Bram Mosswick had forged a thousand blades, but no metal was good enough for his own head. He turned a horn on a bull's skull growing from his own bone, and iron cuffs still bit his wrists. Both marks came from Malachar's curse. He meant to smother that shame under a helm so fine that men would stare in envy instead of pity. But the ore in his bin was common iron. Common iron rusted. A rusted helm would only prove the curse right. He scraped his forge cold and went looking for better stone. Days later he stood at the edge of a burned crater. A meteor had cracked the swamp open long ago. Fused rock and jagged fragments jutted from black tar. Veins of orange fire still glowed inside the broken stone. Bram climbed down, and the tar sucked at his boots. He pried a shard loose and knew at once it was harder than any iron he had touched. "Put it down, boy," a rough voice said. "That vein will kill you before it crowns you." The speaker was a dwarf, barely reaching Bram's belt, with a white beard braided to his chest and a leather vest stuffed with picks. He walked the crater's rim like a man reading a book he had read a hundred times. Bram had heard of him. Borin Stonepick, the old prospector who had quit mining and never said why. "I need ore that won't rust," Bram said. He held up his cuffed wrists. "I need it more than my life." Borin squinted at the horns, then at the manacles. He didn't flinch. "The good stuff sits deeper than this crater," he said. "The richest vein feeds a beast. Ten stories of tentacle. I lost two partners to it. That's why I hung up my pick." Bram's stomach dropped, but his hand tightened on the shard. "Then show me where the beast sleeps." Borin laughed, short and dry. "You don't scare like the others." He knelt and dug his fingers into the tar near Bram's feet. He worked loose a chunk of stone streaked with pale crystal and old bone, and pressed it into Bram's palm. "Moonfall stone. Fell with the rest. It never rusts. There's your crown, if your arm is strong enough to shape it." Bram turned the fragment in his hands. Blue and violet light pulsed under the black surface. It was heavier than iron and colder than water. This was the ore. He had found it. "But that scrap won't make a full helm," Borin said. He pointed past the crater, toward deep water. "For enough, you go where the kraken guards the mother vein. And it does not sleep." Bram closed his fist around the moonfall stone. His masterwork had a beginning now. It also had a monster standing between him and its end.