Aldric held the geode against the lamp and knew it could relight the dead mountain. He had spent a lifetime learning stone. This one hummed under his monocle like a struck bell. Ironholt's oldest peak had gone cold ages ago, its heart snuffed dark. Aldric meant to wake it. The geode had the power. He had proven that much last night, cracking a smaller twin and watching the shards glow for an hour. But power meant nothing without a path. He did not know where the mountain's heart lay. He set the geode in the crate with the others and wiped dust from his beard. The shop stood quiet at the end of the lane, its walls faceted like a split geode, crystals glinting in every angle. Aldric climbed the ladder to the tall shelf of enchantment books. His father had left him these. He pulled down three volumes, spread them across the counter, and searched for any chart of the dead peak's insides. He found ore lists. He found old wards. He found no map. The heart could sit a mile deep or a hundred feet. Without the way in, his strongest stone was dead weight. The door opened without a knock. A dwarf stood there, bald, his copper beard hung with iron rings and rune-stones. A leather blindfold covered his eyes, stitched with a jagged symbol. Aldric had never met him, but he knew the trade by the glowing brands on the man's forearms. A rune-worker. His father had spoken of them once, the ones who read stone by touch. "You have the geode," the dwarf said. "Word travels." "Who are you?" "Merlyn." He crossed to the counter and laid a bare hand on the closed book. The runes on his skin flared. "You're looking for a map. There isn't one." Aldric's chest tightened. "Then the mountain stays cold." "I didn't say that." Merlyn tilted his head toward the crate. "The stone knows the way. It came out of that mountain. Split rock remembers its bed." Aldric stared. He believed stones held their conditions. He had built his whole trade on it. But he had never thought to ask a geode where it was born. "Show me," he said. Merlyn lifted the humming geode and pressed it between both palms. His brands burned bright. The stone answered. A thin line of light bled from a crack in its shell, sharp and steady, pointing past the shelf toward the north wall. It did not waver. It held like his father's compass needle held true north. "That's the bearing," Merlyn said. "Follow it and you reach the heart." Aldric's hands shook as he took the geode back. The light stayed. For the first time the path was real. But the beam pointed straight into deep rock, and Aldric knew no way to walk a line through solid stone.