One foot forward. The next followed.

  One foot forward. The next followed.

  One foot forward. The next followed.

  And on and on and on and on.

  Endlessly.

  Azarus of House Savoy stared forward into the blackness that stretched on before him. On either side of his stout frame, he was surrounded by the walls of a stone tunnel that seemed…familiar to him, in a distant way. As his booted feet tromped forward, almost as if they weren’t under his control, Azarus wondered how that could be. Surely…surely this was the first time he had ever been here?

  But none of that mattered. He had to keep going. He had to reach the end of the tunnel, where he knew she was waiting for him.

  He had to reach her before it was too late. He…he would never forgive himself if he didn’t make it in time.

  Her life depended on it.

  It felt like only moments ago Azarus had been sleeping soundly in the cot at the foot of his loaned forge. He had earned the right to use that forge, as small and dinky as it was. Long, long hours learning at the feet of the old Dwarven masters of the Holds had granted him his own space. He had impressed ancient Jorvik, the Defiant himself, with a very traditional axe wrought from mithril. Azarus had spent hours and hours and hours making bars of the stuff, none of the masters should have been so damn surprised that even a Velancian like him could work it properly.

  Too bad he couldn’t keep the axe. But in return, he’d earned the right to his own forge.

  A proper workplace, from where he could build a life for him…and for her.

  But after a long day forging flippin’ cutlery, he'd been awoken by Torgir barging his way into the comforting heat of the tiny building. Azarus had been startled awake by the racket Tor was making, something out of the ordinary for the normally quiet leatherworker next door.

  The other dwarf’s words had shocked all tiredness from his body.

  “The Korvoks grabbed Sigrun.”

  Azarus had barely stopped long enough to grab his still-untested hammer and shield before dashing out of the forge, Torgir hot on his heels. He hadn’t even bothered to put on a shirt.

  There were more important things than the stares of the citygoers.

  He had to get to the mines, now.

  Azarus had gotten the story from Torgir on the mad dash through the streets of the Hold, lit by eternally blazing braziers on every corner. Sigrun had been asked by her father to accompany a team of inspectors on a jaunt to shaft number thirty-three. Apparently, the crews might have found a new vein of Lunar Basalt of all things. This had been a big deal for the grey beards of the Jarlthing, and since Sigrun’s father was one of those Jarls…

  However, once she had reached the vein deep into that old haunt, snaking through and out of the mountain, it turned out the Hold hadn’t been the only Clan to find it.

  The Korvoks were waiting for the team.

  In all the chaos of the skinners descending upon the inspectors, one of the miners leading them had shamefully fled back through the tunnels. It was only thanks to that terrified coward that anything was even known about the ambush.

  Azarus was torn between hating him for leaving miners and functionaries to the not-so-tender, non-existent mercies of the rogue cannibal Clan, and being thankful they had any word of what happened at all. If not for him, it could have been hours or even days before a search team was dispatched for the missing crew.

  The Hold guard had naturally been gathering at the mouth of the tunnel when Azarus and Torgir reached it, waving away curious onlookers from venturing into the depths. Sigrun was a Jarls daughter, after all, and too important to go un-searched for like so many other disappearances had been over the years. Azarus knew they probably would have blocked him from accompanying them, with the way Sigrun’s father very publicly disapproved of their courtship.

  There was no way he would have been allowed to search for his own damned fiancé.

  But with Torgir’s help, Azarus just barged through the blockade. The leatherworker had distracted them so he could sneak by. Once past the Guard, Torgir had stayed behind to delay them if only for a moment, so Azarus could get ahead.

  He would always be grateful for that. Azarus hadn’t known Torgir liked him that much.

  Only…

  The tunnel he had run into didn’t seem to have an end. Azarus must have run down that seemingly infinite shaft for hours, with all the speed that his Awoken legs could grant him. He had cursed himself for a fool, focusing more on his Professions than his Stasusial advancement. If he had only gone on more monster-hunting expeditions, maybe he could have broken through the barrier into being a proper Cultivator. Surely with Ki of his own, he could have reached the ambush site where the Korvoks were holding his love.

  But he never reached it. Over time, Azarus started to lose strength. He couldn’t keep his mad dash up forever and had to try and conserve his strength with a swift jog. He might need to fight off the Korvoks, after all. Eventually, even that became too much for him. His job turned into a fast walk, and then…

  Even slower.

  Now Azarus was barely trudging forward on feet and legs that had little to no strength left in them. The scion of both House Savoy and House Florens had no idea how long he’d been slowly shuffling his way down into the depths of Vereden, but he…he couldn’t stop. He had to save Sigrun.

  If he didn’t…

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  What…what did he have to live for?

  Soaked in sweat born from both fear and exertion, Azarus slumped to his knees in the middle of the tunnel. His eyes stared ahead of him, seeing nothing, feeling nothing below his waist. His legs had long since gone numb, and the smith didn’t know if he had injured himself in the grim march to save Sigrun. His feet could have been shredded into so much mangled meat that they were little better than nubs, and he wouldn’t have even been able to tell.

  For a moment, he considered falling face-first onto the stone below, to drag himself forward on hands and knees. Surely…

  Surely he would reach the ambush eventually.

  As if in a dream, Azarus fell face forward onto the hard stone of the tunnel, scraping his cheek on pickaxe hewn floor. Shakily, he raised his right arm and dug it into the rock before him and dragged himself forward.

  He inched forward and smiled. He…he could do it.

  Just a bit more. He could do more.

  And then, Azarus blinked and found himself back where he had been kneeling, only moments ago.

  Ah…it…it had all been a hallucination of his exhausted mind. He hadn’t moved ever since he’d fallen to his knees. He…had just been staring out into the darkness that stretched before the whole time.

  Despair fell upon him then. He couldn’t do it. There wasn’t an ounce of strength left in him, no matter how hard he struggled. His hands and feet couldn’t move him an inch farther.

  It was over.

  Because of his failure, Sigrun would be slaughtered by the Korvoks.

  Azarus slumped further in his kneeling position, let his head slump against his chest, and wept. All he wanted now, was for the stone to reach out…

  And swallow him whole.

  He didn’t know how long he knelt there, dwelling upon his own deficiencies and what they’d cost him. However, a curious sensation grew over time, eventually catching his attention.

  From the pocket of his pants, he felt a strange warmth. Sluggishly, Azarus raised one limp hand to dig into that small space. Inside, his smithing roughened fingers brushed the surface of a smooth, glassy surface. Clenching the warm object in his hand, he withdrew it. As he did, a light began to chase away the deep, all-encompassing darkness he dwelled in.

  Even through the bars of his fingers, warm rays of light shone through. Curious despite himself, because he had no idea what this could possibly be, Azarus opened his hand.

  A star bloomed in the dwarven carved tunnel, chasing away the void. Sitting in his hand was a small gemstone that looked to be wrought from frozen flame. In it’s depths he could see oceans of what appeared to be flowing fire, endlessly writhing in whorls and spirals.

  Azarus stared down into the sea of flame, enraptured. He had never seen anything like this in his life. He had no idea where it had come from.

  It was like it had just…appeared on his person.

  As he stared into the firey gem, hypnotized, he heard something. A voice, almost, appearing at the edge of his hearing, speaking as if from an impossible distance.

  Male and proud, it beseeched him.

  Break…it…

  Azarus blinked.

  And clenched his fist tightly down on the stone. Even though he…wasn’t (?) yet a Cultivator, he was strong enough to crush a stone.

  The gem shattered in the palm of his hand with a sound akin to the breaking of glass, and from his clenched fist poured forth an ocean of flame. All of the fire trapped within it was now free, and yet…

  It did not burn him.

  No…

  Instead, the light and the warmth of the sun in his hand chased away the darkness clouding his mind as well.

  Azarus, formerly of House Savoy, blinked long and hard. His lips parted, and he remembered.

  This…all of this.

  This had happened years ago. Three of them, to be precise.

  There had been a tunnel. There had been a raid. There had been Torgir, who he had not seen in a very long time.

  And most importantly…

  There had been a Sigrun.

  But the tunnel had not been endless, and he…

  Had been too late.

  By the time Azarus had reached the site of the ambush by the Korvok clan, they’d already had their fun and their fill. To the last, each dwarf of the team of inspectors had been skinned and partially devoured. Some of their victims had been strung up their own intestines to hang from the ceiling of the tunnel, wound around the stalactites above.

  Including his Sigrun.

  Of the Korvoks, there was no sign of where they went, or even where they came from. That Clan of monsters and demons had always been able to appear and disappear like that, seemingly at will.

  Even now. Even now the sight of her defiled corpse was burned into his mind's eye. He saw it every time he dreamt. He saw it every time he blinked.

  Azarus knew, with the certainty of stone, that he would never escape that horror, not until the end of his days.

  Maybe not even then.

  From that tragedy, he lost everything he cared about. The loss of his daughter in such a gruesome manner drove Sigrun’s father, Jarl Garlan, mad. For some reason beyond him, the dwarf blamed Azarus for the ill-fate that had befallen she who they both loved so deeply. He was stripped of his hard-won forge, and stripped of his guest right in the halls of the Mountain Holds. It was barely a day before he was formally exiled by the Jarlthing at Garlan’s request. Even now, he didn’t know the actual reason given for the banishment.

  By that point, he hadn’t cared.

  Near suicidally depressed, he had trudged his way back to the nearest city to that Hold. That being Vittolia, the stronghold of his paternal House.

  The Savoy.

  Anguis had welcomed him back with strangely open arms, clucking his tongue in mock sympathy at the tragedy Azarus had endured. From that point on, he was free to do as he wished, and the only thing he cared for was his art. He spent years mindlessly toiling away at a forge much nicer than the one he had won with his own two hands but didn’t care even a fraction as much about.

  Unaware of the chains slowly tightening upon him.

  Until the day came that his Lord Uncle called in his debt. Azarus had idled the years away, he was told, spending gold frivolously in pursuit of gains both Statusial and Professional. Why, Anguis had even personally financed his Cultivator Ascension ritual and all the required reagents. It was time for him to give back to the House, this time through service.

  And so he was shipped off to wait at the hands and feet of his mad cousin, in a mad hamlet, for a mad task.

  The sacrificial lamb.

  The indignity of it all…it finally awoke him from his years-long sorrow. He hatched a plan with a fellow prisoner, and not long after that…

  A curious human slave came into his life.

  Only, he wasn’t a true human at all.

  Azarus breathed out shakily, nearly swimming through the sea of painless fire that had filled the tunnel.

  He had been accompanying said person what felt like only moments ago. He, and all of their traveling companions, had been sucked into some strange door set into the wall of the most ominous mountain he’d ever seen.

  Somehow…someway?

  It had trapped him in a torturous recreation of that mad dash through the tunnels of the Hold mine, as he raced against fate to try and save his love.

  “This is…” Azarus spoke aloud, a scowl growing on his bearded face. “Pretty fucked up.”

  He didn’t expect the reply that came, echoing out of the flame itself.

  A bit of an understatement, wouldn’t you say?

  Azarus shivered. Something about that voice…

  Something in it felt like it was speaking to his soul.

  “Who goes there?!” He called out in the now illuminated tunnel. It still stretched out into seeming infinity, but he could at least see his hands in front of his face. He used said hands to draw his hammer and shield and held them at the ready.

  Who am I, you ask?

  The light from the flames brightened, and Azarus could have sworn he saw a brief shape condense in the midst of it.

  It almost looked like another dwarf.

  I am the light that falls upon the verdant. I am the warmth that chases away the bitter cold. I am the dawn that lifts the hearts of the righteous, and he who delivers judgment upon the wicked.

  I…am Tarus, Lord of the Sun. Everburning. Unrelenting.

  And I have an offer for you, Azarus of No House.

  Azarus blinked and lowered his armaments, staring into the burning eyes of the flaming dwarf across the tunnel. Despite everything…

  He was intrigued.

  “Alrigh’,” Azarus said slowly.

  “Make yer pitch.”