Torgin Ironbraid slammed his axe on the tavern table and swore he would take back the hold his clan lost three generations ago. Six warriors laughed at him. He had walked six days through the mountains to find the ruin himself, and now he stood in Warrington asking men to trust a lone dwarf with a bald head and a double-braided beard. None of them had seen the hold. They had only his word. "Show us proof," said the biggest of them. "You claim a fortress waits in the peaks. I claim you dreamed it in your cups." The others nodded. Torgin's face burned. He had climbed the broken gate himself. He had touched the old clan mark carved above it. But a story was not a wall, and no man crossed six days of stone on a story. Then the tavern door burst open. A shriek cut the room. Five small green shapes scrambled between the tables. Goblins, ragged and quick, with sly grins and grabbing hands. One snatched a coin purse. Another yanked a knife from a warrior's belt. They shoved and tumbled over each other, stuffing their arms with stolen loot. The warriors stood too slow. Torgin did not. His axe left his hand before he thought. It pinned the lead goblin's tunic to the doorframe. The creature squealed and dropped its haul. Coins, keys, and one heavy iron pendant spilled across the floor. Torgin crossed the room and set his boot on the goblin's chest. He did not pull the pendant free yet. He had seen its shape before, above a broken gate in the peaks. He held it up so all six warriors could see the mark stamped in the iron. It matched the clan mark on his own axe haft. "These pests came down from somewhere," Torgin said. "They came down from my hold. This pendant is dwarven work. Ancestral work. They robbed the place I mean to take back." He tightened his grip on the pinned goblin. "Ask it where it stole this." The biggest warrior picked up the pendant and turned it in the firelight. His laugh was gone. He looked at Torgin, then at the squirming goblin, then at the four others cornered against the wall. "If goblins nest in your ruin," he said slowly, "then the ruin is real. And a nest that carries dwarven gold has more inside." He drew his sword and set the point under the goblin's chin. "Talk, and we let you run." By the time the tavern quieted, three warriors had agreed to follow Torgin into the peaks. It was not the army he needed. It was a start. But the goblins had told them one thing before they fled into the night. The hold was not empty. Something far larger than goblins had driven them out of it.

Three warriors was not enough. Torgin knew it as he climbed the last ridge toward the hold. Below the broken gate, goblin fires dotted the slope. He counted twenty, then thirty, then stopped counting. His men crouched behind him, weapons ready. March in blind, and the pests would swarm them before they touched the gate. He needed a plan, not more axes. "You brought them to a slaughter," said a voice behind him. Torgin turned. A halfling stood on the rocks, barely tall enough to reach his belt, wrapped in full plate that caught the firelight. She held a mace in one hand and a broad shield in the other. She did not look afraid of the drop or the goblins or the dwarf twice her size. "Thorgrim Stoneheart," she said. "I heal the ones who live. I've buried the ones who don't. And you're about to make me a lot of graves." Torgin gripped his axe. "Then help me, or move." She walked past him and studied the slope. "You can't beat that many head on. But look where they're camped." She pointed her mace at the goblin fires. "They're all outside the walls. Something inside scares them worse than you do." Torgin remembered the goblin's words in the tavern. Something larger had driven them out of the hold. He had feared that thing. Now he saw its use. "They won't go back through the gate," he said slowly. "So we drive them toward it." Thorgrim grinned. "Now you're thinking like someone who wants to live." They worked fast. Torgin sent two warriors wide along the ridge with torches. He kept the third and the cleric with him near the gate. When the torches flared, the goblins shrieked and scrambled. Torgin's axe took the first that charged. It spun and dropped. He threw again, and a second fell. The goblins broke. They ran from the fire, straight toward the broken gate, the one place they feared most. Torgin drove them on, roaring, axe flashing. The little pests clawed over each other to escape him. Then the gate answered. A sound rolled out of the dark hold, low and huge, felt in the stone underfoot. The goblins froze. Whatever lived inside had woken. The green shapes scattered into the night, screaming, gone. The slope emptied. Torgin stood before his ancestral gate at last, weathered stone and iron carved with his clan's runes. No goblin barred him now. Thorgrim came to his side and stared at the dark doorway. "You cleared the pests," she said quietly. "But you woke the thing that scared them." Torgin looked at the gate his family lost three generations ago. Behind it, something breathed in the black. He had won the slope and lost his surprise. Whatever waited inside knew he was coming. "Then we go in ready," he said. He hefted his axe and stepped toward the hold.