You lead a cautious party into the ferns, following the scout’s path until the ring of scorched stones rises from the roots like a memory the forest failed to bury. The blackened rocks are set in a precise circle, each one cracked by heat yet still standing, and the moss around them grows thin and sickly where ash once fell. At the center lies a shallow pit lined with fused glass, smooth as a smith’s work and far older than your colony. The dwarfs mutter that this was no campfire, no mere accident, but a place built for fire and left behind when the fire grew teeth.

As you kneel to study it, a warm draft slips from the pit and brushes your beard, carrying the faint scent of sulfur and wet stone. One of the miners taps the edge with his pick, and the ground answers with a hollow note that runs away downslope toward your planned sleeping hall. The forest seems to hold its breath, and even the birds go quiet in the canopy above. You have found not just a relic, but a warning that the mountain’s old veins of heat may lie closer to your colony than anyone guessed.