Bram Orvyn knelt at the bottom of his vault and knew it would never fit him. The cellar under his lakeside lodge held his gold, stacked in tight rows he counted twice a day. But the ceiling brushed his shoulders when he stood. As a man, he managed. As what he truly was, he could not curl even a wing here. Bram wanted one thing before the frost came: a pit deep enough to hold a dragon at rest, buried under coin, warm and hidden from every neighbor who bought his goods. The problem was the digging. He could not swing a pick for a week without someone noticing the dirt, the noise, the merchant who never hired help. And if he dug in his true shape, claws through stone, one open shutter would end everything. He had lived thirty years as a trader with scorched fingertips and eyes like banked coals. He would not lose it to a curious child at a window. On his workbench, his magpie hopped along the wood, a gold coin pinched in its beak. The bird dropped the coin into a crack in the floorboards and cocked its head at the dark below. "Not there," Bram muttered. But the bird had shown him the truth. The floor was thin. Under it, only earth, waiting. He needed a digger who asked nothing. That night he went down to the water and found the dwarf who slept in a lean-to past the boat sheds. Thorak Deepdelver had been driven out of his own tunnels; the town said he'd killed no one, only argued with the wrong elders. He sat sharpening a short pick, his black beard heavy with lake damp. "I have stone that needs moving," Bram said. "Underground. Quiet." Thorak did not look up. "Everyone's got secrets in a cellar. Coin buys my silence longer than my curiosity lasts." Bram set down a purse. Thorak weighed it in one thick hand, then bit a coin. "Real," the dwarf grunted. "When?" "Tonight. Every night after, until it's done." They worked while the lodge slept. Thorak read the rock like a page, striking where it split easiest. He carried out the spoil in sacks and dumped it in the lake shallows before dawn. By the third night the vault dropped twice its old depth. Bram stood in the new dark and finally felt space above his back. On the fourth night, Thorak stopped and held his lamp to the far wall. He pointed at the fresh cut with the pick. "That's not my dirt," he said. "That's dressed stone. Old. You didn't tell me you were digging into somebody's tunnel." Bram came close. Cold air breathed through a seam in the rock, air that smelled of deep places and iron. The vault was deep enough now. But the wall between his hoard and something buried under Windscour had just cracked open.

The seam in the wall breathed cold air over Bram's gold. He held his lamp to the crack and saw only black beyond the dressed stone. Anything down there could crawl through while he slept. Worse, it could find him curled in his true shape, wings folded in the dark. He had spent thirty years hiding what he was. One breach could undo all of it. The wall had to close tonight. Thorak Deepdelver crouched by the gap and pressed his palm to the old stone. The dwarf had dug this vault for coin and asked no questions. Now his sharp eyes narrowed at the tunnel he had broken open. "I know this cut," he said. "My people laid stone like this. You didn't hire me to dig a cellar. You hired me to break into a grave." "Then help me seal it," Bram said. He dropped a fat purse on the floor. It rang against the stone. "Same price. More, if it holds by morning." Thorak weighed the purse, then spat into his palm. "Fill won't hold. Loose rock, and it breathes through. We wall it proper or not at all." He pointed his pick at Bram. "You carry stone. I set it." They worked fast. Thorak split blocks from the vault floor and squared each edge by lamplight. Bram hauled them close, his scorched fingers steady on the cold rock. He did not tire. That alone made the dwarf watch him longer than Bram liked. When Thorak leaned into the gap to measure, his lamp lit something inside. A soft green glow spread across the far tunnel wall. Moss clung there in the dark, shining faint blue and gold, like coals under water. Neither man had brought a light like that. "Living things grow down here," Thorak said quietly. "Air moves. Water. This tunnel goes somewhere." He set the last block and packed the joints with wet clay. "There. Sealed. Nothing crawls through tonight." Bram pressed his hand flat to the new wall. No draft touched his palm. The cold breath was gone. His hoard was hidden again, and his true shape with it. He let out the breath he had held for hours. Up on the workbench, his magpie hopped and dropped a coin. It rolled to the base of the sealed wall and stopped against the fresh clay. Thorak did not reach for his second purse. He stood staring at the wall he had just built, his beard heavy with sweat. "I sealed it," he said slowly. "But I know what's back there now. My people mapped these deep roads before they cast me out." He turned to Bram. "They'd pay a fortune to hear one of their lost tunnels still stands. Enough gold to bury a man." Bram's ember eyes fixed on him. The wall was closed. But the dwarf who closed it now held the one thing worth more than any stone.