Orlan Wolfstone knelt in the ash where his forge used to stand. Six years ago, the Chaos Lords had pulled it down stone by stone while he watched. He had spent every year since taming the ember wolves that would give him fire hot enough to forge weapons against those same lords. Six wolves now followed him. Six beads hung in his blonde beard. He had the fire. He had no hearth to hold it. He pressed his stone palm to a cracked block at his feet. The block split. He set the pieces aside and reached for the next. The mountain wind carried soot into his beard. Behind him, one of his wolves lay in the ash, cracked hide glowing from within, yellow eyes tracking his hands. The wolf's breath melted the frost off a nearby stone. Orlan had a plan. Stack the outer ring first. Line it with the black rock the wolves would not burn through. Call the fire last. He worked through the morning. His stone fingers gripped each block without crushing it, a trick that had taken him years to learn. By midday he had raised the ring to his waist. Then the ogre came down the slope, emberwolf fur across his shoulders, fire eyes fixed on the wolf in the ash. He stopped ten paces off and lifted both hands to show them empty. "Something is killing your wolves in the low woods," Alden Firepaw said. "Three this week. Scorched prints. Not fire I know." Orlan stood. The wolf beside him rose too, hackles lifting in slow orange lines. Orlan counted his beads without meaning to. Six. Not seven. Not eight. He had thought he would lose wolves to age or to the hunt, not to something that left burn marks in mud. "Show me the prints," Orlan said. Alden shook his head. "After. Finish your ring. You will need the fire more than I need the tracks fresh." He crouched and set down a bundle wrapped in oiled cloth. Inside lay a hammer of ruby and gold, runes lit from within. "Found in the low woods. Near the last body. It is not mine to keep." Orlan lifted the hammer. His stone hand did not crack it. The runes warmed against his palm. He walked back to the ring and called the wolf. The wolf stepped into the half-built hearth and breathed. Fire poured from its jaws in a slow orange stream and pooled inside the black rock. The stones held. Orlan brought the hammer down on the first bar of iron he had carried up the mountain in a sack for two years. The bar folded like warm bread. Sparks jumped. The forge was lit. Orlan turned to the ogre. "Now the prints," he said. Alden was already walking down the slope.

Orlan followed the ogre down the slope, the runed hammer still warm in his belt. Before they reached the low woods, a wolf howled behind him. He turned. Smoke rose from the ridge above his new forge. A shape moved through it. Not a wolf. Something bigger, with a mane of fire. He climbed back up. The ogre came with him. At the tree line above the hearth, Orlan crouched. The creature paced along the outer stones. Its coat was ash gray. Its mane burned. Each print it left scorched the ground black. One of his six wolves lay bleeding in the dirt, ribs cracked open, ember light leaking out of it like sap. Five beads now. He touched them once, then let his hand drop. The lion sniffed the forge mouth. If it stepped inside, it would kill the wolf feeding the fire. Then the hearth would go cold, and every weapon he meant to make would stay iron in a sack. Orlan drew the hammer. He did not wait. He walked into the open and struck a black rock at the forge's base. The runes on the hammer flared. The stone rang like a bell. The lion turned its head. It charged. Orlan set his feet. His stone skin was made for this. The lion hit him chest-first and knocked him back three paces, but he did not fall. He brought the hammer down on its shoulder. Bone cracked. The mane flared and burned his beard. He swung again and caught its jaw. Teeth broke on his arm. He felt none of it. He was rock. He hit it a third time at the base of the skull. The lion dropped. It did not die at once. It tried to rise. The ogre came down the slope with a spear and finished it. The fire in its mane guttered out. Black prints steamed in the dirt around them. Orlan knelt by his dead wolf and pressed his palm to its side until the glow faded. He pulled one bead from his beard and set it on the wolf's flank. Five left. Five wolves to feed the forge. Enough, if nothing else came. The ogre wiped his spear. "It was not alone," he said. "There were two sets of prints in the low woods. This one and another." He nodded down the mountain, toward the huts and vendor stands of the market hamlet at the foot of the slope. "The other went that way. Yesterday." Orlan stood. The forge behind him still burned. He had killed the thing at his door and kept his fire. He had also learned there was a second one, and it had gone where people slept. He lifted the hammer, still warm, and started down toward the thatched roofs below.