Dreyfus didn’t flinch.
“Absolutely not.”

The demon blinked — stunned — then her expression crumbled.

“You don’t understand,” she said, voice cracking. “We’ve lost everything. They’re tired. Starving. We drift from ash to ruin. Just let us stay... please.”

Dreyfus said nothing.

Her sorrow twisted into fury. “You’ll regret this, Portal Master,” she hissed — and with a snap of claws and sulfur, she vanished.

Silence.

Dreyfus turned to the Hollow. “We seal the seams.”

He walked the perimeter of the clearing, fingers slicing the air, pulling threads of realmstuff like strands from a stubborn wound. He wove barriers — dense, recursive folds of dimension twisted inward. Wards flared and anchored into the trees, the roots, the sky.

He spoke old words: binding laws of access, transit, and memory. Anchors sank into the ley beneath the Hollow.

The plane thickened — not sealed shut, but thorned.
Fast-moving demons would bounce. Slower ones would twist endlessly in spirals.

He left one gate open — his own — and locked it with a name only he remembered.

Jira watched in silence. The trees held their breath.
The Hollow slept a little easier.

Jira turned her many-threaded head, eyes gleaming faintly.

“It was your intention to turn this place into a city, wasn’t it?” she said. “But with a single access point, that might be… difficult. Unless, of course, you turn that point into a massive welcoming gate.”

Dreyfus didn’t hesitate. He looked to the sealed seam pulsing with quiet power.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Dreyfus began the summoning.

The ground shook. Light bent. A deep hum rolled through the roots.

Then it appeared: a massive gate, incomplete — a mountainous arch of stone, gold, and rune-metal — with scaffolding clinging to its bones. Dozens of master dwarves stood frozen mid-work, tools in hand, startled by their sudden displacement.

One of them — a thick-bearded foreman with eyes like coal and grief — stepped forward, looking around in disbelief. Then, quietly:

“We were building a monument,” he said. “To commemorate a victory over our foes. But the victory was too costly. Our world is cracking, our halls thinning. We worked in silence while it died.”

He looked up at Dreyfus, his hammer clenched.

“Where... are we now?”

> Let Them Stay – Offer them sanctuary in your growing city. Let them finish the gate — not as a monument to war, but as a passage to peace.
> Send Them Home – Return the dwarves to their world. It’s crumbling, but it’s theirs. Let them decide its fate.
> Forge a Pact – Bind them to this land as honored builders. They’ll work and be protected — in return, their skills shape your future.
> Share the Hollow – Give them a pocket territory to reshape as a dwarven enclave. They build their own city within yours. Two legacies, side by side.
> Write in