Leaving Sun Valley felt as shameful as slinking away from a bad ball where you owed everyone a dance but no one any gold. In the morning, the sun struck our faces, but it was a pale, anemic light that had no intention of warming anyone. It merely served to highlight the frost clinging to my newly reclaimed pants.

  The valley, named after the sun, met us with a persistent, clinging frost. I took it as a personal insult. Or perhaps an invitation to an adventure that, as usual, begins with a frozen backside. In this world, great deeds arrive exactly when you are desperately lacking warmth.

  Zorkia carried our meager belongings steadily until the trail turned upward so steeply that tormenting the animal became impossible. I stopped and looked the mare in the eye. In return, I saw a clear and even slightly impatient "goodbye." I gratefully patted her flank. Zorkia watched me for a long time, as if weighing whether I was worthy of the honor, then turned and trotted back quite briskly.

  "She’s sold us out," Flint summarized gloomily. "Or she’s going to demand compensation from the elder for the moral damage of speaking with us."

  "She earned it," I replied. "If we return, I’ll bury her in carrots. If not, let her at least eat for us."

  The road to the fortress was stubborn. We scrambled along trails until a paved ribbon lay beneath our feet. The stone here was old, worn to a mirror-like shine by millions of steps. Between the slabs ran veins of metal—copper or bronze.

  I looked closely at these strips. Where I grew up, metal was a rarity, but here it was poured directly into the ground. Yet it looked wrong. In places, the bronze had turned green, like the scales of a sick fish, bulging with "brazen blight." Elsewhere, the stone had cracked, revealing rusty, orange "scars" of oxidation. When the bone of a mountain crumbles like that, it means it is mortally tired.

  The higher we climbed, the stronger the scent of old scale and slag became. The walls of the fortress didn't seem built; they seemed grown into the rock, like a giant fist that had once struck the sky and frozen there. But the knuckles of this fist—the towers and parapets—were peeling. The layer of metal on them was cracking, exposing the gray flesh of the stone.

  Gellia gripped her sword hilt. She felt it too—the smell not just of iron, but of a slow, cold decay.

  At the passage beneath the overhang, we were met by a dwarf named Brund. He sat on a bench, his shoulders wider than the bench itself.

  "Who are ye? What's the need?" he asked without looking up. His voice sounded like he was chewing gravel.

  "Priorin. A squad of travelers. Crown's business. We need to speak with the commander."

  The dwarf measured us with a look. His eyes lingered on my dusty boots and on Faurgar, draped in his curtain-cloak.

  "The crown arrives—the pot empties," he grunted. "Everyone has pretty seals, but empty bags. In this world, only food possesses true beauty."

  He stood reluctantly and gestured toward the inner gates. The portcullis shivered, grinding metal on metal—a sound that made my teeth ache. Too much friction, too little oil. The fist of the Bastion unclenched unwillingly, letting us into its rotting gut.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The air inside the Bronze Bastion was different—dense, almost tactile. It was saturated with the smells of heated metal, acrid sweat, machine oil, and boiling water. This scent reminded me of our caves before the season of the Great Hunt—a scent of collective tension.

  In the courtyard, life boiled, devoid of any grace, raw and honest. Men in greasy leather jackets hauled weights; others pulled sinews on stretching racks. At the inner gates stood two—Sinister and Gauntlet. Massive forged sentries, frozen like two silent terminal points at the end of any order. The steel on their carapaces didn't ring; it emitted a faint hum, a low-frequency vibration that made my heart resonate.

  "To the elder?" Brund tossed over his shoulder.

  "To the elder," I confirmed.

  I straightened my shoulders. My tight pants creaked at the seam, but I ignored it. In a place like the Bastion, they look at your gear second. First, they look at how you hold your back under the gaze of the golems.

  "A word of advice: don't promise anything here you can't deliver," the dwarf grunted. "The local bronze loves the truth. It feels it. If you lie, the walls will begin to close in."

  On the parade ground, a fierce match of Cagerun was underway. Stocky, built bodies leaped beneath suspended hoops; the ball struck the stone with a hollow thud. It wasn't a game; it was a sublimation of rage. I looked at the warehouse gates. The heavy doors were closed and bound with chains, not for protection, but to hide the emptiness within.

  "They hold on sheer stubbornness," I said quietly to my companions. "It’s not just a fortress, Faurgar. It’s their way of not going mad from the lack of everything."

  Our passage ended with an encounter that could hardly be called friendly. Mangratum, the head of the Bastion, stepped out. He was as broad as a section of the fortress wall, with dull copper woven into his thick, soot-scented beard. He was accompanied by two Forged—their steps echoing in the stone like heavy ingots.Mangratum was a relic of a dying age. At nearly four centuries old, his skin was less like flesh and more like weathered basalt, cracked by the weight of too many winters.

  "Vellaris, you say?" Mangratum said, his voice the clang of a bolt. "Fine. Where is your supply train?"

  "There is no train," I said, stepping forward. "We are a special task force. Heading into the Forbidden Lands. We were supposed to have been heralded..."

  "They are masters of 'heralding' in the capital," Mangratum cut me off. "And masters of hoping for miracles. But they are no masters of feeding soldiers. The fortress has been on half-rations for a week. Either you bring food, or there is no passage for you. We have held this wall by the throat for too long to let freeloaders through with empty hands."

  "What use are you to us?" Mangratum continued. "Speak only what you can answer for with deeds, here and now."

  The silence was viscous. Priorin looked ready to show his fangs, but I knew heroism here was worth less than a crust of bread. Mangratum nodded to himself, already crossing us off the list of the living.

  "A week ago, a squad of my boys went into the lower tunnels. They were to scout a path to the southern lowlands—a shorter, safer food route. They didn't return. Go there. Find out why. Clear the path if you can. Return alive, and then we will speak of your passage further."

  Suddenly, a siren wailed from the northern wall. A real, piercing howl. Mangratum grabbed a heavy gauntlet and moved toward the stairs.

  "Alert on the northern wall! If you want to earn the right to stand on this earth, go to the third embrasure. There’s room enough for everyone to fight."

  Priorin’s blood demanded the fight on the walls. But we had a goal.

  "We take the tunnels," I said loudly at Mangratum’s back. "Where your scouts vanished. It’s closer to our route... and perhaps, it’s what you need most right now."

  "Your choice," the commander snapped without looking back. "Guest barracks are down the left hall. I’ll give no rations—we have little ourselves. Take the tunnel maps from the duty engineer. Candles are your own."

  He left, and the air behind him turned cold. We were left alone in the humming gut of the Bastion, facing a darkness that had already swallowed one squad.

  The Hard Math of Survival. Commander Mangratum is one of my favorite NPCs. He is a Hadozi, like Flint, but he represents the "Old Guard"—he is literally turning into stone. His refusal to give the party rations isn't him being a villain; it’s a reflection of the brutal scarcity in the Forbidden Lands.

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