The road down from the Lower Drift did not feel like retreat until the mine vanished behind the shoulder of the hill.
While the black mouth remained visible, Serious kept expecting the click of stone against stone to follow them through the rain.
Once the pines closed around the track and hid the scar in the mountain, the lack of pursuit became its own pressure, as if the mine had not let them go so much as chosen to wait.
Tollen hung between Pell and Vayra for the first steep stretch because Serious’s wounded leg could no longer be trusted with another man’s weight.
The miner tried twice to walk under his own strength, and each attempt ended with his face going pale beneath the mud while Pell cursed him back into leaning.
“Put weight on it again and I’ll break the other leg so you match,” Pell growled, tightening his grip beneath Tollen’s arm with more fear than anger.
He kept his eyes on the track, but his shoulders flinched every time loose stone shifted under their boots.
“Wouldn’t have to carry me uneven then,” Tollen muttered, and the joke scraped out of him like gravel dragged across wood.
He tried to smile after saying it, but blood loss had made his mouth clumsy, and the effort left him sagging harder against Pell.
Vayra adjusted her hold without looking at either of them.
“Save your breath for walking,” she said, then glanced once toward Serious’s leg.
Her eyes caught on the dark line where blood had worked down from beneath the borrowed armour straps, and moved away quickly enough to let him pretend she had not seen it.
Serious pretended because pretending was easier than admitting the cut had become a pulsing argument from thigh to hip with every step.
The System had called the wound light, which seemed technically true and emotionally useless.
Light bleeding still meant bleeding, light pain still meant pain, and a light mistake in a mine tunnel could still become a body someone else had to carry home.
The warning returned at the edge of his sight: [Condition: Wounded], [Bleeding: Light], [Recommended Action: Clean and bind injury].
Serious dismissed it with a thought and immediately regretted the irritation, because the System was right and his pride was not a bandage.
The road had been difficult on the way up.
On the way down it became cruel.
Mud filled the cart ruts, rain slicked every exposed stone, and the warhammer that had felt like a chosen tool at dawn now hung from his hand with the dumb insistence of dead weight.
He had not cleaned it.
Mud clung to the iron head, and something darker had dried along one edge where the rain had failed to reach.
Bran had lent him the weapon, and Serious had brought it back bloodied, which sat inside him with more weight than the hammer itself.
Pell slowed near the first ore rest, the flat place where carts could be braced before the descent.
The leaning post Serious had noticed on the way up stood at the track’s edge, split near the base where water had gathered in the grain of the wood.
Iron bands held it together, nails driven at clever angles by a hand that had known the tools available, but water had worked beneath the join and the old reinforcement had begun to fail where the material itself could no longer carry the load.
He had almost stopped for it earlier, back when the day still had room for observations not attached to blood.
Now Tollen’s breathing hitched beside him, Vayra’s bandaged arm had begun to bleed through the cloth, and the whole party had to keep moving because useful thoughts did not become safe just because they waited their turn.
The thought came cold and precise despite the pain.
Runes could strengthen what existed, but they could not make a bad join into a good one unless the base shape gave them something honest to hold.
Serious nearly laughed, then stopped, because nothing about the day had earned laughter.
The idea stayed anyway, lodged beneath fear and exhaustion like a splinter he would have to pull out later.
Vayra fell back beside him once the ground widened enough for Pell to take more of Tollen’s weight.
“You’re limping worse,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes forward so the words looked like a comment on the road rather than concern.
“I’m trying to make it look deliberate,” Serious said, though the attempt at humour came out thin.
He shifted the warhammer to his other hand and immediately discovered that his other shoulder hated the idea.
“It does not look deliberate.” Vayra reached into the pouch at her belt and offered him a folded strip of clean cloth without ceremony, as if making the offer smaller might make it easier for him to accept.
“When we stop, use it.
Pride is a poor medical tool.” Serious took the cloth and tucked it beneath his belt rather than trying to bind the wound while walking.
The movement tugged at the cut hard enough to catch his breath, and Vayra noticed, but she let him keep the small lie of dignity.
A private chime touched the edge of Serious’s hearing.
It was not sound exactly, because it had no echo and did not belong to the rain, boots, breath, or creak of leather.
A message unfolded across his vision: [Vayra: Testing.
Can you see this?] Serious almost stumbled.
He caught himself with a sharp breath and looked at Vayra, but she kept her face fixed on the road.
Only the faint tension near her mouth betrayed that she had done anything at all, and Pell was too busy keeping Tollen upright to notice the exchange happening under his nose.
Serious opened the reply with a thought.
The interface offered a narrow channel separate from the panels he had used all morning, and he sent back, [Serious: Yes.
Do not make me trip].
Vayra’s mouth twitched before she smothered it.
[Vayra: So this works.
I was not sure if friend messaging needed distance or privacy.] [Serious: Apparently not.
Still feels rude while walking beside someone.] [Vayra: Better than saying the wrong thing in front of Pell.] Serious looked at the miner’s back before answering.
Pell was muttering to Tollen about his father, the lamp, and several future punishments that sounded physically unlikely but emotionally necessary.
[Serious: Agreed.
No player words around him.] [Vayra: I noticed.
You said local before.
Not the other word.] [Serious: They are people.
That seems worth remembering.] The message left him feeling more exposed than he expected.
The road gave him no place to hide from his own words, and the silence in the private channel felt too clean, too empty, while Vayra walked beside him with her shield close and her injured arm tucked tight against her ribs.
[Vayra: Most players do not talk like that this early.] Serious read the message twice before replying, because the old reflex rose in him, defensive and sharp.
Anything that made him different had always carried risk, even here, and perhaps especially here.
[Serious: Most players probably did not spend a month being taught by Bran Hale.] [Vayra: That sounds like a warning.] [Serious: It is a recommendation.] Vayra’s steps changed for half a moment.
He thought she might be laughing silently, but then Tollen stumbled, Pell swore, and the road demanded all of them back into the wet present.
They reached the lower fields with daylight thinning behind the cloud cover.
Briarvale did not appear all at once; it emerged by degrees through rain and smoke, first as hedges and outbuildings, then as dark roofs, shuttered windows, and the faint orange pulse of Bran’s forge burning ahead of evening.
The outpost saw them before they reached the gate.
A boy on watch rang the grain-store bell three times, too fast and too high, and the sound scattered dogs, voices, and running feet across the wet lanes.
Pell shouted first.
“It’s Tollen.
Alive, but bleeding.
Get Mirel and clear the forge yard.” His voice cracked from strain rather than volume, and that crack did more to frighten the village than any clean warning could have.
Briarvale moved with the practiced shape of people who had survived more than one bad day together.
A woman vanished toward the healer’s house before Pell finished speaking.
Two men came running with a door lifted from its hinges, and Dava drove children back with the same voice she used on stubborn apprentices near hot iron.
Bran stepped out of the forge with his leather apron still tied and a hammer in his hand.
He looked first at Tollen, then at Pell’s neck, then at Vayra’s arm, and finally at Serious’s leg and the warhammer hanging muddy at his side.
His face did not change, but the air around him did.
“Inside yard,” Bran said.
“Not the house.
Mirel will need room.
Nim, bench.
Dava, water.
Pell, breathe before you fall over and make yourself extra work.” Nim moved before he looked ready to move.
Dava was already calling for kettles, cloth, and salt, her hands busy clearing a workbench with brisk, angry care.
Serious tried to help and discovered that the yard tilted if he turned too quickly.
“Sit,” Bran said without raising his voice.
“I can-” “Sit before I make the lesson memorable,” Bran said, and the sentence was soft enough that Serious obeyed faster than if it had been shouted.
He lowered himself onto the bench and felt the wound answer with a hot pulse that turned the rain-grey world white at the edges.
Mirel arrived with her satchel, her sleeves rolled, and no patience for anyone’s dignity.
“Tollen first,” she said, and no one argued.
Pell tried to explain everything at once while she cut away the ruined trouser leg, until she pointed one bloody finger at him without looking up.
“You can be useful after I decide he is not dying,” she said.
Pell stopped talking.
His silence scared Serious more than the curses had, because it made the yard suddenly too aware of Tollen’s breathing.
Mirel worked fast.
She cleaned the leg, sniffed the wound, swore at the smell, and ordered boiled water, salt, needle, thread, clean cloth, honey, and three people to stop hovering unless they intended to grow extra hands.
Tollen screamed once when she probed deeper than he expected, and Pell flinched as if the sound had cut him.
Dava stepped between Nim and the sight without slowing her own work.
“Coal in.
Bellows checked.
Then fetch the old shutter boards,” she said, giving him tasks because fear with nowhere to go would only curdle.
Nim swallowed, nodded too hard, and ran.
Vayra stayed near the outer wall, holding cloth to her arm and watching the pattern of work with sharp attention.
Serious wondered if she had ever seen a village move like this before, not as scenery or quest support, but as a community whose emergency had a practiced shape.
Mirel reached Serious after Tollen stopped shaking.
She did not ask permission before cutting away the torn section of his trouser leg and loosening the lower straps of Bran’s armour.
“Goblin blade?” she asked, bending closer.
Her fingers were cold and steady against skin that felt too hot.
“Yes,” Serious said, and looked away when the wound opened under her inspection.
The sight of his own blood was somehow more humiliating than the pain.
“Filthy little knife.” Mirel poured warmed water over the cut with no interest in whether he was ready.
“Lucky it skated instead of bit deep, unless you earned that luck by moving at the right time.” “Mostly panic,” Serious said, curling his fingers around the edge of the bench until the wood pressed hard beneath his nails.
“Some training, but mostly panic.” “Panic that moves the right direction is sometimes called sense afterward,” Mirel said, cleaning the wound with a cloth that felt far rougher than any cloth should.
“Do not let anyone call it courage until it has healed.” Bran stood nearby, cleaning the warhammer head with slow, controlled strokes.
He said nothing, but Serious could feel every movement of the cloth against iron as if it were happening to his own skin.
Dava crouched beside him a moment later with a steaming cup that smelled bitter, green, and medicinal.
“Drink,” she said, holding it close enough that refusing would require more strength than accepting.
“What is it?” Serious asked, though he took the cup because Dava’s face suggested the answer would not change the instruction.
“Something Mirel makes when boys come back with holes,” Dava said, glancing at his leg with a softness she did not let reach her voice.
“It tastes worse if you ask questions.” Serious drank, and it did taste worse than questions.
The heat steadied his stomach after the first awful swallow, or perhaps his body only chose that moment to remember it had survived and wanted to continue doing so.
Nim hovered near the door until Bran looked at him.
“Get more coal in and stop standing there like fear pays rent,” the smith said, and Nim jolted into action.
He grabbed the coal bucket too quickly, spilled half a shovel’s worth near the wall, cursed under his breath, and fixed it before anyone could comment.
Serious watched him work because looking at Nim was easier than looking at Tollen.
The younger boy’s nervous energy made the forge feel less like a sickroom and more like a place that might survive the evening.
Vayra came to the bench once Mirel finished binding Serious’s thigh.
The healer had wrapped it tight, smeared something beneath the cloth that tingled unpleasantly, and informed him he would either rest or be sat on by three people older and meaner than him.
“You look less dead,” Vayra said, placing herself where her body blocked part of the yard from his view.
The position looked accidental, but it spared him Tollen’s bloodied bandage and Pell’s haunted face.
“I have been given tea that makes death seem less hostile,” Serious said, holding the cup with both hands because his fingers still shook when he forgot to command them.
“How is your arm?” “Cut, not torn.” Vayra lifted the bandage enough for him to see that Mirel had replaced her field wrapping with something cleaner.
“Mirel said if I move it stupidly, she will sew my sleeve to my ribs.” “She seems capable of that,” Serious said, glancing toward the healer, who was threatening Tollen with a spoon for trying to apologise while she worked.
“Possibly from across the yard.” Vayra’s gaze softened.
“Your village is efficient,” she said, and the word village came carefully, as if she knew it mattered.
“I expected questions first.” “They know what bleeding means,” Serious said, and after speaking he realised the answer was not something Sirius Smith would have understood a month ago.
He had lived among people before, but not like this.
The friend channel chimed again while Vayra watched Dava organise the yard.
[Vayra: They care about you.] [Serious: They care about the mine, the ore, Bran’s apprentice, and the person who came back bleeding in borrowed armour.] [Vayra: That was not a correction.] Serious closed the message window without answering because he did not know what to do with the accuracy of it.
Bran finished cleaning the warhammer and set it across the bench beside Serious, not in his hands, but close enough to be seen.
The iron head was clean now, the dark smear gone, but the weapon looked different anyway.
Use had changed it, or use had changed him, which felt more likely and far less comfortable.
“Report,” Bran said, pulling a low stool closer with his boot.
He sat opposite Serious while the forge fire snapped behind him, turning one side of his face bronze and the other shadowed.
“Now?” Dava asked, giving Bran the kind of look that had already decided he was wrong but might allow him to explain the degree.
“Now while it is fresh,” Bran said, though his eyes stayed on Serious.
“He can stop if he starts falling over.” “I am right here,” Serious said.
The protest came out weaker than intended, so he straightened until the wound reminded him that dignity had a cost.
Report had been the purpose from the start.
Bran nodded as if that mattered.
“Then tell it straight.
Not brave, not pretty, just what was there.” Serious began with the shifted brace because Bran had taught him to start with what could be seen before what could be guessed.
He described the footprints, the drag marks, the stink, and the lamp frame that had rolled out of the dark.
Pell added Tollen’s name when Serious reached the groan.
Vayra corrected the number of goblin voices near the bend, and Serious accepted the correction because she had been closer to the sound.
Together, the three of them put the tunnel back into the yard one ugly detail at a time.
He described the first fight with as little decoration as he could manage.
The tunnel had been narrow, the hammer too long until he shortened his grip, the goblins small but not stupid.
One had waited above the support beam, two had worked near the passage, and the storage chamber had been searched rather than merely wrecked.
Bran’s face changed at that.
“Tools missing how?” “Pick head gone from the handle,” Serious said, closing his eyes briefly to see the room again.
“Wedges gone.
Rope cut into lengths.
Barrels opened and sorted through.
Not just smashed.” Pell swore softly.
“I saw that too.
Didn’t think on it proper with Tollen bleeding under the shelf.” He looked toward the forge doorway as if the mine lay just beyond it.
“You thought enough to get him out,” Dava said, speaking without looking up from wringing bloody water out of cloth.
The sentence landed quietly but firmly, giving Pell no room to argue with it in public.
Serious continued, and when he reached the old water crack, the forge seemed to shrink around the listening people.
Bran looked at Pell, Pell looked at the floor, and Mirel looked up from Tollen’s leg with a needle held still between her fingers.
“That fault was blocked,” Pell said, dragging both hands over his face after he spoke.
“My father was on that crew, and his father before him marked the seam.
We packed stone, wedge-braced the old flow, and sealed the lower run because water made supports rot faster than coin could replace them.” “Could goblins open it?” Serious asked.
He kept his voice careful because the question mattered more than whether it made him sound ignorant.
“Not from our side without knowing where to dig,” Pell said, eyes gone distant with remembered tunnels.
“From below, maybe, if something widened the crack first.
Or if they found another way into the fault and worked upward.” “Something moved deeper,” Vayra said, resting her bandaged arm against her side as everyone looked toward her.
“Large enough that the supports shook.
I felt it through the floor before the dust came down.” No one dismissed her, and that mattered.
Serious saw the way Bran weighed her words as evidence rather than stranger’s panic.
Bran looked at Serious again.
“You saw it?” he asked, and his fingers finally moved, rubbing forge grit against forge callus.
It was the smallest sign of unease Serious had seen from him.
“No.
Only heard and felt it.” Serious made himself keep the answer plain.
“Every part of that place felt wrong once the deeper sound started, and leaving was the only sensible answer.” The answer was true without mentioning the panel only he had seen.
Serious felt Vayra glance at him, and kept his eyes on Bran because the village needed a report, not a glimpse of the invisible layer sitting over his sight.
Bran’s eyes narrowed in measurement rather than suspicion.
“And you listened.” “Vayra said to leave,” Serious admitted, because taking sole credit would have felt like theft.
“I agreed very quickly.” Vayra did not smile, but her shoulders loosened a fraction.
Mirel tied off the last of Tollen’s dressing and sat back on her heels.
“Then we have goblins in the lower mouth, tools in goblin hands, a sealed fault open, and something bigger below,” Mirel said, wiping her knife clean before anyone could pretend the list sounded manageable.
“Hallis must send men now.” “Hallis must do many things,” Bran said, looking toward the rain beyond the forge door.
“Whether he does them before the mine eats another fool is a different argument.” Pell stood too fast and swayed.
“I’ll go.
I’ll take Tollen’s father’s mark and the lamp frame.
Hallis’s guard can’t call it miner’s nerves if I put proof on his table.” “You’ll sit until Mirel is done with your neck,” Dava said, cutting through his anger.
“Then you’ll go with two men and not before, because the road does not need another body tripping over pride.” Pell opened his mouth, looked at Mirel, then closed it again.
That was probably wise.
The adults divided the problem into tasks.
Runners to Hallis, watch doubled at the hedge, no children near the mine road, ore counted, coal counted, spare spearheads checked, old shutters reinforced, and someone to tell Tollen’s father only after Mirel decided whether the leg would keep.
No one asked what level the goblins were.
They had their own words for danger, proof, work, wounds, debts, and delay.
A notification opened quietly while the village spoke around him: [Quest Progress Reported: The Cost of Iron], [Confirmed Threat: Goblin occupation of Briarvale Lower Drift], [Recovered Survivor: Tollen], [Discovered Entry Path: Old Water Crack], [Warning Delivered: Unknown deeper threat], [Local Trust Increased: Briarvale], [New Objective Available: Await recovery and further instruction], [Condition Note: Wounded – strenuous movement not recommended].
Serious read the last line with growing irritation and kept his face still enough that no one local could ask what he was seeing.
Bran saw the stiffness anyway and guessed the useful part.
“No mine road tomorrow,” the smith said, picking up the cleaned warhammer and setting it on the wall pegs where it belonged.
“No training yard either.” “I can still work,” Serious said, and the words came too quickly.
The thought of being useless while the mine remained open had more bite than the wound.
“You can pump bellows seated if Dava lets you.
You can sort rivets.
You can write down every measurement and stupid thought from that mine before fear edits it.” Bran turned from the wall and fixed Serious with the look he used before lessons that bruised more than hands.
“Write down?” Serious asked, looking toward Dava, then Nim, then the forge shelves, because writing had become complicated in Mordrea in ways he still did not fully understand.
“Marks, sketches, whatever your head uses when it stares too long at broken things,” Bran said.
“You noticed the brace post on the road this morning and again coming back.
Don’t look surprised, boy.
Your eyes stop walking before your feet do.” Dava’s expression shifted toward something that was almost amusement.
Serious looked at the floor because being understood by Bran was often more uncomfortable than being scolded by him.
“The brace is failing at the join,” Serious said.
The thought he had pushed aside returned with the smell of rain and split wood.
“The iron bands help, but water works under them, and the nails only hold where the wood has not already started to loosen.” Bran grunted.
“That can wait,” he said, though his eyes sharpened in a way that told Serious the problem had not been dismissed.
“The difference between waiting and forgetting is whether you write it down.” Serious nodded slowly.
That, at least, he could do.
Vayra pushed away from the wall.
“I need to take the ironcaps to the road camp,” she said, touching the pouch at her belt with two fingers.
“The apothecary should know not to send gatherers near the drift, and he may have supplies useful for goblin cuts.” “You’re not walking alone with that arm before dark,” Dava said, and the sentence struck Vayra with the same authority that had already defeated three local men.
“You can go with Pell’s runners or sleep under a roof and go at first light.” Vayra looked genuinely startled before rebuilding her face around caution.
“I can pay for a bed.
I do not want to take what is needed here.” Dava looked at the blood on Vayra’s sleeve, the mud on her boots, and the pouch of ironcaps gathered from a room where a bound miner had nearly died.
“You helped bring Tollen back.
Tonight that pays for floor space and stew, unless you plan to insult my roof.” Vayra blinked once.
“No,” she said, lowering her eyes with careful respect.
“Thank you.” Nim, carrying coal again after clearly deciding work was safer than emotion, leaned toward Serious as he passed.
“She talks like you did when you first came,” he muttered, keeping the words low enough to be almost private.
“All careful, like every sentence has thorns.” Serious looked at Vayra, then at Nim, who had said something painfully accurate and was pretending he had not.
“I still talk like that,” Serious said, taking another bitter drink because the cup gave him something to do with his hands.
“I just know where some of the thorns are now.” Nim considered that as if deciding whether it could be turned into a joke.
His face shifted, then settled into something more serious than his name deserved.
“You killed goblins,” Nim said, looking at the cleaned warhammer on the pegs.
“Did it feel like being a real warrior?” The forge seemed to quiet around the question, though no one else had stopped moving.
Serious could have answered like a player and talked about experience, handling increases, unlocked combat application, or the way the System named the dead after they stopped being dangerous.
He looked at Nim’s face instead.
“No,” Serious said, and did not let the word stand alone.
“It felt like being alive cost someone else something, and I do not know what to do with that yet.” Nim’s mouth opened, then closed.
Bran looked away first.
Dava took the empty cup from Serious’s hands and replaced it with bread.
“Eat,” she said, pressing it into his palm with enough force to make refusal impractical.
“Fear lies worse after blood loss.” Serious ate because Dava had said to, because the bread was warm, and because his body had chosen that moment to remember it had been moving since dawn.
The first bite sat strangely in his mouth, too ordinary after the mine, but hunger made a quiet argument and won.
Evening settled over Briarvale while the forge kept working.
The runners left for Hallis with Pell between them despite Mirel’s insults, carrying the bent lamp frame wrapped in cloth and enough sworn testimony to make delay look like cowardice.
Tollen slept under a blanket near the forge wall because moving him farther would do more harm than good, and Aunt Mirel sat beside him with her satchel open and a knife across her knees as if daring infection to show itself.
Vayra accepted stew from Dava with both hands and ate near the wall, watchful but less guarded with each spoonful.
She spoke little aloud, but the friend channel chimed once while Serious sat with a wax tablet balanced on his knee and tried to sketch the storage chamber from memory.
[Vayra: Your people are strange.] Serious looked across the forge yard while the message hovered.
Dava was scolding Nim for hovering, Bran was heating an iron strap that probably did not need work tonight, and two farmers were arguing quietly over who would take second watch at the hedge.
[Serious: They are not my people.] He hesitated before sending it.
The lie was not clean enough to be comfortable, but the truth was not shaped enough to hold.
[Vayra: That was not a correction either.] Serious pressed the stylus too hard into the wax.
The line meant to show the old water crack gouged deep, and he had to smooth it flat with his thumb and try again.
[Serious: Are you staying?] Across the yard, Vayra stirred her stew as if the message had not reached her.
[Vayra: Tonight, because your Dava made it sound like leaving would start a boss fight.] Serious nearly smiled, but he turned it into a cough before Nim noticed.
[Vayra: After that, I do not know.
The mine is more than a gathering quest now.] Her eyes moved toward the road beyond the forge yard, where rain and dusk had made the hedges look like a wall.
Serious looked at the warhammer on the pegs, clean iron and plain ash haft, no decoration except use.
[Serious: Not tomorrow.] [Vayra: That is not a denial.] He let the message remain unanswered and looked down at the sketch again, tracing the storage chamber, the missing tools, the water crack, the brace, and the shape of the support beam where the third goblin had waited above them.
Bran was right.
Fear would edit what memory left unworked.
Serious wrote until the wax filled with marks.
By the time the forge fire burned lower and the rain softened to mist, he had drawn the lower drift badly three times and better once.
He listed missing tools, goblin positions, sound direction, injury points, and the way the heavier movement had shaken the beams.
At the bottom, where no one else would know what it meant unless he explained it, he wrote one more line: Physical joins fail before magical reinforcement can save them.
He stared at the sentence for a long time.
It was not an invention, and it was not even an answer, but it was a problem with edges.
After the day he had survived, Serious understood that problems with edges could cut people if left alone long enough, so he kept his thumb near the line as if it might move if he stopped holding it there.
Bran came to stand behind him without speaking.
Serious knew he was there from the heat-shadow, the smell of forge smoke, and the way Nim suddenly found somewhere else to look.
“Good,” Bran said at last, and the single word landed heavier than praise.
He reached past Serious, tapped the sketch where the storage passage met the bend, then tapped the note about the brace post.
“You see two troubles?” Bran asked, and after speaking he waited with the patience of a man who knew the answer mattered more if Serious found it himself.
The forge fire popped behind him, throwing brief orange light across the wax.
“The mine,” Serious said, touching the old water crack with the stylus tip.
“And the way we build against force.” Bran grunted.
“That is one trouble wearing two coats,” he said, and the old smith’s eyes moved toward the dark road beyond the yard.
“Heal enough to stand.
Then we work out what kind of coat it needs.” Serious looked at the sketch, the cleaned hammer, the wounded miner sleeping by the wall, and Vayra’s silent outline near the door.
The Lower Drift had not been cleared, Hallis had not answered, the old water crack remained open, and something moved below it.
But the mine had sent back more than fear.
It had sent back a shape, and Serious picked up the stylus again.
This time, when his hand shook, he kept writing anyway.