Legend XXXVI – Thorrig and the Treasury of Eternity

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Deep in the mountains of Tarnvyr, where even the echo is too ancient to know its source, dwells a dwarf whose name seeps through the centuries like oil through stone. Thorrig, the guardian of forgotten things. He is small, scarcely taller than a chair leg, yet his eyes glow like embers beneath bushy brows, and his gaze holds a patience that only stone itself can possess. His beard is gray as ash, his smile crooked like a broken coin. And when he speaks, his words sound as if he has weighed them carefully. No one knows when Thorrig created his treasury. Perhaps it wasn't built, but grew with him—a cavern that burrowed ever deeper each time he brought something into it. Among veins of gold and ore stand countless chests, from tiny boxes to glass coffins that glow from within. Some hovered above the ground, as if lighter than what they held. Yet not one contained gold. Inside them lay things that no one could buy, but no one could return: the last note of an old song, the flicker of a glance never returned, the taste of a farewell. Thorrig was once a blacksmith. He worked for kings until he understood that even their crowns rusted, their names faded, and their splendor grew dusty. Then he began to collect what lay beyond decay. He stole moments—not out of malice, but out of fear that they might otherwise be lost. But with each one he took, he became smaller, more crooked, more cunning; as if the weight of what he had preserved had compressed him. When he sits by candlelight at night, he sorts his loot. With a tiny silver tool, he opens a chest, and a glimmer floods the room: the memory of a kiss, of rain on a deserted road, of the word "Stay" never spoken. Then he closes it again, sighs, drinks from a small glass, and murmurs, "So much, and yet no end." Many sought him, seduced by tales of immeasurable wealth. Some found the way, but none returned. For whoever enters the halls sees what they have lost. And in this seeing, one dissolves—first in the heart, then in the body. Thorrig calls this "the weight of truth." He has seen it a thousand times, and each time, a flicker of pity flashes briefly in his eyes before he closes another chest. Sometimes, when the world above grows still and no wind stirs the passes, a ringing sound can be heard deep within the mountain, like glass touching itself. Then, the elders say, Thorrig has opened one of his chests to check if the memory still breathes. And a breath escapes upward—warm, golden, fleeting—a wind that recalls something one never experienced but painfully misses. So the dwarf sits in his subterranean eternity, cunning and weary, a thief of time and its last keeper.