Trollheim Chronicles
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Dead Hills Stir Bones Teeth of Kloor Hollow Accord Mark of Hrond
Bones of the Mountain
Trollheim - Fall, 1907
The Council of Ashes convened beneath Grollak’s Fang, a jagged overhang carved into the cliffs like the mouth of some long-dead beast. Rain ran in narrow rivulets down the black stone teeth above them, tapping steadily on the gathering of cloaked figures seated in a semicircle around a low fire pit. A haze of smoke from damp-burning pine needles hung in the air, lending the shadows an almost sentient quality.
The elders were restless.
Graggul the Hollow-Eyed stood with arms crossed, his heavy jaw set like a stone trap. “He reopened the Atrium,” he growled. “Our sacred ground. The one place that was sealed after the Sundering, until Hrond defied our customs. And for what? A few crates of iron and coal?”
“He gave them nothing,” replied Yernatha the Bitter, voice like cracked slate. “He allowed them entrance. A difference, but not enough to warm these bones.” Her fingers, thick with rings carved from bone and tusk, twitched with agitation.
Even Redna follows Hrond’s orders now, without question— “That Atrium was sealed for a reason,” Graggul snapped, turning toward her now. “We lost a generation of shamans to the forge-wars. You were there, Yernatha.”
“I was,” she murmured. “And I remember the Dwarves’ song turning to smoke.”
“They betrayed the Pact!” Graggul’s voice echoed off the stone walls. “And now Hrond wants us to bow again? I say the mountain will crack before I do.”
“You may get your wish,” came a new voice—calm, but loud enough to carry. Narka Firebrand stepped into the circle, water dripping from her cowl, eyes dark with road-dust and conviction. Her satchel hung heavy at her hip, stained from the long journey across the Dead Hills.
Graggul narrowed his eyes. “Have you come to defend Hrond, girl?”
“No,” she said simply. “I've come to challenge all of you.”
That drew silence.
She stepped closer to the fire and pulled back her hood. Her dark braids were soaked, streaked with silt, and her weathered hands trembled slightly as she unstrapped a scroll tube from her back.
“We argue over wounds without knowing how they were made,” she said. “I propose we stop shouting about the past—and go look at it.”
Several elders shifted uncomfortably. Yernatha’s eyes narrowed. “You mean Garradash.”
Narka nodded. “The temple where the last Accord was broken. If there is truth to be found, it’s buried in the bones there.”
“No one has walked those steps in a hundred years,” said a younger elder, Garn Two-Knuckles. “They say the earth curses those halls. That blood burned into the stone.”
Graggul snorted. “Let her go, then. Maybe she’ll find what the Dwarves left behind—and join them in it.”
“Better to walk into the dark,” Narka said, “than spend your life flinching from its shadow.”
And with that, she left.
The descent into Thag-Nura, the Wound of Garradash, began before dawn. Narka traveled alone. No one offered to accompany her, nor did she ask. She followed the trail southward, the path crumbling beneath her boots with each step down into the long-buried scar of the old war.
The Dead Hills were quiet, but not still. Wind curled through the scrub pines like a warning whispered in a forgotten tongue. Occasionally, a bird would lift off suddenly from the rocks—then vanish into the gray sky as though chased by something unseen.
By midday, the light had dimmed even though the sun still hung behind the cloud-stained sky. A fine mist had begun to fall, dampening her cloak and clinging to her skin like breath. She reached the third switchback and stopped to catch her breath.
She rested her hand against a broken cairn and looked down into the basin below. From here, she could just make out the shattered archway of the Temple of Garradash. The ruin jutted from the hillside like a rib, one half-buried in moss and the other half blackened from ancient fire.
It looked smaller than she expected. And older. Not in the way of time, but in the way of memory—as if the stones themselves recoiled from being remembered.
The temple’s archway still bore its inscription:
“Truth Burns Brighter Than Fire.”
She stepped inside, torch raised. The inner chamber was circular and lined with columns that reached up into a broken dome, open now to the pale light above. Dust and soot clung to everything. The air was still, and thick with the smell of old stone and forgotten promises.
Murals covered the walls. She paused before one that showed a gathering of Trolls and Dwarves beneath a stylized mountain, arms outstretched in trade. There were gifts: carved tools, bundles of herbs, even a child’s toy sleigh. Beneath that, another image—Trolls and Dwarves again, but this time in battle, the sky filled with fire and the ground split open by some terrible force.
Someone had gouged a line straight through the center of that mural.
She descended deeper, down a spiral stair of worn obsidian steps, until she reached what must have once been a ceremonial vault. The space was roughly hewn, the floor cracked and uneven. Bones littered the far wall—not arranged or buried, just left, as if someone had meant to return but never did.
Narka knelt and unpacked her tools. She worked slowly, carefully brushing aside layers of ash and earth. She found pieces of shattered armor—bronze and black iron—too light for Dwarves, too narrow for most Trolls. She found a broken dagger, its handle still wrapped in stitched bark. She found a small leather pouch, intact only because of the wax seal that bore a dual glyph—Trollish on the left, Dwarvish on the right.
Her fingers trembled as she opened it.
Inside were five stone tablets, thin and curved like jawbones, etched with what appeared to be diplomatic minutes. Her Trollish was excellent. Her Dwarvish, rusty—but legible. The words were tense. Talks of shared magic gone wrong. Blame passed like fire between hands. But then—something else.
“The fault lies beneath. We turned on each other to keep the dark from seeing us united.”
She blinked. Read it again. The dark? A metaphor? Or something worse?
A sudden sound froze her: a scraping, soft and close. Stone on stone.
She snapped around, torch raised.
Nothing.
Only a slow shift of dust near the far wall. A few pebbles tumbled down, as if something had brushed past.
She held her breath.
She remembered the whispers traded in the Atrium—claw-marks, heat pulses, the old stories no one dared say aloud. Whatever passed this way had moved like shadow… and left no scent but dread.
The silence stretched.
Then she picked up the tablets, repacked them, and backed out of the vault—never turning her back on that wall.
When she returned to Trollheim, she didn’t go home.
She walked straight into the Council Chamber, mud still caked to her boots, the satchel slung over one shoulder.
“I bring truth,” she said, unrolling the first tablet. “From the heart of Garradash.”
The elders watched silently as she laid them out one by one.
“These records show that neither side was blameless. That the Pact failed because something deeper went wrong—something they both feared.”
She placed her finger on the critical line.
“The dark would see us divided.”
“This,” she said, “was not a war of betrayal. It was a panic. A cover-up. They feared something ancient. Something watching. And they chose to blame each other rather than face it together.”
Garn Two-Knuckles spoke first. “And what do you propose?”
Narka looked around the circle, her voice low.
“I propose we stop fighting the ghosts of our enemies and start fearing the ghosts of our silence.”
Even Graggul did not reply.