I turn on him, fury rising in my throat. "You think I'm imagining things? You think I've lost my mind over some human woman?"
"I think you're tearing yourself apart over something you can't control." His scarred jaw works as he considers his next words. "Maybe it's time to accept she's gone."
The words hit like a physical blow. I slam my fist against the stone wall, feeling bones crack against ancient mortar. "She didn't leave. She was taken."
"By who? We've questioned every guard, every servant. No one saw anything. No one heard anything." Gargan steps closer, voice dropping to that careful tone he uses when I'm about to do something spectacularly stupid. "The council says?—"
"The council says she was never real. That I've imagined her. That grief has made me see phantoms." I spit the words like poison. "They sit in their warm chambers, growing fat on lies, while she's somewhere in this cursed place bleeding."
"Vargath."
"They want me to forget her. To go back to Zharra, to their plans, to their neat little arrangements." My voice is raw with exhaustion. "But I felt her kick, Gargan. The baby. My child. Real as the scars on my arms."
Gargan's expression softens, but his voice remains steady. "I believe you. But if she's truly gone?—"
"She's not gone." The certainty burns in my chest like molten iron. "This place is older than any of us remember. Built on human foundations, riddled with passages the council pretends don't exist. She's here. Somewhere."
I push past him, heading for the outer corridors where the newer construction meets ancient stonework. Where secrets hide in the spaces between old and new.
"Where are you going?"
"To find someone with a better memory than the council."
The forge district sprawls beneath the main stronghold like a cancer of smoke and steel. Here, the old human architecture shows its bones—cracked foundations, half-collapsed archways,chambers that serve no purpose anyone can remember. The perfect place to hide someone you want forgotten.
I find Grosh hammering red-hot iron into submission, sweat streaming down his massive frame. He's been here since before I was born, knows every tunnel and forgotten chamber better than the maps.
"Warleader." He doesn't look up from his work. "Heard you've been asking questions."
"I need information."
"Information costs coin. Good information costs more."
I drop a heavy purse on his anvil. The sound of gold rings clear over the hammer's song. "What do you know about the old passages? The ones that don't appear on official maps."
His hammer pauses mid-swing. "Dangerous question."
"Dangerous times."
He sets down his tools, studying me with eyes that have seen too much. "There are places beneath this stronghold that predate orcish rule. Chambers the first builders sealed away. Tunnels that lead nowhere." He leans closer, voice dropping to a whisper. "Places where things get lost. Permanently."
"Show me."
"Can't do that. But..." He glances around, ensuring we're alone. "Old Vex might know. Temple worker, older than stone. Keeps the sacred scrolls. If anyone has maps of the forgotten places, it's Vex."
I'm already moving before he finishes speaking.
I find Vex hunched over ancient scrolls in the deepest chamber of the temple archives, her gnarled fingers tracing faded ink by candlelight. She's so old her skin resembles cracked leather, and when she looks up at me, her eyes hold the cloudy weight of decades.
"Warleader." Her voice rasps like autumn leaves. "Heard you've been digging through shadows."
"I need to know about the old passages. The sealed sections."
She studies me for a long moment, then reaches beneath a pile of ceremonial texts. Her weathered hands produce a piece of charcoal-stained parchment, edges brittle with age.
"Maedra asked me to keep this. Said someone might need it someday." She unfolds the drawing carefully. "Map of the original catacombs. Before the collapse twenty winters past."
The charcoal lines show a maze of tunnels beneath the temple, chambers that branch off like roots from a dead tree. Several passages are marked with crude X's—sealed, forgotten, buried under tons of rubble.
