Ironwight mine didn’t look like much from the ridge. A sprawl of canvas shelters and cut-stone bunkhouses, all pressed against the flank of a jagged slate hill that seemed to grow darker the deeper it yawned into the earth. Carts clattered in and out of the slope’s gaping mouth, their axles shrieking under loads of ore. Tephes was merciless, casting long, sharp shadows across the worksite as the afternoon shift trudged in, quiet, their eyes dulled by routine, their faces pale from being underground for too long.
Nazire stood still beside the cart, one clawed hand resting loosely on the hilt of the Tomahawk strapped to his belt. Not a weapon, at least, not officially. But he'd wielded worse in the pits of Bacot, and he’d survived.
The air was dry. The ground was speaking. He could feel it in his chest. Not excitement. Not fear. Homesickness.
The cave yawned wide before them, cool and dark, deep enough, maybe, to pretend. Pretend he was back under Bacot, beneath the endless stone sky, before daylight and banishment and the strange Visions. The scent of coal and sweat pulled at his gut, the way a lullaby might stir a soldier on leave. Unwelcome. Unrelenting.
The cloak Daga had given him clung awkwardly to his frame, the rough fabric meant for a smaller man, barely reaching past his ribs. It smelled of salt and lavender oil and whatever spell she’d whispered into the seams. She'd said it would help him go unnoticed. He didn’t believe that for a second, but he wore it anyway.
Daga had already dismounted, silver braid tucked tight, her messenger bag pressing gently against her side. The glass sphere inside shifted once, a soft slosh of fluid barely audible. She said it was just an old pet. He knew better, but not enough to ask.
Still, none of that bothered him as much as the birds.
They’d followed the cart for hours, a dozen or more ravens, sleek and silent, keeping pace through forest and field like a funeral procession with no corpse to claim. At each mile, one had fallen off, and now they perched, watching, their heads tilted just so. Black eyes gleaming.
“You see?” he muttered, voice thick as river mud, low enough only Daga would hear. “Same ones. From Kuono’s house.”
Nazire’s eyes tracked the birds with the focus of a pit-fighter watching for an opening. Six still lingered now, six that hadn’t vanished with the others. They flitted along the ridge, wheeling above the mine’s shadowed mouth like watchmen with nowhere to be.
Then, one broke off. It veered sharply, wings dipping with purpose as it arced back toward Caer Dulinor, back the way they’d come. Not like prey fleeing danger. Like a messenger returning home.
Nazire stiffened.
“That one,” he said, pointing with the tip of his claw. “Goes to speak.”
Daga followed his gaze. Her silver braid shifted in the wind, her face unreadable, save the slight narrowing of her eyes. She exhaled softly, something low and fluid, like a word in a forgotten dialect. Her fingers brushed the rim of her satchel, where the glass sphere nestled quietly, and whispered.
Far overhead, the raven flared like a cursed star, a blossom of emerald-blue flame that snapped open midair and tore the bird to cinders. The sound came a moment later, a sharp, whoomph of displaced air and cracking heat. Tiny sparks drifted like fireflies across the ridge before winking out.
“...What the fuck.” Nazire flinched despite himself.
“It won’t report.” Daga lowered her hand. Still didn’t look at him. The other five ravens broke formation. No cries. No caws. Just movement, one straight into the forest, one over the mine’s mouth, two slipping behind a rock face to the south, and the last vanishing directly overhead, into the high gray clouds.
Nazire watched them scatter, fists clenched. “Spies,” he said, low. “Not natural.”
This time, Daga met his gaze. “No,” she said, “not natural at all.”
The foreman’s tent squatted at the edge of IronWight Mine like a wart, its canvas weathered but taut, the seams reinforced with stitched copper wire. Nazire held the flap open for Daga and ducked in behind her, brushing against the heavy scent of oil, sweat, and ink.
Inside was cluttered precision. Charts and ledgers were tacked to every vertical surface. The air was still, save the rhythmic ticking of three mismatched clocks, each one a half-second out of step.
At the far end of the tent stood Baldo, a halfling with a steel posture and a scholar’s stare, his grey hair cut to the root, bright blue eyes dancing with too much knowledge and too little kindness. He was meticulously dressed, the cuffs of his plum-colored coat folded just enough to show the silver stitching beneath. He did not rise to greet them.
Balanced on a perch in a brass cage beside him sat a canary, a prim little creature with bright yellow feathers and black-ringed eyes. It watched them without blinking.
Baldo was already speaking.
“...And what brings two strangers sniffing around my shift change?” he asked, voice light and dry, like a teacher humouring a late student. He toyed with a fine stiletto, flipping it once between his fingers before setting it down beside an ink blotter. “Most folks wait to be summoned.”
Daga didn’t flinch. “We’re looking for a man. Name of Kuono. Took work in the lower shafts a week ago. My business partner,” she tilted her head toward Nazire, “and I are simply following up on a financial matter.”
Baldo didn’t blink. “Ah. A creditor.” His eyes flicked lazily to Nazire. “And the muscle.”
Nazire crossed his arms, hood shifting over his shoulders. “I am many things,” he said, accent thick and voice low. “Muscle is merely one of them.”
“Of course.” Baldo smiled thinly. “And what makes you think this Kuono is still here?”
Daga shrugged casually. “He owes me. People who owe me don’t run far.”
Baldo tapped a gloved finger on his ledger, his tone sharpening.
“There are rules in IronWight. If he’s on the roster, he’s working. If he’s working, he’s earning. If he’s earning, you’ll get your coin... eventually.”
The canary, Aran, fluttered its wings once, a silent punctuation.
Nazire took a step forward. “We not interfere. Just want word.”
Baldo’s smile twitched. “Word costs.”
Daga’s fingers drifted to the messenger bag across her chest, stroking the strap idly. “Oh, I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.”
Baldo raised a brow, curious now, or maybe intrigued. The canary chirped once. A clean, high note like a bell.
Daga turned to him, lips pursed in thought. “Nazire, could you wait outside?”
He blinked once, his long blue tail giving the faintest flick beneath the cropped edge of the cloak she’d given him.
“I should not loom in corner?” he asked, only half-joking.
She leaned in, voice low and casual. “Baldo negotiates better when he thinks he’s winning.” Her eyes didn’t quite meet his. “I’ll be quick.”
Nazire held her gaze a breath longer than needed, then nodded and stepped back through the tent’s flap.
The afternoon light had dimmed. A patchwork of thin clouds pulled long shadows across the mouth of the Mine, stretching fingers of darkness toward the trees. Somewhere in the low valley beyond, a work bell tolled—faint, metallic, and tired. A shift change was coming.
Nazire stood still, arms crossed, eyes scanning. The ravens had not returned. And that, more than anything, sat wrong on his tongue. He’d been watched all his life by handlers, by trainers, by guards drunk on authority. Something had called those birds away. Something had told them not to come back.
He stepped to the edge of the raised path and looked down into the mine’s staging yard. Workers milled between tool sheds and ore carts, dwarves mostly, a few humans. No one looked up. No one paused to glance at him. But still, he felt the itch on his scales, that sense of being noticed without being seen.
A gust of wind swept down the hillside, and for a moment he caught it—a scent that didn’t belong. Not stone, or iron, but brine or, perhaps, saltwater. He wrinkled his nose, presuming the scent wafted off a passerby. He glanced back at the tent. The flap was still drawn shut, but he imagined the whispering inside wasn’t all coin and threats.
With a smack on the ass, the yoked bull was stirred into motion and the elevator groaned. Its platform—a lopsided square of timber bound with rusting iron brackets—jostled under the weight of twenty men and women. Nazire stood at the edge, arms crossed tight beneath the cloak Daga had given him, watching the pulley ropes creak overhead with something close to reverence.
Daga, meanwhile, crouched beside the brake lever, steadying her bag with one hand and checking the satchel strap across her chest with the other. The glass sphere housing the octopus familiar shifted faintly inside. She murmured something to it, too low for Nazire to hear.
“Is safe?” he asked, his voice bold over the grinding of gears. Daga grinned, her silver hair tucked behind one ear.
“No,” Another man interrupted with a chuckle, “but we’ll get to the bottom either way.”
The bull plodded forward, massive and probably half-blind, its harness patched with canvas and stitched leather. As it moved, the elevator began to descend, swaying with the tension of each slow pull. The winch spat sparks once, then settled.
The light above them narrowed to a square. Dust hung in the shaft like ghostly sediment in amber. The air turned damp and metallic, iron-rich and thick with sweat, rust, and old water. Shadows curled along the shaft walls, split by the rhythmic thrum of torch brackets bolted every twenty feet or so.
Nazire closed his eyes for a breath. It smelled like home. Like a dozen boys waiting in anxious anticipation. Like stone, iron, and sweat. When he opened them again, he found Daga watching him. Not unkindly. Just... watching.
“is familiar,” he said, voice low.
She tilted her head. “Good or bad?”
“Yes,” he answered, just as the elevator gave a sharp lurch and settled on the first landing.
Beyond the gate, a narrow tunnel stretched out into gloom, timber braced, slick with condensation, and empty of miners. The only sound was the slow dripping of water into unseen puddles and the soft whistle of wind that had no business being underground.
Daga stepped off the lift without hesitation, adjusting her satchel. “Come,” she said, her voice suddenly harder. “They said Kuono works lower. But we need to get to the other end first.”
Their path twisted south through the old workings, deeper than Daga had claimed the debt-dodging Kuono would be. Nazire didn’t mention it. She moved like she knew where she was going, torch in one hand, the other never straying far from her satchel.
They passed abandoned tool racks crusted with rust, and veins of iron split like ribs in the stone. Once, they crossed a shaft still half-lit by old mage-lanterns, green light flickering in fractured glass, casting shadows that made Nazire pause.
“You sure he work down this far?” he asked.
Daga didn’t answer. She just adjusted the strap on her shoulder and pressed forward, ducking beneath a collapsed brace without hesitation.
The air grew colder as they descended, and wetter. The kind of wet that had weight, clinging to skin and clothing alike. Water dripped from the ceiling in slow, patient rhythms. Their boots left shallow prints in soft stone dust, and Nazire counted the turns like he used to count steps between blows in the pit, just to stay oriented.
The deeper they went, the louder the mine breathed, pickaxes striking rhythmically like a distant heartbeat, voices echoing down the tunnel in bursts of laughter or the barked curses of foremen. Lamps swung from iron hooks driven into the rock, their flickering amber light dancing over the sweat-slicked backs of workers. The walls here were marked with fresh chalk, shift notes, danger signs, numbers in a code Nazire didn’t know but instinctively didn’t trust.
Daga kept her hood drawn low, weaving through the turns with an almost familiar certainty. She didn’t speak to the miners. She didn’t slow. Whatever she’d negotiated with Baldo had bought her passage, and whatever she was seeking lay deeper still.
Nazire followed in silence, the cropped cloak snug around his shoulders, a bit short in the back, but enough to obscure his outline. The weight of the place pressed in on him. The iron in the walls, the heat of the earth. It stirred memories of the Bacan Pits, of steel on stone and the roaring cheers of unseen spectators. The stink of forge ash. The tang of crushed minerals on the tongue. Not quite home. But familiar enough to ache. Nazire trailed his fingers along the wall as they walked, feeling the vibration in his bones. Every rough groove and damp ridge echoed the passages of Bacot, where the stone was not just shelter but teacher, ward, and witness.
In Bacot, you learned to survive before you learned to speak. Strength came first. Then came diplomacy, once you understood what your strength meant.
He remembered The Baker, pink-skinned and flour-dusted. He’d found young Nazire bruised and bleeding outside the training ring, ribs cracked, pride worse. Bene handed him a steaming hunk of black bread, thick with barley and fire-seed.
“You fight well,” The Baker had said, not unkindly. “But you fall like a privileged child." He pointed to Nazire’s opponent, huffing with excitement, that no one shared. “Your loss is your brother’s win, and you are too busy moping to share it with him.” Nazire looked at the albino half-elf, who shrugged, smiled and walked away.
Nazire approached the orc boy pacing aggressively, ringing hands still stained with the drakon’s blood. There was a moment of tense silence throughout the training room as the boy puffed his chest and narrowed his eyes.
“You leg sweep!” Nazire challenged, the orc boy tensed, “Is good move.” Nazire stretched out his hand, and the two spent the next few minutes celebrating and analyzing the fight..
He’d never forgotten that man. Black leather goggles, perched above pink eyes, so fair he almost glowed in the darkened caves beneath the city, and the smell of sugar and vanilla that followed him.
A flash of memory struck Nazire, The Baker on his knees, Stormcaller buried deep in his collarbone. An audience roared in shock. Or … was it a reptilian, covered in blood and laughing as Nazire strangled him? Then it was gone. Nazire shook his head sharply, trying to shake the sudden rush of guilt and shame.
“De Win’er Champeen, o’ Bad Omen ‘as been stripped o ‘is ty-tul an’ banish’ from Bad Omen.” Captain Tahi’s voice echoed in his head.
“You good?” Daga shook him from his reverie, and he grunted his acknowledgement.
They passed another team hauling ore by sled, the clatter of iron wheels sharp and shrill. A broad-chested orc glanced up at Nazire, narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.
Then, the tunnel opened. A broad chamber, stone-cut and timber-braced, lit with pale arcane globes mounted in sconces. Tracks ran through the center, leading to an open shaft fitted with a secondary lift platform, larger than the one they’d used above, built to haul full carts and crews.
This one wasn’t in use yet. A few miners lingered nearby, eating, stretching, preparing for the next descent. Daga approached without hesitation, eyes scanning the posted manifests nailed to a splintered board near the shaft. Her fingers tapped one line, then another.
Nazire tilted his head. “Down again?”
She nodded. “Baldo said Kuono signed up for the exploratory tunnels on the lower levels last week.”
They waited nearly half an hour, the air growing close and metallic as shift whistles echoed faintly through the caverns above. One by one, the miners began to gather, dust-covered men and women in canvas and leather, faces blackened with ore, voices low and clipped. A full shift’s worth of them, almost two dozen, each bearing picks, belts of tools, and steel lunch pails.
While the miners loaded the last of the crates and strapped down the gear, Nazire leaned against a timber post, arms folded beneath Daga’s cropped cloak. The fabric clung tight across his back and shoulders, the hood casting a shadow over his scaled brow. He looked like a displaced street rat trying not to draw attention.
That’s when he felt it again. Eyes, following him. He turned slightly, slow enough to seem disinterested, and caught the orc across the platform watching him. The brute sat on the edge of one of the ore sleds, idly chewing on a splinter of wood. Built like a smith’s anvil, with a thick neck and tusks dulled at the tips, the orc’s gaze was too steady. Not just curious, measuring. Like he was trying to decide something.
Nazire held the stare for a heartbeat longer than most would’ve dared. The orc didn’t look away. Neither did he.
The moment came when one of the sleds creaked forward, and a miner reached out for balance. The orc shifted to help, sliding off the sled with a shrug and a low grunt. But his eyes flicked back once more, quick and narrow.
Nazire exhaled through his nose, slowly. He knew that look. He’d seen it many times, in the breath before the knife left the sleeve.
Daga’s voice beside him: “Keep your hood up. We’re almost there.”
Four heavy ore sleds were dragged out and loaded with crates of gear: spools of cable, shoring timbers, oil lanterns, bundled track sections, and a squat steel tank that hissed faintly with heat. Together, the workers heaved the sleds one by one onto the large freight platform—a rust-flecked iron raft mounted with safety rails and cables thick as Nazire’s wrist.
Nazire looked at the heavy chains suspended above the platform and the gears waiting to turn. This elevator wasn’t pulled by a bull, like the last. It was steam-driven, the pipes hissing softly as pressure built from some unseen boiler. Daga watched it all from under the edge of her hood, arms crossed over the messenger bag where her strange little octopus familiar slept in a faintly glowing orb.
“New system,” she muttered to Nazire, quietly. “Slower, but it goes deeper. Past where the mine maps get vague.”
Nazire grunted in agreement, his golden eyes on the miners, the gear, the waiting dark below. The tunnel behind them was already empty; the bustle here was concentrated entirely around the elevator platform.
The engine hissed again. A halfling in an oil-streaked leather apron gave the all-clear. Then the platform lurched. It descended with a deep, rhythmic groan, like the mine itself was exhaling. The cavern narrowed as they dropped, the light growing dimmer, lanterns flickering. Time seemed to stretch, longer than any descent should take. The heat increased. The air thickened. The pressure grew until it pressed against the inside of Nazire’s skull. He closed his eyes, the vibrations in the rail beneath his clawed fingers bringing back the low, thunderous lull of Bacot’s deepest halls.
About ten minutes into the descent, with the walls pressing close and sweat beading at his brow, Nazire felt a presence shift behind him. The orc, broad-shouldered and bull-necked, with a crooked tusk and a glint of something bitter in his eye, had been watching him earlier. Not openly hostile, but curious. The kind of curiosity that broke fingers if you let it. He’d stood toward the edge at first, but now he was closer, boots scraping over the iron grating of the platform with lazy intention.
Nazire didn’t look. He didn’t need to. He could feel the weight of him, smell the sweat and burnt-hair musk beneath his leathers. And more than that, he could feel anticipation, like a bowstring drawn tight.
The shaft widened. A large cavity opened up around them, lit only by two swinging lanterns bolted to the ceiling beams above. The railings here were warped in places, one corner bent slightly outward, leaving just enough room to fall.
It happened fast.
The orc staggered, too casually, and threw out an arm as if losing balance. It caught Nazire across the back and shoulder, hard and low, like a shove disguised as a stumble. The platform trembled. A crate of lantern oil clanked hard against a rail.
Nazire’s foot slid. His claws scraped metal. For one breathless second, he was over the edge, weightless in a void of steam and shadow. A miner gasped. Someone cursed. Then Nazire twisted, his tail bracing against a metal post as one clawed hand locked onto the rail. With a snarl low in his throat, he hauled himself back up in one smooth motion and landed in a crouch, cloak swaying wide like a broken wing.
The orc was already apologizing, hands up, voice thick with feigned concern. “Eh, sorry there, friend. Narrow space. Lost my footing, s’all.”
Nazire rose slowly. His pupils were slits, glowing faintly. He said nothing. Just looked at him, really looked. The orc, perhaps for the first time, realized just how little a cloak or charm could hide a Drakona’s blood. The rest of the descent passed in silence. Nazire never took his eyes off the Orc until the platform had settled ungracefully at the base of the tunnel. The Orc spent the rest of the trip flush, staring at his boots.
The elevator moaned to a stop, steam hissing from its joints like a tired beast exhaling. As the platform clanked into its mooring, a new cavern yawned before them, a hub chamber about 200 feet across, ribbed with support beams and choked with the scent of sweat, metal, and rock dust. Lanterns hung from old hooks driven into the ceiling, casting long, swaying shadows over the roughly carved walls.
Tunnels branched in every direction, vanishing into gloom: some narrow and choked with rubble, others wide enough to run a sled through two abreast. Overhead, thick ropes threaded through pulleys and iron hooks, a crude system to haul gear and ore toward the upper shafts. The floor was packed earth, scuffed by boots and grooved by countless sleds.
No one greeted them. But the workers here, clad in dusty leathers, faces smeared with grime, moved with purpose.
Daga stepped off the platform first, already pointing.
Four ore sleds stood waiting just off to the side, each heaped with rough chunks of iron, still wet with the sweat of extraction. As the new arrivals disembarked, the gear-laden sleds from above were unceremoniously swapped in exchange for these weightier burdens.
Nazire helped guide one of the emptier sleds to its slot and watched as a barrel-chested dwarf with a leather apron lashed the iron in place and barked orders to a pair of runners.
A miner passed Nazire with a nod, then looked twice and gave a strange little start at the sight of his gleaming blue scales beneath the cloak. He moved on quickly, muttering under his breath. Nazire didn’t react. He was already watching the tunnels. Something about them felt familiar. Not the layout, but the air, the heaviness of stone, the rhythm of tools echoing down long corridors. He didn’t miss it, exactly. But it stirred something old and rooted in him, like a chord plucked in a half-forgotten song.
Daga tapped his arm. “This way.” And without waiting, she led them deeper still.
The two of them made their way past the central cavern, slipping into one of the broader tunnels veined with torchlight and iron struts. The clatter of tools and distant thuds echoed like heartbeats in stone. The air was thicker here, damp and metallic, with the faintest trace of mildew under the sweat and dust.
Nazire kept a half-step behind Daga, eyes sweeping left and right, senses keyed. He didn’t miss much, not the downward tilt of the corridor, not the scatter of fresh gravel underfoot, and certainly not the voices that carried from a side tunnel ahead. Two miners stood by a half-loaded sled, one hunched over with a clipboard, the other leaning on a pick.
“Hey, you seen Carl?” the one with the pick asked, his tone too casual to be innocent. The other shook his head.
“Heard he took a couple of shifts in the exploratory tunnels.”
“Fuck me,” the pick-leaner muttered, “Really?!”
Nazire slowed slightly, just enough to catch the final exchange.
“I mean, the money is good, but the risk …” said the first, eyes flicking toward the dark passage that forked off into silence. Neither of them laughed.
Daga didn’t break stride; she veered toward the very split the miners had side-eyed, her pace steady, her eyes fixed forward. Nazire followed without question, though the skin between his scales prickled. The tunnel yawned dark and empty ahead. No torches lit this path, just the flicker of what they carried and the low throb of silence pressing in. He didn’t say anything, but a part of him, a part sharpened in a place like this, marked that silence.
The air grew colder, damper. The walls narrowed quickly, rough-hewn and less reinforced than the central shafts. Veins of iron still streaked the stone, but these hadn’t been touched in some time. Moss clung to the edges of the path where water trickled in a lazy drip. Their footsteps echoed strangely, close and whispering, swallowed quickly by the crooked walls, tight corners, and Sharp turns. Nazire ducked low under an arch of stone, his wide shoulders scraping.
“Feel like rabbit warren,” he muttered.
Daga didn’t respond, just gave a small, tight nod. She knew where she was going. Eventually, the tunnel opened into a small, claustrophobic cavern, the ceiling low enough that Nazire had to stoop slightly. There was no sound of mining here. No signs of fresh work. Just a squat iron lift rigged in the middle of the floor, resting on thick ropes wound around a series of rusted, hand-cranked pulleys. The dust on them looked like it hadn’t been used in several days.
The platform was barely big enough for five men to stand shoulder to shoulder, and two would have to keep their arms tucked tight to turn the cranks.
Nazire gave it a skeptical glance. “Is… safe, da?”
Daga placed a hand on the rim of the lift and exhaled. “Safe enough.”
She reached into her coat and withdrew a stub of chalk, scrawling something in dwarvish along one of the lift’s beams, then tucked the chalk away and stepped aboard. Nazire followed with a grunt. The wood groaned under his weight. He took up the crank, testing its resistance. It moved, though begrudgingly.
Once it started moving, the crank wasn’t hard to operate, just slow. Every turn groaned like tired knees, the chains protesting but holding firm as the platform descended inch by stubborn inch. Nazire and Daga took turns, keeping pace with a rhythm as old as work itself. They didn't speak much, just the sound of creaking chain, wood, and breath.
Minutes passed, maybe twenty, maybe thirty, with nothing but shadows above and a void below. The tunnel eventually widened, the narrow shaft giving way to the yawning throat of a cavern. They couldn’t see it, not yet, but Nazire felt it. The carriage swung, the air cooled, the echoes sounded longer, more hollow. There was no tunnel; this was a belly.
Then the platform shuddered. Just once.
Nazire froze. “Eh?”
The chains jolted again, a violent tremor, metal groaning with tension. The lift swayed suddenly, throwing him off balance. Then …
Ping.
A metal snap from above, faint but real. The left side of the platform dipped, listing a few inches before stabilizing again.
Nazire’s tail flicked with unease. He reached for the side, peering upward into the suffocating dark. “Dat is not wind,” he said slowly, accent thick and wary. Another tremor. Another faint snap. He turned to Daga, voice low, sharp. “Someone is cut us loose.”
The chains groaned again, and this time the platform lurched lower, the left side sinking an inch deeper than the right.
No more jokes in his voice now. Nazire squinted into the darkness, searching the black for shadows. There was a ledge, not far off, about ten feet away, maybe less, just wide enough for a body, maybe two.
“We don’t fall,” he muttered, gripping the railing. “We swing.” He shifted his weight hard to one side. The platform rocked slightly, swaying just a little, then slowed. He tried again, with minimal success.
Daga, already crouched with one hand on her bag, looked up at him with a narrowed eye. “Move,” she said.
Nazire blinked. “What—?”
“Just move.”
He stepped aside.
Daga stood, braced her feet, and leaned out low—like a wrestler anchoring a grapple, then heaved her weight sideways with sudden force. The lift lurched, groaned, and swayed again, farther this time.
Nazire caught on. He joined her, dropping his weight and then pumping his legs to match her rhythm. Push. Sway. Pull. The chains above screamed, but the swing had begun. The platform was drifting, pendulum-like, inching toward the ledge.
Nazire could see it now, clearly, a narrow outcropping of rock. A part of an old maintenance path, perhaps. But it was there. Real. Reachable. He glanced at Daga, sweat trickling behind his horns. “You’ve done this before.”
Her eyes didn’t leave the ledge. “Just hold the timing.”
Another push. Another sway. The gap was shrinking. Somewhere above them, the sound of steel on steel still echoed through the shaft. The platform groaned beneath them, a slow, sick swing building with each rhythm of their bodies. Nazire felt the motion in his bones, counted it in the back of his throat like a battle chant. The ledge was closing in.
Nazire’s hand went to the thick coil of chain at his waist. In one smooth motion, he uncoiled it, the cold iron whispering against itself as it unravelled into his palm. He looped one end around his forearm, let the weight settle in his grip, and with the other hand, he drew his dagger.
Dag pushed, Nazire pumped, and the platform swung faster.
Nazire jammed the dagger through two links of chain, twisting it until the improvised hook and loop held firm. The blade scraped iron, then caught with a muted clink, not elegant, but solid enough. His breath misted in the cold dark as he glanced up.
Ping.
Another sharp crack echoed above.
The chain shook. The platform lurched, a jagged shudder through the planks underfoot that sent one of the gear sleds rattling an inch toward the edge. Daga’s arms flared out to steady herself, her braid whipping across her shoulder.
“One link at a time,” Nazire muttered, more to the black than to her.
They accelerated their rhythm. One-two. One-two. Together, they leaned into the swing. Each time they heaved their weight, the platform responded a little more, a bigger arc, a longer groan of stressed metal.
Nazire’s knuckles were white where he gripped the railing. Sweat trickled under the cloak’s collar. In his off-hand, he spun the makeshift grapple.
Ping!
Another link gave way high above. The carriage dropped another inch, and there was a ringing sound as several hundred feet of chain rapidly descended the shaft above them. It whipped past the platform as they swung and reached the end with a jog, dangling from the side
“Skorrak!” Daga swore under her breath.
Nazire adjusted his grip, uncoiled more slack, eyes fixed on the ledge. Still too far.
“One more,” he growled. “Big swing.”
They threw their weight. The arc was wide, too wide. Nazire’s torch, which he’d dropped onto the platform, toppled over the edge, dragging loose gravel with it into the blackness below.
The platform tilted.
Nazire grunted and let the chain fly.
Nazire braced his clawed feet against the swaying boards, eyes locked on the ledge that rose and fell with each arc of their swinging descent. The makeshift grapple, his dagger wedged through the last loop of chain, was heavy in his hands, the links coiled like a serpent waiting to strike. He waited, counted the rhythm, then hurled it.
The chain unfurled midair with a harsh rattle, the dagger clattering across stone, but it bounced, skittered off the rock face, and fell short, swinging uselessly beneath them.
Ping!
The carriage trembled, a fresh jolt from above sending shivers through the platform as it dropped another inch. That ringing followed again as another length of chain descended toward them. Whipping past them again. There was only one remaining chain keeping them from plummeting to their death.
Nazire didn't curse, he simply recoiled the chain, heart hammering, and cast it again. It caught this time. The dagger wedged into a crack along the stone lip, and for half a breath, hope surged. Then, as they swung wide, the tension jerked sideways and the blade pulled free, tumbling end over end into the darkness below.
Nazire’s jaw clenched. He looped the chain once more, wrapped the final link tighter around the dagger’s hilt, whispered a word of luck to the black rock of his childhood, and threw. The chain snapped out into the void like a whip, arcing perfectly. This time, the dagger struck the stone edge and dug in deep, catching between two slabs like it belonged there.
Ping!
The platform dipped again, now swaying in violent arcs, the floor beneath them groaning like a dying beast. Daga grunted beside him, hands still clenched on the guardrails, anchoring her short frame to each swing like a counterweight. Then, with a splintering crack, the carriage gave way and dropped into the darkness.
Nazire felt the weight shift, felt it in his bones, the final groan of something surrendering above.
“Now!” he barked, and without waiting for Daga to react, he snatched her close, one powerful arm wrapping around her waist as the platform fell away beneath their feet with a thunderous snap.
They dropped. Daga screamed. The chain snapped taut with a bone-jarring crack, wrenching Nazire’s shoulder to near dislocation. The dagger-anchor above shrieking with strain, but it held. Momentum whipped them forward. Nazire grunted as they swung like a wrecking ball toward the cavern wall.
Nazire rotated his body, turning the dwarven woman away from the wall. Stone slammed into Nazire’s side, sharp, wet pain as his ribs took the brunt of the collision, but he curled around Daga, taking the worst of it. Her booted feet scraped the wall, struggling for purchase, and together they bounced, slid, and then hung, swinging like a pendulum against the rock face.
For a long second, all that could be heard was Nazire’s strained breathing, the creak of the chain above, and the slow trickle of dust falling from the shaft’s darkness.
CRACK-KROOM.
The sound of the platform slamming into the stone floor far below echoed through the cavern like a thunderclap in a tomb. The shockwave of the impact surged up the shaft, rattling the chain, and a distant bloom of dust billowed upward through the dark like ash from a pyre.
Daga flinched at the sound. Nazire didn’t blink. He was too focused on the next moment.
He bared his fangs in a tight grimace. “We are alive,” he muttered in Draconic, then winced. “Barely.”
They settled into a shallow sway against the wall. Below them now was nothing but blackness and the wreckage of what should have been their coffin.
Nazire adjusted his grip on the chain, testing the tension. It held, for now. He glanced at Daga, her silver hair damp with sweat and dust streaking her face.
“Climb,” he said, voice low. Before she could argue, his thick tail braced against the cavern wall, and he crouched, coiling power in his legs. One arm wrapped around her waist, the other gripping the chain tightly. With a controlled surge of strength, he hefted her upward, lifting her above his head like a sack of flour with a heartbeat.
She grabbed at the rough edge of the ledge, scrabbling for purchase. “Little more—”
With a grunt and a final push, her boots found purchase, and she scrambled over the lip, vanishing for a heartbeat. Then her hand was there, reaching down.
Nazire followed. His claws scraped at the stone as he climbed, chain clinking with every move. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t quiet, but he moved like someone used to climbing for his life.
He reached the top and hauled himself beside her, the two of them now pressed into a narrow alcove, barely wide enough to sit shoulder-to-shoulder. The stone was damp and cold, and the air tasted like copper and mushrooms. Below them, the dark void swallowed the last echoes of the fallen lift.
Nazire exhaled slowly. “Well,” he said, glancing at her with a crooked grin. “Now what?”
They sat in silence for a moment, breath syncing with the rhythm of their pounding hearts. Then Nazire reached for the coiled rope still slung at his side, fifty feet of coarse lifeline, worn smooth in places from years of use.
“We climb down,” he said, already working the knots. “I lower you. Then, we see what waits.”
Daga frowned. “You’re stronger. Lower yourself.”
Nazire shook his head. “If rope break or slips, I survive fall better. You? Not so much.”
He bound one end around the dangling end of the chain they’d climbed up. He tested it with his weight, once, twice, grunting approval when it didn’t budge.
Then he turned to her. “Stand still.”
Before she could protest, he wrapped the other end of the rope snug around her waist, tying it off with surprising gentleness for hands as calloused and clawed as his. She smelled like stone-dust and stubbornness, like someone who didn’t let others carry the weight, but she let him do it anyway.
“You trust me?” he asked.
Daga gave him a look. “Do I have a choice?”
He grinned and braced himself, feet wedged into crevices in the ledge, back against the wall. “Then go.”
She swung off the ledge without hesitation, vanishing into the dark below.
Nazire fed the rope hand over hand, the strain humming through his arms and legs. For a moment, the world narrowed to the weight of her body, the scrape of rope against stone, the cold sweat beading along his spine.
Then, his foot slipped. A screech echoed from the darkness.
“Zhyarth wazmek!” he spat, fumbling as the rope tore through his palms. He caught it again, two hands down, the jolt almost yanking him off the ledge. He snarled, breath sharp through his teeth, and dug in harder. The rope burned, but held.
“You alright?” her shaky voice called from the dark below.
“Keep going,” he hissed. “Almost out of rope.”
Seconds stretched. Then her voice: “I’ve got something! Ledge, wide enough for two … I think.”
“Good,” he grunted. “Because you are wery heavy for one so smoll.”
She laughed. “I’ll untie and you can climb down, lizard-boy.”
He chuckled back, tying the rope off quickly and testing it once before following.
Nazire slid down the rope hand over hand, claws scraping stone, chain clinking lightly against the wall. The cavern stretched black around them, the only sound their breath and the drip of mineral-laden water. As he dropped the last few feet, a jagged tooth of stone snagged the hem of his leather kilt, jerking it upward just as Daga reached to steady him.
“Hey, I can see your torch from here!”
She said, catching more of him than she meant to. Her hands froze against his bare ass cheek, Firm muscle under damp scales. For the briefest heartbeat, there was only the brush of muscle and the sudden, undeniable presence of him. Her silver eyes blinked wide in the darkness. His brow furrowed.
“…Vrakh,” he muttered, tugging at the twisted hem with one hand, the other still clinging to the rope.
“Oh!” Daga shifted her eyes, though a faint, amused snort escaped her nose. “We may die in this gods-forsaken hole,” she muttered, voice low, “but at least your …pride will be the last thing I feel.”
“I .. am wery sorry,” he grumbled, cheeks burning dark beneath his blue scales, but there was nowhere else to stand. The ledge was barely a breath across.
“I’m not!” she thought to herself as she reached out, fingers curling around his belt, and she guided him forward, slow and careful. Their bodies pressed together in a cramped embrace of necessity, his arms bracing the wall behind her, hers wrapped around his middle to keep balance. Close enough to feel each other’s heartbeat. Close enough that silence meant something. For a long moment, neither said a word.
Then Daga broke it, muttering against his chest, “I was saying …can see your torch from here.” She held him tight, her arms wrapped around his thick torso as Nazire adjusted his footing on the narrow shelf of stone. The scent of old iron and cave moss clung to the air between them, but it was the heat blooming from below that drew his eyes.
Turning slightly, he saw it, a flickering orange light dancing up the jagged cavern walls. The shattered lift, some sixty feet beneath them, had caught fire after his torch rolled off during the fall. Now, dry splinters and, perhaps, something else, fed the flames, turning the mangled wreckage into a slowly growing pyre. Sparks leapt hungrily into the dark.
“I saw a crack,” Daga said again, her breath brushing against his neck. “Just below. Maybe three feet.”
Nazire nodded, the motion small, any large movement might have caused them to fall. Her arms were still braced around him, keeping them steady on the knife’s edge of a ledge barely wide enough for their feet. He turned, careful and slow, reaching down to set the chain and check that the dagger was secure in its final links.
Nazire climbed down, squinting into the dim. His pupils flared wide to drink in the shadow. The rock face was slick with condensation, cold to the touch. Just below their ledge, the rock face fractured like a lightning bolt frozen in stone, narrow, but deep. He braced one foot lower, then the other, his body pressed close to hers as he began to descend. Their faces were nearly touching now, his cheek brushing hers as he shifted, her breath warm against his ear, catching with every exhale. It filled his senses, dulled the edge of focus he needed. His hand slipped.
“Vrakh—” he hissed, catching the dagger just before it clattered free.
Daga didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. But her mouth was at his ear now, so close he could feel the words before she said them.
“Careful, Guardian.”
He growled low in his throat, not in anger, but frustration, heat, the rush of pulse behind his teeth. He secured the dagger in the stone crack with a firm push, testing the anchor twice with both hands, then glancing up.
“Is not much,” he said, in breathy tones, “but maybe enough.”
She didn’t let go, not yet, but he felt a shiver run through her. “How many times have you said that before?” She whispered into his ear, and they both stifled an awkward laugh.
Once again, Nazire took the length of rope coiled over his shoulder and wrapped it around Daga’s waist, slow and careful. His claws made short work of the knots, secure, practiced. But his hands lingered longer than they needed to, fingers brushing against the small of her back, the curve of her hips, where the cloak parted to reveal the fabric of her trousers stretched taut by tension and proximity.
She didn’t speak, didn’t move, except to lift her arms so he could finish tying her in, her silver hair brushing across his jaw like a whisper. The moment felt ceremonial, almost sacred, like the Arming rites of his youth, where steel was placed in your hand with reverence, not force.
The fire below flared brighter as the broken platform burned, casting their shadows against the cavern wall, dancing like spirits. He leaned closer, the knot finished now, but his breath was still heavy on her shoulder.
“You ready?” he murmured, voice low and thick with accent.
She smirked at that, not facing him. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Nazire let out a dry chuckle. He adjusted the line, grunted once in approval, and helped lower her down the face of the wall, inch by careful inch, his grip firm, his jaw tight, his thoughts struggling to stay on task.
Daga reached the end of the rope with her toes dangling, the cavern floor still a daunting eight or more feet below. The rope creaked above her as she hesitated for a breath, then drew a slow exhale through her nose, steadying her heartbeat. With a deft flick of her fingers, she untied herself, tucked her limbs, and dropped like a stone.
She landed light, knees bent, one hand brushing the floor to catch balance, graceful as a cat. Her heart thundered in her chest, but she straightened as if she’d simply stepped off a stoop. A smug grin tugged at her lips as she looked back up the wall.
“Easy!” she said to herself, then louder, “You comin’?”
Above, Nazire grumbled something low in Drakonan, then began his descent. The rock face was damp and uneven, but familiar, almost nostalgic. He climbed down with practiced care until his claws scraped the final few feet.
He paused to jerk the dagger from the crevice it had been wedged into, but it held firm. He gave another pull, this time with a grunt, and the chain popped free; so did his footing.
“Zhyarth…!” he barked as the ground yanked up toward him.
He landed hard, stumbling forward into the cavern dust with a grunt and a curse, skidding to one knee. He rose quickly, brushing himself off, his cheeks darkening with more than exertion.
Daga was already standing there, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.
“That was… graceful,” she said, clearly savouring the moment.
Nazire growled softly, not looking at her. “Rock was weak.”
“Mmhmm. So was your landing.”
He moved past her, stiff-backed and silent, but Daga stepped in front of him with deliberate slowness, smirking up at the much larger Drakona.
“Hey,” she said, tapping her chin in mock thought. “You want me to go first again? Or should I wait here in case you fall on your ass a second time?”
Nazire stopped, jaw tight, eyes narrowing. His only answer was a flick of his tail as he stalked ahead toward the fire.
The wreckage of the platform had become a pyre. Nazire’s torch, dropped in their frantic escape, had caught the splintered wood and grease-slick chains with terrifying ease. Now the fire licked upward along the collapsed platform’s frame, swallowing coal dust, dried pitch, and forgotten gear. Flames danced brighter than any torch, illuminating the cavern in pulsing amber hues that played tricks against the stone.
But it wasn’t just the platform burning anymore. The fire had found the coal. Veins of it, long, dry, and half-mined, ran like forgotten roots through the cavern floor. As the flames heated them, they shuddered to life, glowing red from within and spitting heat in sharp, sulfuric bursts. The fire spread low and fast, eating sideways into the cavern floor like a thing with purpose.
Nazire cursed low in his throat and crouched beside a blackened crack, dragging his claws through the smouldering ash. “Dey were mining Coal?” he muttered grimly.
Daga stood a few paces behind, her face painted orange by firelight, her silver hair a halo of smoke. “It was bound to burn eventually,” she said, too quickly. “Just maybe not with us inside it.”
The heat thickened the air with every passing breath. The shadows danced violently now, flickering through the towering chamber like ghosts in a forge. Despite the rising danger, the cavern still held its secrets.
Daga moved ahead, stepping carefully between cracks, her boots crunching across scorched stone and half-melted tools. Then she stopped, bent low near a blackened boulder, and brushed away soot with the hem of her cloak.
An ore sled lay tipped on its side against the cavern wall, its metal twisted from being thrown by the impact of the elevator crashing down, but the cargo hadn’t burned.
“Diamonds,” she said, voice low. Her gloved hand sifted through the mound: rough, uncut, glittering like starlight in the firelight. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Mud-caked and raw, but unmistakable.
Nazire knelt beside her, smoke curling from his nostrils, examining a raw diamond in his palm. “Then, coal was decoy. This is why men disappear?”
Daga’s lips thinned, her eyes darting toward the deeper tunnel where smoke still rolled like stormclouds. “Kuono wasn’t trying to pay me back. He was chasing this.”
Nazire said nothing, but his gaze lingered on the sled, on the claw marks scoring the stone nearby, dragged footsteps, a broken pick, a dropped helmet.
“They left fast,” he murmured. “They were scared. Of something.”
Daga stood slowly, her fingers brushing the glass sphere slung across her chest as the octopus familiar stirred inside.
Nazire paused mid-step, his nostrils flaring. A strange sensation rippled across the back of his neck, like cold breath against scales not yet grown. The fine ridges of his skin prickled, and his heart thudded once, hard. He turned his head slowly, amber eyes narrowing into the smoky dark.
“…Did you feel that?” he asked, voice low, alert.
Daga glanced up from the sled of ore she’d been inspecting. Her expression was blank, unimpressed. “Feel what?”
He didn’t answer right away. The feeling was already fading, like a sound remembered more than heard, but the echo of it gnawed at his instincts.
“Nothing,” he muttered, but his hand slipped back to rest on the hilt of Storm Caller. Nazire turned toward the deeper dark. “We find out what scared them.”
They did not have to wait long. Daga had just slipped a few of the rough diamonds into the inner pocket of her bag, quick and quiet, like she’d done it a hundred times, when the firelight dimmed around them, not from lack of flame, but as though the air itself recoiled.
Nazire froze. A cold washed through the cavern, cutting sharply beneath the growing heat. His hackles rose. He turned slowly and saw the wall ripple.
A figure stepped through solid stone. He came headfirst, helmet askew, jaw slack and broken, his limbs moving wrong, like a puppet tugged by too many strings. His eyes, hollow and burning with a faint green light, swept over the room without seeing.
Then another. And another.
Silent as snowfall, the spirits of long-dead miners seeped through the rock like mist, their tools still slung from half-shattered belts, their faces frozen mid-anguish. Some dragged phantom sleds behind them, others held ghostly picks, still swinging with the ceaseless rhythm of a job they could not leave behind.
The cavern filled with them. A half-dozen at least, flickering in and out of view as the flames cast strange shadows. One of the ghosts passed through a collapsed beam. The beam groaned.
“You see that?” Daga whispered, clutching the messenger bag tighter across her chest.
“Priz’tharak!” Nazire asked under his breath, watching one shade float inches from the coal fire, unaffected. “De wakeing dead.”
A spirit turned its head. Its eyes locked with his, and the ghost screamed.
The scream cut through the cavern like a jagged blade, high, shrill, and wrong. It started in one throatless echo and was joined in staggered succession by the others, a chorus of agony and rage swelling to fill every crevice of stone and smoke.
Nazire’s ears flattened back. He growled low, eyes wide. “Zhyarth wazmek, what in bone-black hells is that?!”
Daga didn’t answer. She had already pressed a hand to the amulet now pulled from between her breasts, a twisted, stylized octopus etched into tarnished silver. As the wailing rose, the eyes of the pendant began to glow a muted violet. She whispered something in a language Nazire didn’t know, her tone fierce and precise.
A ripple of faint blue light spread over her body, like ink across water, and formed a thin, glowing veil just above her skin. Nazire squinted at her, then at the ghosts, then his bare arms. “You have any more of that?”
She didn’t even spare him a look. “Move.”
One of the miners drifted too close, its half-formed foot swept through a coal vein, sending a fresh gout of smoke rolling. Nazire’s lungs seized.
He whipped his tomahawk free, holding it low, the obsidian blade tight in his palm. “Don’t think this’ll do much,” he muttered, “but will feel better than dying polite.”
Another spectre lunged, silent but sharp. Daga ducked beneath it, her cloak billowing in the heat. “The smoke is getting thick,” she called out. “You see an exit?!”
“Not yet!”
The cavern now roiled with smoke and light, dancing flames, echoing screams, and our intrepid adventurers somewhere between them, the living clung to instinct. The ghosts grew more frenzied as the coal veins fed the fire, some whipping their picks against the living, others staggering in patterns like they were retracing old, final steps.
Nazire scanned the stone through a stinging haze of smoke and spectral light, hoping for a gap, a tunnel—anything—but saw only flame-lit rock, coal veins cracking and flaring under the heat. The fire had begun to creep up the far wall, dancing like hungry fingers, and the ghosts, the ghosts were chasing them.
No longer lingering, no longer reenacting, but chasing. The miners’ hollowed faces twisted in fresh anguish, pickaxes raised, limbs jerking with violent memory. They moved with terrifying purpose, cutting through smoke and ash like wind through fog.
“Run, run—!” Daga’s voice cracked under the weight of her warding spell. Her eyes shone bright behind the shimmer of blue light as another ghost hurled itself forward and shattered like mist against the barrier. “They are pissed! The fire’s driving them mad!”
“Dey not chase fire!” Nazire ducked as one howled past his ear, the sound scraping across his skull like hot metal. “Dey chase us!” He grabbed her arm, nearly dragging her through the smoke as she stumbled, her boots slipping in a patch of melted coal slag. “You got spell to burn ghosts?”
“Maybe?” A ghost burst from a wall to their left, its face sunken and charred, eye sockets glowing pale blue. It reached for Nazire. He swung the tomahawk, his whole body behind it. The blade passed through, but something in the swing broke the ghost’s momentum, scattering it like leaves in a storm.
Daga hissed a word in an ancient tongue. Her fingers curled into a cruel gesture as veins of black ink and rot spidered down her forearm. She pointed at the nearest ghost, a gaunt miner whose hollow eyes wept smoke, and released the spell.
The air boiled in the space between them. A spear of sickly green-and-violet energy, like a harpoon forged from venom and plague, lanced from her palm, but the ghost drifted aside at the last moment, the bolt ripping through nothing.
The spell struck a coal-veined wall instead, and the stone instantly curdled, the moss blackened, the air reeked of rot, and a lattice of dead ivy sprouted and withered in the same breath. Where it hit, a film of mildew and decay spread, hissing as if some deep-sea vent had opened beneath the cavern. The ghost turned its eyeless face toward her and shrieked.
The smoke was a living thing now, writhing, thick, suffocating. It clung to their skin, coated their lungs, and turned every flicker of flame into a searing blur. Nazire squinted through the haze, his tomahawk clenched in one hand, the other reaching for Daga. “We split! I pull them, you cast, yes?”
Daga nodded, eyes watering, the amulet at her throat pulsing faintly. “Don’t get dead.”
He growled and broke off into the smoke. He ran wide, swinging the tomahawk through the air, yelling in every tongue he knew. “Hey! Come, you angry fuckers! Come to Nazire! I got steel for each of you, one at the time!”
He pounded on the stone with his fist, flared his cloak, even tossed one of the sled rails into the coals to make a crashing distraction. Two ghosts glanced toward him, but floated past without pause. More of them were turning now, drifting not toward him, but her.
Nazire skidded to a halt.
“…Why they go to you?”
Daga was already fumbling with her satchel, her eyes wide with sudden realization. “Shit. Shit, it’s the diamonds. They want the diamond!”
She had slipped several uncut stones into her bag. Nazire had only taken one. To him, it was a curiosity. To them—?
The ghosts closed in faster now, their keening wails sharpening into wordless fury. Their outstretched hands clawed at the air between them and the dwarf, ignoring Nazire completely as he watched them pass by like he was not there.
And still, the smoke thickened.
Nazire moved without thinking, his blood singing with ancestral fury as the ghost lunged for Daga, drawn to the diamonds she still clutched. He roared, a deep, cavern-born bellow that echoed like thunder down the stone throat of the mine. Storm Caller flashed in his grip, its haft humming with a low, electric growl. Runes carved by forgotten hands shimmered faintly blue as he brought it down in a sharp arc, and cleaved through the ghost like it had flesh and bone.
There was no spray of blood. No satisfying crunch. But the air tore, a burst of static and pressure exploded outward with the blow, as though he’d split a summer storm down the middle. The ghost screamed, a noise like wind ripping through a graveyard, and was thrown back, unravelling into strands of smoke and memory that flickered before vanishing.
Storm Caller buzzed with energy in his hand, almost eager. Nazire exhaled, half in surprise.
“It works.”
Behind him, the ghosts were closing in, silent now, save the awful crackle of their unnatural forms slipping through the walls. Her fingers clutched the sphere in her bag.
“Thal’Zir,” she whispered, voice low and curling with eldritch cadence. The sphere pulsed once, cold and wet like something alive. One of the phantoms came gliding toward her, face a sunken mask of forgotten agony. Her hand snapped out, fingers clawed toward the thing’s hollow heart.
“Blightening!” she hissed. A spiral of darkness lashed from her palm, shaped like spreading tentacles and ink in water, striking the ghost full in the chest. The spectre shuddered, its form flickering wildly as if caught between this world and the next. A wave of decay spread over it, shrinking the edges of its glow, thinning its arms into wisps and filaments. It stumbled back but did not vanish. Daga growled under her breath and clenched her jaw, moving around a stone column. “Not enough.”
Nazire turned to meet the next spirit, but too late. The ghost lunged, its formless hand passing through his side like smoke. There was no impact. No blade. Just cold. A wrenching, soul-deep cold that dragged something out of him, something vital. He staggered, choking on a breath that didn't feel like his. His vision shimmered. His limbs felt hollow. For a moment, he wasn't in the cave anymore, but back in Bacot, on the pit floor, blood on his knuckles and shame in his throat.
The ghost recoiled, shrieking in stolen breath. Nazire dropped to one knee.
“Zhyarth,” he spat, then growled low. “You want something from me? Come and fucking take it.”
He rose with a snarl, gripping Storm Caller in both hands. The ancestral tomahawk crackled, its carved blade whispering in the deep tongue of his kin. He brought it down on the wraith that had struck him, and the weapon screamed through the air. The ghost shredded apart in a burst of blue-white flame and vanished.
He didn’t stop. Another came at his flank. He pivoted, slashing through it, disrupting its shape like cutting through smoke. A second slash turned it to scattered sparks.
Smoke thickened. Screams rose. Somewhere ahead, Daga called his name. Another ghost surged toward her, and he charged. Storm Caller arced in a clean, brutal circle, cleaving through the last spectre with a snarl of energy. He stumbled to her side, his breath ragged, his soul still shivering. But his eyes burned.
“You good?” he growled, keeping the tomahawk high. “Because I’m not done yet.”
The cavern was a crucible now, walls bleeding fire, veins of coal erupting with slow, relentless fury. Smoke hung like a choking shroud, curling low and heavy, filling lungs with soot and panic. Every breath came sharp and raw, like inhaling knives.
Daga coughed into her arm, her eyes wild. She raised her hand once more, calling to the deep,
“Thal'Zir, blightening!" The tendril of shadow and blight cracked through the smoke, a whip of withering energy—but the ghost slipped aside, untouched, its face still fixed on her with hollow hunger.
Nazire snarled, blood glinting black across his shoulder as he turned from her and levelled Storm Caller.
“Find us a way out!” he barked, voice thick with smoke and fury.
Daga hesitated, torn, until a wave of heat from the floor snapped her focus. The coal seam beneath them had ignited fully now, a line of red creeping between her and the western wall. Flames licked higher across the stone floor, cutting off the far side of the cavern with a wall of hungry light. She spun, searching for any escape.
Nazire roared behind her, bringing his tomahawk down through one ghost, then twisting to parry another. The ghosts kept coming, drifting silently through smoke and fire, drawn by her, not him.
The Drakona slashed a wide arc through a pair of them, then growled without turning:
“Move, Daga! I can’t hold them and the fire!”
She didn’t argue. Clutching her orb, she plunged into the narrowing dark, eyes stinging, heart hammering. Somewhere in the smoke-choked depths of the cavern, there had to be another way.
Behind her, coal cracked and split open with a sound like bone, and the ghosts screamed like they’d been waiting for a thousand years. A ghost lunged, its claws swiping through smoke like knives through silk, but Nazire twisted just in time. The wraith’s howl split around him. Another came on its heels, faster, fiercer. Its hand pierced his side like frostbitten iron, searing through leather and scale.
Nazire staggered, coughed smoke, and roared.
“Zhyarth wazmek,” he spat, and drove Storm Caller in a perfect, brutal arc. The enchanted blade tore through the shrieking spectre, cleaving it from shoulder to hip, then continued into the one behind it. Both ghosts disintegrated in a single sweep, howling echoes sucked back into the embers as if pulled by the flames themselves.
Across the cavern, Daga stumbled against a half-melted rock, coughing, eyes stinging. She blinked the haze away, just enough to spot movement. There, several feet above her, near a bend of scorched wall and blackened stalactites—A face.
A soot-covered face, wide-eyed and frantic, poking out of a narrow tunnel just barely big enough to crawl through. The man was on his hands and knees, coughing into the smoke, eyes scanning. It was him. Kuono.
“Nazire!” Daga shouted, pointing with her free hand, already scrambling up a sloped outcropping of rock toward the opening. “There!”
Nazire, panting and bloodied, turned toward her voice, just in time to see her vanish into the haze, chasing ghosts of her own. Above them both, Kuono blinked at the chaos like a man walking into a nightmare.
Kuono whistled, a sharp, trilling note lost in the thickening smoke. It barely carried, more wheeze than call, but it was enough. Daga’s head snapped up, eyes locking on him as he motioned frantically from the tunnel.
A whisper of cold passed over her skin. She turned just in time to see a ghost's outstretched hand seize her arm. The icy grip scorched like dry ice. Daga cried out, twisting away, ripping the limb free. Blood welled at the wound, thin and sluggish under the heat. She stumbled, clutching her forearm, cursing.
Nazire heard her, heard her pain. Another ghost raked across his back. His pupils narrowed to slits, and he roared. Not just a sound, but a soul-deep eruption. A wrathful hurricane born of firelight and blood. It rolled through the cavern like thunder and crashed into every spectral presence.
The ghosts staggered. Even the flames seemed to hesitate.
“YOU WANT FIGHT?" He bellowed, voice raw with ancient anger. "COME THEN, TAKE IT!!”
Storm Caller spun in his grip, cleaving the smoke like lightning. The first strike, too wild.
The next, solid. A ghost exploded into whirling mist, disintegrating in the fiery haze.
Across the room, Daga caught her breath and looked up at Kuono again. He was pressed halfway out of the stone, arms waving her toward him as if sheer will would pull her up, but he was too high.
She leapt, slipped, and landed hard on her ankle. In front of her, the only escape was out of reach. Behind her, the spectres and flames closed in.
Daga didn’t wait for another scream. She turned from the ghostly grasp, arm frozen through, and bolted for the stone wall beneath Kuono’s perch. Smoke clawed at her lungs, the heat rising in waves as coal veins hissed and popped around the chamber. The diamonds in her satchel shifted with her every move, a mocking weight.
"Hold still, damn you!" she barked at Kuono. He flattened against the edge, arm outstretched, uselessly short. Daga leapt, caught a jagged hold with her fingertips, then slammed into the wall, feet scrabbling for purchase. She didn’t pause. Every inch she climbed was borrowed time.
Below, Nazire fought like a man ablaze. One ghost lunged at him from the smoke, and he ducked low, tomahawk flashing. The blade whistled past nothing but air. Another ghost slipped through the haze and raked its claws across his ribs. The wound sizzled in his flesh like cold lightning. He snarled in pain, spun on his heel, and swung Storm Caller across in a vicious arc.
The spectre didn’t even have time to scream. It vanished in a flash of dissipating light.
“Try again,” Nazire growled through gritted teeth, one hand clutching his side.
Above, Daga pressed her body against the blackened wall, her boots scrabbling over cracked stone. Her muscles burned, her wounds throbbed, but Kuono was close, just a few feet more.
Daga’s fingers found a crack, then another. Her palms were slick with sweat, some of it hers, some of it ghost-blood, if such a thing existed. She didn’t care. Not anymore. Just reach Kuono.
Another screech tore through the smoke behind her. She didn’t look, but a searing cold sliced through her calf, a ghost's hand, phasing halfway into her leg as it struck. The pain was like being stabbed with winter. She gasped, nearly lost her grip, but bit it back and kept climbing. She said nothing to Nazire. No cries for help. No calls to follow.
Nazire turned, Storm Caller ready, but the spectre lunging for him passed wide, its momentum hurling it into the swirling smoke.
He searched for Daga, but she was lost somewhere in the smoke.
“Guts of a damn cave lion,” he muttered.
Then he heard a thud. Behind him, a figure tumbled out of the smoke and hit the cavern floor with a bone-splintering crunch. Nazire spun. It was not a miner.
It was a man in work clothes, tattered, soot-covered, and coughing like he hadn’t breathed clean air in days. His eyes were wild. He clutched something bundled in cloth.
Before Nazire could move, another ghost coalesced behind the man.
Kuono twisted his wiry frame just as the ghost’s claw swiped past his chest, tearing a few strands from his silver beard. He scrambled backward, half-crawling, half-kicking toward the wall, right into the path of another wraith closing in behind him.
Nazire was already moving. Storm Caller whistled through the smoke like thunder cracking open the dark, and the ghost vanished in a streak of blue sparks and shattered air. The impact knocked the creature into a dissolving spiral, its scream lost in the howl of fire and panic.
Nazire turned, breath heavy, eyes wide and wild.
“Who are you?” he barked in his thick Drakonan growl, “where is Daga?”
Kuono blinked, then pointed shakily up the cragged wall. “She got out,” he coughed. “Pushed me out of the exit.”
Nazire narrowed his eyes, stepping in closer.
“No,” he rumbled. “That is not her.”
“She tried to sacrifice me!” Kuono insisted, voice climbing with hysteria. “She said our deaths were fate.”
“Liar.” The word landed like a stone. Nazire’s knuckles tightened around his tomahawk. The smoke coiled around his horns like a crown of flame. “You tell me where she went,” he growled, “or I leave you here for the ghosts.”
Kuono raised his hands, eyes flicking between the rising wraiths and the firelit blade.
“She went into the tunnel above, I swear! You can still catch her, if you climb!”
Nazire snarled, a flash of teeth behind the soot and sweat.
“Show me!”
Before Kuono could protest, the Drakona lunged, grabbing him by the belt and the back of his tunic. With a roar that rattled the stones, Nazire hurled the man upward, toward the lip of the tunnel. Kuono hit the rock wall with a grunt, scrambling with panicked limbs to catch a hold and haul himself the rest of the way.
Behind Nazire, another ghost wailed and lunged, skeletal arms like smoke-wreathed spears. Storm Caller was already spinning in his hands.
“Zhyarth wazmek,” he hissed through gritted teeth, and swung with punishing force, the enchanted blade hissing through a shrieking spirit. The ghost shattered in a burst of greenish vapour.
Nazire hooked his tomahawk onto an outcropping of stone and began his climb. The fire below crackled louder now, the smoke rising faster. The ghosts were not far behind.
The tunnel scraped Nazire’s horns and shoulders, every inch forward a crawl through choking smoke and collapsing stone. His lungs clawed for breath, but he pressed on until at last, the passage cracked open into a narrow cavern lit by the unholy glow of spectral miners.
Daga stood in the chaos like a flame refusing to go out. Her silver hair was wild and soaked with sweat, plastered to her cheeks. The bag at her hip swung madly as she fended off three ghosts with a short, rune-carved sceptre, no wand’s flourish, but a weapon wielded with fury and precision, whipping through smoke and shadow as it flared with green necrotic power at each impact.
The ghosts hissed, flickering through the air like shredded flags in a storm, circling closer with grasping claws and howling hunger. Daga twisted and slammed the sceptre across one ghost’s jaw, if it had a jaw, and the magic flared on contact. The spirit burst like dry rot under pressure, flaking away in angry sparks.
Nazire hauled himself from the tunnel, eyes scanning, chest heaving.
“I am here, Daga!” he roared, the sound bouncing off stone, rough and primal. “Fall back!”
She didn’t turn, didn’t speak, just drove the sceptre in a vicious arc at the next ghost’s chest, forcing it back with a crackle of corrupted green light. Only then did she glance at him, a breathless smirk twisting her lips.
“Took your sweet time, Dragon.”
He bared his teeth, drawing Storm Caller as he charged. The final two ghosts wailed as Storm Caller cleaved through one and Daga’s sceptre shattered the other in a pulse of withering green light. Their howls echoed, long and shrill, before disintegrating into silence that buzzed in the ears like the aftermath of a scream.
Kuono didn’t wait. He darted toward a narrow tunnel on the far side of the cavern, hunched low beneath a shelf of crumbling stone. “This way!” he shouted over his shoulder, his voice ragged from smoke and panic.
Nazire grabbed Daga’s arm, dragging her behind him as they sprinted after the fleeing man. Their boots struck stone slick with coal ash. Somewhere behind them, fire popped and veins of ignited ore hissed in the walls.
As they ran, Kuono glanced back, sweat streaking his soot-covered face. “You brought them with you,” he hissed, eyes wild. “They’ll keep coming.”
Daga narrowed her eyes. “We already killed them.”
“No, you didn’t!” Kuono snapped. “They’re tied to this place, to the diamonds themselves.”
Daga stumbled, caught herself. Her hand instinctively clutched the satchel against her side.
Kuono pointed, urgent. “You want to live, witch, leave the gods-damned diamonds!”
The tunnel ahead narrowed again, the light dimming to almost nothing.
Behind them… the air stirred. Cold. Whispering. A familiar, bone-deep chill was creeping back into their necks.
The narrow tunnel gave way to a yawning cavern, easily the size of a cathedral, its high ceiling lost in shadow. Massive support beams lay cracked and splintered across the ground like the broken limbs of giants. Dust drifted through shafts of light filtering down from cracks in the rock far above, and here and there the groan of shifting stone whispered of an eventual, inevitable collapse.
But none of that held their attention.
The ghosts were waiting. Dozens of them. They stood motionless across the crumbling chamber, some half-phased through stone, others crouched on fallen beams, staring with hollow eyes that glowed faintly like cold embers. Their shapes were human, miners, most of them, but blurred, smeared by time and anguish.
Daga skidded to a halt beside Nazire and Kuono, clutching her satchel to her chest, breath coming fast. “They followed us,” she said flatly, like she’d known they would.
Daga hesitated. Then, with an aggravated groan, she tore open the satchel and flung the handful of raw diamonds into the dust. The moment they hit the cavern floor, everything stilled.
The ghosts turned. Not toward the living, but toward the gems. One by one, without sound or ceremony, they began to drift. Pale hands reached down, not to gather, but to touch, to mark. Then they stepped back, into the stone, into the cracks and walls, into nothing.
Within moments, the cavern was empty but for the living and the smoke that threatened to choke them to death.
Daga stood frozen, her hand still hovering near where the satchel had been. Nazire finally exhaled. “You make powerful enemies,” he rumbled, voice low.
Daga spun on Kuono the moment the last ghost disappeared into the rock. Her voice was ice-edged and trembling with fury. “You thieving little rat. You stole from me.”
Nazire blinked, confused, glancing at the scattered diamonds still glinting in the dirt. “You mean those?” he asked, pointing.
“No,” she snapped, her eyes locked on Kuono like drawn daggers. “Not the gems.”
Kuono took a careful step back, clutching something tight against his chest. A bundle of thick, soot-streaked cloth. From inside it, faint blue light pulsed, and a shape shifted.
Nazire’s nostrils flared. “What is that?”
Daga already knew. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Moa,” she hissed. “Give him back, Kuono.”
Kuono shook his head, grim and pale in the firelight. “Not until we’re clear of this gods-cursed place.”
“You bastard!” Daga took a step forward, but Nazire held her back with a firm hand.
Kuono adjusted his grip on the bundle protectively. Inside, the glass sphere shimmered with enchantment, the octopus, Thal’moa, floated within, his limbs slowly curling and uncurling.
“I didn’t steal him,” Kuono said, eyes darting toward the creeping smoke now filtering into the chamber. “You left me down there to die, he’s insurance.”
Daga snarled, voice raw. “I gave you everything. You were the one who—”
“Enough,” Nazire barked, low and warning. The smoke was thickening, swirling in the air like a living thing. Already, the heat from below was climbing the stone walls like fingers of flame. “You want to kill each other, wait until we are not breathing poison.”
Daga hesitated, her fists clenched, eyes burning.
Kuono slowly backed toward one of the side tunnels. “You want him back?” he called over the roar of distant collapse. “Make sure I get out of here alive.”
The stone groaned above them. Something cracked in the distance.
Daga looked at Nazire, then at the path ahead.
“Fine,” she growled, voice low and venomous. “But when we reach the surface—he’s mine.”
They moved fast through the narrowing corridor, boots scraping across shale and char. The smoke was thick, painting everything in strokes of ash and shadow. Daga kept pace behind Kuono, her eyes locked on the sphere still clutched to his chest, glowing faintly like a stolen heart. Nazire brought up the rear, glancing back occasionally in case the ghosts, or worse, decided to follow.
“You want to know why I took the damn job?” Kuono coughed into his sleeve, his voice tight and hoarse. “I didn’t have a choice. She made sure of that.”
Daga scoffed behind him. “Careful with your stories, Kuono.”
“I am,” he snapped, ducking under a low stone lip. “It’s the truth this time.”
Nazire grunted. “Then tell it. Quick.”
Kuono stumbled but kept going. “She sent me on a delivery. It sounded simple enough. But halfway through, I was jumped, robbed clean. Turns out, she hired the thugs.”
“You can’t prove that,” Daga growled.
He ignored her. “Then she comes to collect, all surprise and outrage. Demanded the money back. Said I owed her double for the ‘inconvenience.’”
Nazire let out a low huff.
“I couldn’t pay it. So she used this little fucker to whisper into my head that I should take a job at IronWight. Considerate, don't you think?” He gestured with the sphere, his pace slowing just a fraction. “Then once I’m down here, I get offered a little bonus to help run diamonds up the shafts, hidden in coal sleds.”
Daga made a sharp sound in her throat, “I didn’t know about the diamonds.”
Kuono wasn’t finished. “But when I got down here... there were others. Two more men. She’d done the same thing to them. Set them up, squeezed them dry, and dumped them in the mines.”
Nazire narrowed his eyes, catching Daga’s expression as they moved.
“You’re not just a collector, are you?” he asked.
Daga said nothing, only pressed forward, jaw clenched. Her silence said enough.
Kuono's voice lowered. “She bleeds people dry, then buries the bones in the dirt.”
Nazire glanced at her again, thoughtful, then turned his eyes forward. “Then I suppose we best not die down here,” he muttered. “Because I have questions.”
The tunnels stretched endlessly ahead and behind, a labyrinth of soot-stained stone and echoing footfalls. At times, they climbed over crumbling ridges, at others, they descended into breathless pockets of stale air and eerie quiet. Their boots dragged with exhaustion, the acrid sting of smoke still clinging to their clothes, skin, and lungs.
Eventually, the air grew clearer. The smoke thinned to a haze. It was Kuono who spotted the narrow passage sloping downward into a cooler vein of rock, hidden behind a collapsed cart and a blackened support beam. They followed it without argument, each of them too drained to challenge the hope of shelter.
The passage opened into a small, forgotten cave, the stone walls smooth and cool, the ceiling just high enough to stretch beneath. At the far end, a steel door stood locked and weathered, half-swallowed by the rock around it, its surface scratched by time and attempts to force it open. But it did not budge, and tonight, they had no more strength to question its purpose.
Nazire cleared a space in the dust and ash, stacking some old supply crates and spreading a thin cloth for them to sit on. Kuono sat against the wall opposite Daga, cradling the sphere of Thal’Zir close to his chest, its soft glow pulsing gently. Daga sulked, eyes on the floor.
No one spoke for a long time.
Finally, Nazire broke the silence with a deep exhale, rubbing his hand over his face. “We sleep in turns. I’ll take first watch.”
Daga opened one eye to look at him, then nodded. “I’ll take second.”
“I don’t fucking think so,” Kuono muttered, curling tighter around the covered sphere. No one offered thanks, no one apologized. The flames, the ghosts, the smoke, they had left their marks; not all of them visible.
Nazire leaned back against the wall near the door, polishing the hilt of Storm Caller with an oiled cloth. Somewhere above them, the coal still burned, but here, for now, there was silence, and that would have to be enough.