Chapter 392: SCOURTING

The jagged rim of the Bleeding Gorge dropped into a sheer, black abyss where freezing mountain winds screamed through narrow fissures of iron-red rock.

Sagiri led the squad along the upper crags, keeping his body pressed low against the frosted shale while his crimson eyes scanned the shadowed ravine below.

Behind him, Squad 25 moved in disciplined loose-stalking formation, using the jagged basalt boulders to break their silhouettes against the pale morning sky.

"Watch your footing along this shelf," Kiuga whispered, dropping into a low crouch while signaling Bukata to cover the northern ridge line.

"The frost here has formed over brittle shale, and if you slide, you will drop three hundred paces into the gorge before anyone can grab your collar."

Maita scoffed quietly as he stepped over a frozen crevasse, pulling his woolen collar tighter against the biting chill of the mountain draft.

"I survived four miles of garrison drainage filth," Maita muttered, adjusting his twin short-swords with a grimace, "so a patch of frozen gravel is not going to kill me."

"Keep whining and I will push you over the edge myself," Kaka rumbled, stepping past him with his heavy iron tower shield locked firmly against his back.

"Silence," Sagiri instructed in a low hiss, dropping to one knee as he placed his bare palm flat against the frozen stone shelf.

The bedrock beneath his fingers was cold as ice, yet beneath the surface frost, a faint rhythmic tremor pulsed upward through the dense granite core.

It was not the natural settling of mountain rock or the rush of subterranean water, but the steady mechanical vibration of heavy machinery turning deep underground.

"What do you feel down there?" Kiuga asked, creeping up beside Sagiri while pulling a charcoal parchment map from his leather chest pouch.

"The mountain is hollowed out," Sagiri said, feeling the subtle vibrations resonate against the ancient pulse of the Archive within his chest.

"There are massive hollow chambers beneath this cut, running at least three hundred paces deep into the solid granite foundation."

Zolinka crawled along the eastern ledge with his bronze-tipped probing rod, stopping where a thin line of white steam rose from a narrow crack in the rock.

He knelt beside the fissure, scraping away a layer of frost before waving Kiuga and Sagiri over with a quick, urgent motion of his hand.

"The snow is not sticking to this section of the ridge," Zolinka pointed out, tapping the dark basalt where the frost had completely melted away.

"The stone here is warm to the touch, and there is a faint mechanical draft pushing upward through the seams of the rock."

Kiuga leaned over the opening, his sharp nose twitching as he caught the faint, pungent stench of sulfur and burning chemical grease.

"That is unnatural heat," Kiuga noted, tracing the direction of the fissure as it angled downward toward the base of the canyon wall.

"They are routing their furnace exhaust through natural mountain cracks to prevent thick smoke plumes from giving away their position from the sky."

Bukata peered down from the higher overhang, resting his heavy recurve bow across his knees while pointing his gloved finger toward the canyon floor.

"Look at the dry wash at the bottom of the gorge," Bukata called down in a hushed voice, squinting through the shifting morning fog.

"The riverbed is choked with jagged boulders, but there are two distinct grooves pressed deep into the frozen mud along the eastern wall."

Zazarie and Ulekai held their positions at the rear bottleneck, their halberds braced against the stone while keeping their eyes glued to the northern approach.

"No patrols on our tail," Zazarie reported in a low murmur, "the wind is carrying our scent away from the high watchtowers."

Sagiri leaped down from the stone shelf, landing without a sound on a lower terrace before sliding down the scree toward the canyon floor.

Squad 25 followed his descent with practiced military precision, keeping five paces of spacing between each warrior to avoid scattering loose stones.

They reached the frozen floor of the ravine, gathering beneath the deep shadow of an overhanging cliff that blocked the pale winter light.

Kiuga dropped to one knee beside the frozen mud, brushing away powdered frost to reveal wide, parallel ruts stamped into the hardened shale.

"These tracks were made by iron-rimmed transport wagons," Kiuga analyzed, measuring the depth of the indentations with his leather gloved fingers.

"Whatever was loaded into those carriages carried immense weight, and the ruts lead straight toward that solid slab of granite ahead."

Kaka walked toward the sheer rock face, resting his calloused hand against the dark stone while inspecting the jagged seams along the base.

"There is no opening here," Kaka grunted, his heavy brow furrowing as he knocked his iron gauntlet against the solid mountain wall.

"A wall of stone does not bleed chemical grease," Sagiri replied, pointing toward a thin dark stain glistening along the lower rock joint.

"Look closer at the rock seams," Zolinka said, stepping forward with his pry bar and wedging the flattened bronze tip into a hair-thin seam.

He pulled back on the lever with steady pressure, causing a thin layer of stone-coated canvas and wooden mesh to peel away from the cliff face.

Behind the camouflage mesh lay the true subterranean threshold—a massive blast gate forged from four-inch cold-rolled iron embedded directly into the living granite.

The iron gate was coated in thick layers of dark, frost-resistant grease, sealed tight against the bedrock with heavy hydraulic pressure locks.

Thick iron pipes lagged in frozen mineral wool ran along the ceiling crevice, humming with stolen geothermal current that pulsed with an eerie green light.

"By the ancestors," Ulekai whispered in awe, stepping back as he looked up at the towering iron barrier buried within the mountain.

"How could anyone build a fortress of this scale out here without the regional garrisons noticing the construction?"

"Because the northern generals were looking at the roads," Kiuga answered with a sharp scoff, examining the intricate interlocking locking pins of the gate.

"They brought their materials through the abandoned mining tunnels beneath the western peaks, keeping everything buried beneath three hundred feet of rock."

Maita stepped close to the reinforced iron frame, running his fingers along a narrow viewing slit reinforced with thick lead-glass plating.

"The latch mechanism is locked from the inside," Maita reported, peering through the glass into the pitch-black corridor beyond the gate.

"I can smell cold grease, stale iron, and something that smells like rotting swamp water mixed with burning incense."

Sagiri closed his eyes and pushed his sensory perception through the tiny gaps around the hydraulic seals, sending his mind into the dark tunnel beyond.

The interior passage was wide enough for four heavy wagons to pass abreast, sloping downward at a steep angle into the bowels of the earth.

Deep within the subterranean complex, he could hear the faint hum of pressurized cryogenic vats and the heavy thrum of geothermal boilers.

Beneath the industrial hum, however, his senses caught a far more disturbing rhythm—hundreds of cold, irregular pulses echoing through the rock.

They were not the warm, lively heartbeats of living soldiers, but the sluggish, rhythmic thumps of bodies suspended in chemical fluid.

’Sir Black is mass-producing the Soulless down there,’ Sagiri realized, his jaw clenching as cold fury settled into his chest.

Kaka unstrapped his heavy war axes from his back, letting their steel heads rest against his knees as he looked at the blast gate.

"You cannot batter this door down without twenty men and an iron ram," Kaka stated plainly, testing the rigidity of the reinforced iron hinges.

"A locked door only proves that whatever is hiding inside is terrified of what is walking outside," Kaka added in his low, stubborn rumble.

"We do not need to batter it down," Kiuga replied with a cunning smirk, pointing up toward the auxiliary ventilation shafts running above the lintel.

"Every underground stronghold needs air to feed its furnaces, and wherever air flows into the mountain, a squad can slip inside."

Sagiri stepped back from the blast gate, turning his gaze toward his companions as the cold wind whipped their dark field cloaks around them.

"We have found the stronghold," Sagiri said, his voice quiet and deadly serious as he met the eyes of every warrior in Squad 25.

"Now we climb back to the ridge, map out every entry point, and draft a plan to tear this place apart from the inside."