CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Thalia descended the narrow stairs behind Kaine, each step carrying her deeper beneath Frostforge's familiar halls and closer to memories she'd spent two years trying to forget.
The heat of the Howling Forge faded with every turn of the spiral staircase, giving way to a chill that seeped from the ancient stone and settled into her bones.
She flexed her fingers against the cold, trying to focus on the steady rhythm of Kaine's footfalls rather than the quickening beat of her heart or the whisper of dread that coiled around her throat like a living thing.
"We don't have to do this," Kaine said, pausing to look back at her. Shadows carved deep lines into his face, illuminated only by the guttering flame of the lantern he carried. "I could find someone else to help me open the door. I’ll sketch what I find, bring it back to you."
Thalia shook her head, grateful for the offer but unwilling to yield to her fear.
"No. I want to see it myself." She had made the decision moments after their kiss, while still wrapped in the warmth of his arms. She couldn't let her personal terror stand in the way of her duty.
"I'm not the same person Maven tried to sacrifice.
I won't give her that power over me anymore. "
Kaine studied her face for a moment longer, his expression a blend of concern and pride, before nodding once and continuing downward.
The stairway eventually opened into a corridor that bore little resemblance to the academy's upper levels.
Here, the walls were rough-hewn stone rather than finished masonry, the ceiling low enough that Kaine had to duck beneath the occasional jutting rock.
Water trickled somewhere in the darkness beyond their lantern light, the steady drip-drip-drip like the beating of a heart within the mountain itself.
Their footsteps echoed down the passage, then faded into silence as they reached the end of the corridor.
Before them stood a massive circular door, its surface a patchwork of symbols and runes etched into dull metal.
The same door Thalia had watched Maven open years ago, minutes before the instructor had revealed her true intentions.
Thalia's hand hovered over the cold surface, not quite touching.
Memory flashed through her mind—Maven's fingers tracing these same symbols, her voice chanting ancient words, her smile when the mechanisms within groaned to life.
The instructor's amber eye gleamed with anticipation as she explained how the sacrifice of a human life would activate defenses beyond imagining, how Thalia's death would save them all.
"Breathe," Kaine murmured beside her, his voice gentle but firm. Not pitying, never that. He understood too well what it meant to face old wounds. "It's just a door now. Nothing more."
Thalia nodded, drawing air into lungs that suddenly felt too tight.
She forced herself to examine the door objectively, as she would any other artifact.
At its center, overlapping symbols of flame and ice crystal marked where a specific type of magic was required to unlock it.
The Founders had ensured no single type of magic could access this chamber.
Kaine positioned himself at her side, his shoulder brushing against hers. "Ready when you are."
Thalia slipped on her frost gloves—simple leather with enchanted silver wire woven through the fingers, designed to channel cryomancy without frostbite—and placed her palm against the ice crystal.
Kaine set his hand over the flame symbol, his eyes closing in concentration as he called upon his faint current-sensing abilities to manipulate the metal's inherent energies.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Thalia felt the familiar chill of cryomancy flowing from her core, down her arm, and into the ancient mechanism.
Beside her, Kaine's hand grew warm, then hot against the metal as he channeled heat into the counterpart system.
The runes along the door's edge began to glow—first dimly, then with increasing brightness until blue-white light spilled from each etched line.
A low grinding noise reverberated through the stone floor as hidden gears turned within the mountain rock. Slowly, ponderously, the circular door receded inward before rolling to one side, revealing the chamber beyond.
The light from their lantern seemed to falter at the threshold, as though reluctant to enter. Thalia steeled herself and stepped forward, forcing her legs to move despite the weight of memory that threatened to root her in place.
The Founders' Price chamber was exactly as she remembered it.
Vast yet low-ceilinged, with the stone pressing down just a foot above her head, but the opposite wall vanishing into shadow.
The air smelled of age and stone dust, undisturbed by the currents that flowed through the rest of Frostforge.
At the center of the room, a perfect circle of runes was carved into the floor—the ritual space where Maven had intended to spill Thalia's blood.
She avoided looking directly at it, focusing instead on the far wall where Kaine was already striding. His boots left clear imprints in the fine dust that covered the floor, but Thalia noticed other tracks as well—older footprints, crossed and recrossed.
"You've been here often," she observed, following him but giving the central circle a wide berth.
Kaine glanced back. “I have been. The excavation has taken some effort. I had help, too.” A flash of consternation crossed his features. “Senna’s been aiding me.”
Thalia frowned. She resented the way she felt at the sound of Senna’s name in Kaine’s voice. She didn’t want to waste her energy on jealousy, but the emotion coiled in her chest anyway, hot and unwelcome.
They reached the far side of the chamber, where part of the wall had crumbled away to reveal an opening behind it. Kaine stepped carefully over the rubble, offering his hand to steady her as she followed.
"This wasn't accessible before," Thalia said, remembering the solid wall that had stood there during her last visit.
"The battle damaged more than just the upper levels," Kaine explained. "I felt tremors all the way down here while the Isle Wardens were attacking. When I came to investigate afterward, I found this section had partially collapsed. I helped it along the rest of the way."
Beyond the broken wall was a smaller chamber, perhaps half the size of the main room.
Unlike the ritual space, this area seemed designed for study rather than ceremony.
Shelves were carved directly into the rock, though whatever scrolls or artifacts they'd once held had long since turned to dust. The walls themselves, however, remained intact—and they were Kaine's clear focus.
He approached the back wall, where his lantern illuminated what initially appeared to be decorative inlays.
As Thalia drew closer, she realized they were runes, similar to those on the chamber door but far more intricate.
They formed flowing lines and symbols across the stone, each character precisely inlaid with metal that had dulled with age but retained its essential form.
"Look here," Kaine said, kneeling before a section near the bottom. He set the lantern on the floor, its light casting his shadow huge against the rune-covered wall. "These phrases describe a 'threat from the sea'—raiders with weapons that could shatter ice and stone alike."
His finger traced a line of symbols crafted from a metal so dark it seemed to absorb the lantern light. Thalia didn't need to touch it to recognize the material—it was identical to the Isle Warden blade they'd examined in the forge.
"And these," he continued, moving to a different section where the runes were formed from a pale, silvery-blue alloy, "detail the defenses the founders created in response. The Founders’ Price, yes, but also others I’ve been unable to translate.
" The blue metal caught the light differently, reflecting it with a soft luminescence that made the runes appear to float above the stone.
"I've been piecing together the translation from fragments in the archives," Kaine explained. "It's slow work—the language is archaic, and parts are in dialects I've never encountered.”
Thalia leaned closer, studying the contrasting materials. "The black is identical to the Warden blade. But this blue alloy... I've never seen anything like it in the forge."
"Nor have I," Kaine admitted. "It doesn't match any ice-metal blend in Frostforge's records.
The composition appears to be entirely outside our current metallurgical knowledge.
" He looked up at her, his eyes bright with suppressed excitement.
"But you might be able to sense something in it that I can't. Your gift with currents goes deeper than mine. "
Thalia hesitated, then knelt beside him.
She removed her frost gloves and flexed her fingers, preparing to extend her senses into the unknown metal.
Current-sensing had always come naturally to her, an extension of the gift she'd used in her mother's herb shop to identify the potency of plants and minerals.
In metals, the gift allowed her to feel the flow of magical energy, to understand the internal structure in ways that even expert smiths couldn't.
She pressed her fingertips to the cool surface of the blue-silver runes and closed her eyes.
At first, she felt nothing but stone and age.
Then, slowly, a sensation emerged—a hum, distant but distinct, vibrating through the metal and into her fingertips.
Cold, but not the biting chill of traditional ice-metal.
This was deeper, more resonant, like the cold of the ocean's depths rather than the sharp bite of a winter wind.
She followed the current deeper, tracing its flow through the alloy's structure.
The magical signature was complex, layered in ways she'd never encountered.
Beneath the surface enchantment lay something else—an ore she couldn't identify, with a vibration unlike any metal she'd worked with in the forge.
Thalia's eyes snapped open. "This isn't just a different blend," she said, her voice rising with excitement.
"It's a completely different base metal, something I've never encountered before.
The magical current within it..." She searched for words to describe the sensation.
"It's self-sustaining, almost alive. And it resonates at a frequency that's completely opposite to the black alloy. "
Kaine's brow furrowed. "Opposite how?"
"Like...like wave patterns that cancel each other out," Thalia explained, her mind racing ahead of her words.
"When two opposing forces meet with equal strength, they neutralize each other.
" Her fingers traced the blue runes again, confirming what she'd felt.
"This alloy doesn't just resist the black metal's effects—it actively counters them.
The enchantment patterns are inverse, perfectly mismatched. "
She stood abruptly, pacing the small chamber as the implications crystallized in her mind.
"Don't you see? If we could reproduce this alloy, we could reforge our weapons, our armor, everything—create defenses that not only withstand the Wardens' black blades but potentially neutralize them on contact. "
The fear that had gripped her upon entering the chamber had burned away, replaced by the fire of possibility. This wasn't just a defense—it was a counter-offensive, a way to strip the Isle Wardens of their newfound advantage.
Kaine rose more slowly, his expression thoughtful.
"The Founders must have faced a similar threat.
Perhaps an earlier wave of maritime invaders, using the same black metal technology the Wardens have rediscovered.
" He ran his hand through his hair, leaving it standing in unruly spikes.
"But if this blue alloy was so effective, why was the knowledge lost?
Why aren't our weapons already made from this material? "
Thalia frowned, considering. "Maybe the ore is rare.
Or perhaps the technique was deliberately obscured after the threat passed.
" She gestured to the hidden chamber they stood in.
"This room wasn't meant to be found easily. The Founders’ Price has been kept secret for decades.
The knowledge might have died with the original metallurgists. "
"Which means," Kaine said slowly, "we need to find the source of this unknown ore before we can even begin to test your theory."
"The mines," Thalia said immediately. "Frostforge was built here for a reason—the mountains are rich with metals found nowhere else in the North. If this alloy was forged here once, the ore must have come from somewhere nearby."
She turned back to the wall, studying the blue-silver runes with new intensity. Now that she knew what to look for, she could feel the subtle differences in the metal's composition, the unique signature of an ore that had somehow been forgotten by time.
"We need to map the old mining tunnels," she continued, her mind already racing ahead. "Many were abandoned centuries ago when their veins ran dry, but if we're looking for something rare, something that might have been overlooked because it didn't fit known patterns of metallurgy..."
"The academy keeps records of all mining operations," Kaine said, nodding. "Most focus on iron and copper deposits, but there might be mentions of anomalous findings, veins that were abandoned because the ore was deemed unsuitable for traditional forging."
Thalia stepped back from the wall, a new determination settling over her.
The chamber that had once been the site of her greatest terror now held the key to Frostforge's salvation.
Maven had tried to invoke ancient defenses through blood sacrifice, not understanding that the true power lay in knowledge, not death.
"We should go," she said, gathering her frost gloves. "We need to search the archives, find those mining records before the Wardens return. They've retreated for now, but they'll be back—and with reinforcements."
As they made their way back through the main chamber, Thalia found herself looking directly at the ritual circle for the first time since entering.
The carved runes that had once filled her with dread now seemed smaller somehow, less significant in the face of what they'd discovered.
Maven's shadow no longer loomed so large.
At the threshold, Thalia paused and looked back at the chamber, seeing it with new eyes, not as a place of terror, but as a repository of forgotten knowledge—knowledge that might save them all.