There, in the vale of Gorgantum, he flung up jagged peaks to surround his place of hiding. He brought forth great slabs of marble from the earth and Shaped them, black and gleaming. And he showed them his plan, the vast citadel with its high towers, its encircling wall, and the secret heart of it like a twin-chambered nautilus. There the Fjel labored, honoring their ancient oath. Strong and high they built its walls—and deep, deep below it they delved, in Gorgantum, the hollow, where the earth’s strong bones conjoined.

When they reached the Source, he sighed to see the marrow-fire.

Godslayer would be safe.

It was a lingering essence of the blazing godhead of Uru-Alat; a blue-white fire that ran through the bones of the earth, the spark of which fueled the dragons’ fiery bellies at their emergence. Here, at the Source, it gathered. Nothing mortal could withstand its touch. He had enough of a Shaper’s power yet to Shape the marrow-fire. It took delicacy, tapping just enough to lace the veined marble of his citadel, to light the unfaltering torches. For the first time, he understood the joy his siblings had taken in Shaping the emerging world, and wondered what it would have been like to do so in the fullness of power before the Souma was shattered.

No matter. This would have to be enough.

Of its smoke, he wrought a pall of darkness, and this he flung like a cloak over the vale of Gorgantum, until the very skies were shrouded. And at this, too, he smiled, for it veiled his Elder Brother’s prying eyes and sheltered him from the sun’s wrath that had scorched his form to blackness.

The Source itself, he dared not alter, but from it he drew a steady flow, a Font in which the marrow-fire danced in an endless coruscation of blue-white flame. In the Font, where no mortal hands would dare reach, he placed the dagger, Godslayer. And there it burned, throbbing like an angry heart; burned, yet was not consumed.

His citadel was complete, and he was pleased.

And he was alone, and lonely.

There were the Fjeltroll, always, faithful to their oath. He had never lied to them. It was true, he treasured them for their very simplicity. But oh, how quickly their lives flickered past, measured against his own! Generations passed in the building of his sanctuary. And in the brute simplicity of their very fidelity, they served as a stark reminder of his complicated, solitary existence. To whom could he turn, when first he heard the whispers of his brother’s new Prophecy? It was a cunning plan.

No one.

He turned instead to the prize the Fjeltroll had seized from the battlefield and brought him like a trophy at his summons. The Helm of Shadows, Men had named it.