Inheritance

When Dago slowly opened his eyes, he found himself standing quietly on a dilapidated golden street.

The lingering dream swiftly faded from his vision, replaced by the suffocating metallic texture of reality.

He was deep within the ruins of the Mechanical Heart, the industrial wasteland left behind by the era of the dwarf civilization.

Once, this place had been filled with the hiss of steam, the grinding of gears, and the acrid smell of burning heavy oil.

It had borne witness to the glory of the Third Era, the age of "steam and steel"—a mechanical miracle that defied the laws of nature.

Everything around him was golden, gleaming with the luster of gold.

He was still in the Mechanical Heart.

The pipes that had once carried high-pressure steam now wound along the outer walls of the buildings like bulging golden veins.

But the Mechanical Heart had now been transformed entirely into cold, cast gold. Every piece of metal within it had turned to gold.

This was a dead tomb of gold.

There was not a sound. Absolute stillness and silence reigned all around him.

There was no clacking of turning gears, no rumble of moving pistons. Even the whistle of wind through gaps in the metal had been swallowed by this heavy precious metal.

Dago lowered his head and discovered, to his astonishment, that the golden fruit pit he had gripped so tightly throughout his dream had become a golden runestone.

The Golden Magic Box he had fought so hard to obtain had already been opened.

It lay at his feet, with a red runestone and an irregular, fist-sized lump of black metal still inside.

Dago fell silent. A moment later, he quietly raised the golden runestone in his hand to examine it.

The runestone contained only a single rune,