Chapter Ten: The Goblin Overseer
The Runes Crack, the Hunt Begins Far from the lowlands and golden fields, where the wind still carried the memory of hoofbeats and fire, a dark tower rose above a dying marsh. Twisted trees hunched around its base, their roots drowned in stagnant water. At the tower’s peak, where no light dared linger, the goblin overseers gathered in a chamber carved from black stone and veined with cruel runes.

In the heart of the room stood the crystal—vast, gleaming, alive. Polished daily by the hands of lesser goblins, it pulsed with captured visions and stolen voices. Smoke swirled within its depths, whispering the truths of distant lands.

The overseers circled it in silence. Their claws clicked on the obsidian floor. Their breath steamed from flared nostrils. Eyes narrow, lips twitching, they waited for the crystal to speak.

And then—it showed him.

The stallion. The one they thought broken, buried in the mines of Grubkhar, beneath chains and commands. The crystal shimmered with the image: a towering figure cloaked in hard steel, the sun behind him like a crown. The jaguar walked beside him, tail flicking, gold against gold. A forgotten weapon reborn.

The goblin lord shrieked, voice scraping the walls like iron across bone.

“He walks! The slave walks!”

The others hissed, recoiling.

“He should have rotted!” one snarled.

“His name was taken,” whispered another, “but the fire stayed. We felt it when the rune split—”

“Silence!” the lord barked. His eyes glowed with panic and fury. “If one breaks the runes, more will try. The chains weaken. The wards fail. The world turns its gaze again.”

He turned to his warriors—scarred, sharp-fanged brutes bred for violence and silence.

“Find him. Kill him. I want his head smoking in a sack. I want the jaguar skinned and mounted above the gate.”

They bowed low and disappeared into the dark—riders without honor, swords without sound.

The crystal dimmed.

But in its depths, for a heartbeat more, the vision remained: Jasper and Flame, side by side, walking roads they were never meant to survive.

A storm was coming.

Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3