The Standing Stones

Open ground, east of Durok’s spring. The stones are dark rock with a silverish metal fleck that catches light strangely — they hold cold the way iron holds heat. Touch one and it does not feel like touching a rock. It feels like touching something that has been here much longer than the landscape around it.

Durok Deepseeker discovered them. They are not decorative. They are functional, or were.

Alina spent a full night studying the runes — interrupted partway through when a Remorhaz came up through the ground. The research survived; the Remorhaz did not. What the full night of interrupted work yielded was a single Netherese phrase:

The city that never was.

That is as close as the inscription would let her get to a name. The actual name slips away each time she tries to hold it directly — though the Shaping House’s propaganda doll named it aloud in Session 5: Irenthal.

The stones need at least one more visit.

The Shaping House is visible from the research camp — a crèche where Irenthal sent its noble dedicants before the academy, its top floors sheared off by the same force that took the city.