The Molten Hermit

A half-collapsed Vyr elder who walked onto the Emberthrone's lower slope thirty years ago and did not die — lives in a lava tube on the east face, speaking in riddles that are directions to the Cindervault's sealed inner door.

He went up as a scholar of the old machines and came down as something the mountain decided to keep. His riddles are not metaphors; they are the only vocabulary left for what he saw. Anyone who learns to read them can follow them into the vault.