Gray Chronicle

Chapter 15 Both Sides of the Stone Wall

No one answered. Only Kirk twirled the iron rod in his hand, turning the sharpened end in a different direction.

Garrett didn't stop his gesture. His fingers were still in mid-air, but his eyes were asking Wald. Wald neither nodded nor shook his head. He simply slammed his staff on the ground, the brass base striking the stone with a vibration much softer than the previous hammer blow, but in the same direction.

It was quiet on the other side of the stone wall. The silence lasted longer than before.

Then the voice rang out again. This time it spoke Common Tongue. The pronunciation was slow, with each word spaced a breath apart, as if the speaker was simultaneously recognizing the words they were saying.

"Outside. A few."

Garrett withdrew his finger from mid-air. He didn't answer. He was waiting for Lynn.

Lynn took a step forward. His boot landed on a regular line; the line didn't break, but it jerked. He walked to the edge of the ore pile where Randall was sitting, standing five steps in front of the stone wall. The light from the Holy Iron Blade illuminated the dense chisel marks on the stone wall. The grooves dug by fingers didn't look like traces of despair under the red light; they looked more like calculations. The depth, spacing, and angle of each groove were different; they weren't dug randomly, but were recording something.

“Seven,” Lynn said. He didn’t count himself, Ellie, and Kirk. “There are seven people outside.”

There was a moment of silence behind the stone wall.

"Seven isn't many. I've seen far more," the voice said. "More than seven people walked this way forty years ago. They didn't stop. Where do you think they went?"

Lynn's fingers tightened on the hilt of the knife. Forty years ago. Old Tok's master. Forty years ago, he went into the depths of the dark river and never came out again.

"You are that dwarf," he said. "You are old Tok's master."

There was no answer from behind the stone wall. But the red light dimmed again. This time it wasn't caused by the hammering; it was a sudden darkness. It was as if something on the other side of the stone wall reacted when a certain name was mentioned.

Then the voice said, "Tok. Is he still forging?"

Lynn's back relaxed by an inch. Just an inch.

"He hit. His left little finger was cut off, but he still hit."

Silence. The silence lasted longer than ever before. Then the sound from behind the stone wall changed; it was no longer the metallic resonance, but became closer to a human voice. It was as if the speaker had awakened slightly from some state.

"Fingers. Was I there when they cut off their fingers?"

No. It happened seven years ago.

"Seven years. Seven years. The fire in the furnace went out and burned again, burned again and went out. How many hammer blows are seven years?" The voice paused for a half-beat. "Who are you?"

"Lynn. Old Tok's apprentice."

"Apprentice." The voice repeated the word. "He took on an apprentice. He shouldn't have. His master died because of the word 'apprentice.'"

Lynn felt the Holy Iron Sword at his waist heating up. It wasn't the heat of the gleaming gray-etched patterns, but a different kind of heat. The spine of the sword pressed against his leg bone, the heat seeping into the bone.

“He didn’t treat you as an apprentice,” Lynn said. “Forty years ago, someone put a hammer on an anvil and walked into the underground river. He said that person wasn’t killed by anyone else. He was standing by the furnace, forging iron, when he looked down at his hands as if he saw something that others couldn’t see. Then he walked into the deepest part of the underground river and never came out again.”

The red light receded from the crack in the stone wall.

It didn't disappear. It gathered. A whole patch of red light scattered throughout the crack contracted towards the center, finally condensing into a vertical line that hung straight down from the top of the stone wall to the chisel mark on the ground. The red line passed precisely through the center of the pulsating white light at the bottom of the icy pool.

"What he saw were the lines of rules," the voice behind the stone wall said. "What he saw were complete lines of rules, rising from the mines at the bottom of the icy pool, passing through underground rivers, canals, cities, temples, and all the way to the heavens. He saw how the rules of the entire world were severed one by one by the temples. After seeing that, he knew that all his blacksmithing work throughout his life had been forges. Rune forging isn't about hammering patterns into iron. Rune forging is about re-weaving the internal structure of iron with threads from the lines of rules. What he hammered in before was all dead, because he couldn't see the lines."

Wald took half a step forward. The tip of his staff aligned with the point where the red light fell on the stone wall. The flashing frequency of the gray-etched crystal changed, becoming a steady pulse, each beat coinciding with the changing rhythm of the red light's brightness.

"Your staff," the voice from behind the stone wall said. "The Aldric Temple's design, isn't it? Forty years ago, the Aldric Temple wasn't called the Temple of Order. Before that, it was called the Temple of Fire. The surveyors of the Temple of Fire didn't measure veins; they measured the curvature of regular lines. You now use facets of crystals for measurement, which is more accurate than before, but crystals are cut from eroded veins. Erosion is like regular pus; using pus to measure a wound will always reveal where it hurts."

Wald's hand stopped on the staff.

Who are you?

"A descendant of Arsha the Bronze Hammer. Forget the name; names rust if they're not used for too long. Remove the crystal from the staff." The voice paused. "Remove one-sixth. The piece near the brass band."

Wald was silent for a moment. Then he pulled a small pair of pliers from his waist and clamped them onto the edge of the crystal at the tip of the staff. With a crisp click, a crystal the size of a fingernail was removed. The staff's light dimmed, but didn't go out.

Something was flowing inside the exposed crystal. It wasn't light, nor was it a liquid substance; it was a line so fine it was almost invisible to the naked eye. It was dark gray, coiled within the layers of the crystal's cross-section, one end cleanly broken, the other extending deeper into the crystal.

"See? The large chunks of gray-etched crystals embedded in your staffs were all cut from intact ore veins by the temple. But they didn't remove the threads when they cut them. They stuffed the broken threads of the rules into the staffs, and casting spells was like using these broken threads to pull on other people's rules. The opponents you hit weren't defeated by elemental damage, but by being torn apart at the level of the rules. Every staff you use is helping the temple digest what they dare not openly admit—the remnants of severed rule threads."

Garrett and the girl simultaneously looked at their equipment. Their robes, their boots, their measuring tapes. Everything was inlaid with etched crystals. The etched crystals used by the surveying team were all purchased from the temple's procurement office.

"It took us seven years." Garrett's voice choked. "Seven years of equipment."

"Seven years is nothing," the voice behind the stone wall said. "Arsha was locked at the bottom of the icy pool for more than seven years. The ancestor of the Copper Hammer family, the creator of the Deep Eye Path, was betrayed by his own student. That student later became Nox's first chief judge. Guess how he tried him—he plucked out Arsha's pupils and soaked them in a solution of ash-corrosion crystals to see if the eyes of an observation-type professional could be used as detectors for ash-corrosion veins. Those two eyes are still soaking in Nox's relic vault."

Randall moved on the ore pile.

His pupils had been removed from his eye sockets, which were turned toward the stone wall. His empty eye sockets were expressionless, but his lips were trembling.

"The Relic Archives. I've been to the Relic Archives. I went during the troop tour." His voice was hoarse, as if his throat was filled with a layer of corrosive dust. "A required course for first-year trainee archivists. Visiting the Relic Archives to learn how to file and classify relics. There was indeed one relic in a sealed jar. The liquid was pale green, and something was floating in it. The label read 'Unknown Paleontological Specimen.'"

There was no sound from behind the stone wall.

Randall's fingernail scraped against the chain. Rust got into his fingernail, but he didn't stop.

"When we were queuing up and passed that jar, the guide said it was the eyeball of an ancient monster. One of the trainees asked why there were gray etched patterns on the eyeball. The guide said he was mistaken; those were the optic nerve endings of an ancient creature. When the trainee went back and copied the skill list, his hands were still shaking; he hadn't made a mistake."

"That intern."

"Number NK-4944. Two classes below me. Four months later, he was assigned to the terminal archives area. No one has seen him since."

Silence permeated the entire domed void. The torchlight flickered on the stone walls, but the white light shining up from the icy pool below suppressed all shadows.

Then the voice from behind the stone wall spoke a sentence. This time it wasn't Ancient Dwarven Language, nor Common Language. It was another variant of Dwarven Language. A label popped up in the corner of the vision: [Forge Language - Before Extinguishing the Flame]. This was the last sentence the Dwarves spoke before the molten iron in the furnace solidified. It wasn't a prayer, it was a farewell.

"What's his name?" Shi Bi asked. (Common language.) "What's the name of that trainee who wasn't officially registered?"

Randall said the name. A very ordinary name, and then it dissipated. The red light behind the stone wall contracted slightly, as if someone were carving the name into something. Then the red light retreated deeper into the crack, not disappearing, but moving further into the stone wall.

"Come in."

The door remained closed. But suddenly, the chisel marks on the stone wall lit up. Red light seeped out again from the grooves dug by fingers, flowing along the grooves and connecting one by one to form the shape of a door frame on the stone wall. The inside of the door frame was still stone, but the stone had become transparent. Not that it had turned into glass, but that it allowed people to see what was inside—very deep, deeper than a vein of ore, all the way down.

Inside was a downward staircase. The staircase was narrow, allowing only one person to pass sideways. The surface of the staircase showed no chisel marks, only natural stone patterns, but each step was exactly the same height. The rock walls on both sides of the staircase were covered with gray erosion crystals, not scattered veins, but rows of vertically arranged crystal pillars, spaced at extremely regular intervals.

"Forty years ago when I went up, the steps went upwards." The voice behind the stone wall trailed off, then stopped. When it resumed, it was phrased differently. "Today I'm going down. The decision is yours."

Wald glanced back at Garrett. Garrett looked at the girl. The girl had already taken out tracing paper, a pencil tucked behind her ear, and her free hand was flattening the rolled-up paper.

"Who drew it?" she said. "Who recorded it?"

Ellie walked forward.

She didn't stop as she passed Lynn, only brushing her arm against his as they passed. In the Lower City, people don't say "I'll go with you," this gesture says it all. Kirk followed behind her. The iron rod changed position, slung over his shoulder, the sharpened end facing backward.

Lynn glanced back at the other side of the icy pool. Randall sat atop a pile of ore, his hands gripping taut chains. He didn't stand up, but his head was turned toward Lynn.

"You still have the key," Randall said. It wasn't a request, it was confirmation.

Lynn placed her hand on her coat, which rested on her collarbone. "Yes."

"Find Theo. Tell him I'm still in the underground river. He doesn't need to come to rescue me; he won't find me anyway. Just tell him I'm still alive. It's been long enough."

Lynn nodded.

Then he turned toward the steps embedded in the stone wall. The light of the Holy Iron Blade shone into the transparent stone, casting its own shadow on the steps. The shadow wasn't black; it was gray. A gray-etched gray.

He stepped onto the first step.

The rule-bound line beneath his feet followed him into the doorway. Behind him, Ellie's curved line trailed at her heels, as if hesitating whether to change direction. Then the line didn't change. It followed her down.

Wald was the last to enter. His staff was missing a sixth of its crystal, and its light was more diffuse than before. He placed the broken crystal on the ground outside the stone wall, pressing it into the deepest groove of the chisel mark.

"No need to pay," he said. Then he squeezed sideways into the doorway.

The red light merged.

The stone wall turned back into stone. The light in the crack vanished completely. Only the white pulsation at the bottom of the icy pool continued to rise, segment by segment, along the direction of regular lines.

Go upstream.

Heading to the city.

Heading towards Graymist City.

---

After the door closed, only three people remained in the domed cavity.

Randall. Stone wall. Cold pool.

Footsteps sounded again from the direction of the five-way intersection. This time it wasn't five people. It was three. Their steps were heavy, they wore hard-soled shoes, unconcerned about loose stones. Their movement was clumsy, but fast.

The leader stopped at the entrance to the tributary of the eye. The torchlight illuminated his face. There was a scar on the left side of his jawbone, its edges edged with fine pits burned from ash and dust. Wright Steelwrist.

"Eye spurs. Damn—there was light just now." His voice was muffled behind the gray mask, a low, rumbling sound. He showed the temple rune on the back of his hand, which wasn't fully repaired yet. "Look at the ground. The footprints are fresh. At least six people."

A shadow warrior crouched down behind him and wiped the water off the stone surface with his finger.

"It still has warmth."

Wright Steelwrist looked up. The light from the cold pool stretched his shadow long, but it wasn't just the shadow that was stretched. The arrangement of chisel marks on the stone wall before him came into view. Not meaningless scratches, but calculations. Records.

He didn't recognize it. But he knew it shouldn't exist.

"Chew open the rock wall."

The person behind him didn't move.

"Captain. Digging here will trigger a vein resonance—"

"chisel."

He took two steps back. The Shadow Warrior raised his hammer. The hammerhead was forged in the temple and inlaid with a ring of gray-corroded crystal fragments.

The hammer fell. The dark red light patterns within the chisel marks vibrated.

There was no response.

Only the white light surged upwards from the bottom of the icy pool; the rhythm between the second and third sections was interrupted by half a beat. Then it resumed, becoming even faster.

Heading towards Graymist City.

Twenty minutes later, in the lower city of Gray Fog.

No one noticed a very thin layer of frost on an iron railing by the street. It wasn't water frost, but a crystalline film of condensed dust. This film lasted on the railing for less than three seconds before vaporizing. At the same time, the water temperature in the underground tributary of the old canal dropped by half a degree, and the iron nail that old Tok was hammering rolled off the edge of the hearth, its tip spinning like a compass before stopping at due south-southwest.

That's the upper reaches of the underground river.

Old Tok placed the hammer on the anvil. He looked at the nail.

"What did you see?"

He wasn't asking about a person.