The darkness ever deepens. As you stumble your way through the shadows of the earth and stone, you enter an especially cold room full of stone fixtures. Along the wall on your right, massive carved chambers large enough to fit a fully-grown adult lie empty, their insides painted black like a closet of night. Along the opposite wall, weapons racks are empty, looted long ago of their tools of war, and the armor stands hold up only cobwebs. Scattered throughout the center, misaligned, oft overturned, are anvils of varying sizes, a few hammers and other smithing tools accompanying them on the hard floor. The carved chambers, which you now find to be furnaces, are all empty and cold, abandoned for many a year. Ash still stains the insides, scorches from where flames once licked. This forge has been empty for a very long time, and any use it once served has been stripped from it long ago.

As you pass from one end to the other, you begin to hear something echoing in the distance. At first it is too faint to make out, but as you continue walking, it grows to be the fall of a hammer striking iron, an anvil reverberating through distant halls. It shakes through the ground, the walls, the air around you, shaking your teeth with the vibration of the smith's craft. You have no doubt that no one has used this forge in many years, and yet there is still the ringing of of metal. You feel somewhat unnerved. Even if this forge is abandoned, somewhere there is one that is warm and alive. A lone blacksmith crafts their life away in the depths of a purgatory structure, creating for others and yet never to be seen by anyone. No hammerfall will be praised, nor sword will be swung. No arrowhead will fly, no shield will clash. There is nothing here for a crafter such as them. The thought saddens you deeply. You didn't notice when you started crying, but you wipe your eyes as you continue on your journey.