words that sounded more like vibrations than speech.
He gasped, pulling back just as the slab began to shift.
Stone groaned. The earth trembled. And with a slow, ancient exhale, the slab split down the center, revealing a staircase that spiraled into darkness.
Lysa reached for her knife instinctively, but Kieran stopped her with a glance. His fingers still trembled. His heart hadn't slowed. But he understood.
This place had been waiting for him.
The stairwell led into a chamber deeper than the glacier vault, but colder in a different way—not in temperature, but in silence. The air was still. Undisturbed. The walls shimmered with veins of obsidian, and in the center stood a low forge, long since extinguished but still reeking faintly of old fire.
Scattered across stone tables were fragments—daggers, shards, curved blades, all carved from dragonglass. Each bore runes along the edge, humming softly when Kieran neared. He passed a hand over them, not touching. Just feeling.
The system stirred again.
Not a voice, not a command, but an offering.
Knowledge poured into his thoughts—not just of magic, but of craft. The shaping of mana not only through spells, but through materials. Through objects. Through weapons. It was art. It was alchemy. It was belief made steel.
And it was his now.
He chose a shard.
Long, curved, almost fang-like in shape. Black as night, smooth to the touch but heavier than expected. He laid it on the forge and closed his eyes.
He didn't need fire to shape it. Not here.
He needed will.
The pendant warmed, and the air around him shimmered. He drew glyphs in the air—deliberate, slow, ancient. One for focus. One for binding. One for memory. Lysa watched silently from across the room, her eyes reflecting the runes like mirrored stars.
The shard rose.
Mana coiled around it like breath around glass, fusing with the markings as they glowed deep violet. His fingers moved with purpose, each motion instinctual, as if he had done this a thousand times. He wasn't forging a weapon.
He was naming it.
And when it was done, it hovered for a moment—sharp, curved, humming with contained force—before falling gently into his outstretched hand.
Moonfang.
That was the word that came to mind. Not in English. Not in the Old Tongue. Just a name born of the thing itself.
It felt right.
And it felt dangerous.
That night, they didn't make camp near the vault.
The air had grown too quiet, too watchful. They moved a few miles west, built a low fire in the shelter of a hollow ridge, and ate in silence. Lysa spoke first.
She told him that the vault smelled like something older than the Night King. Older than any tale told by her people. She said the glyphs gave her dreams she didn't remember, but woke from with her heart racing.
He didn't deny it. He had felt it too. That weight. That pressure behind the silence. The sensation that unlocking one piece of this world had made it turn just slightly faster.
Lysa touched the edge of Moonfang as he laid it across his lap. Her finger traced the rune near the hilt.
This wasn't made for killing men, she whispered. This was made to kill things that shouldn't exist.
He didn't answer.
He only stared into the fire, feeling the blade's presence echo against his heartbeat.
And when she finally leaned against his shoulder, curling into the space between him and the flames, he didn't stop her.
Their fingers brushed.
Neither of them pulled away.
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