I reached the Greyvein Mine past noon. The main entrance was a black hole cut into the side of the eastern ridge. The timber framing over the arch sagged, rotting from the damp. Cart tracks cut deep into the frozen mud, ending abruptly at a barricade of splintered wagons. I climbed over the woodwork and stepped inside. The temperature dropped immediately. The air was heavy, stale, stinging the back of my throat with the taste of rust and old stone. I pulled the wrapped torch from my pack, and lit it up with a magical spark. The light hit the walls. Deep gouges in the rockface. Splinters of rusted picks. Ten yards in, the main tunnel ended in a wall of collapsed shale and cracked support beams. Silas was right. The Guild had brought the roof down. I set the torch in an iron bracket on the wall. Took off the waxed cloak. Grabbed the hammer with my right hand and pressed my left palm flat against the fallen stone. Cold. Damp. Dense. I pulled the mana, letting the familiar pressure build in my chest, and pushed it down my arm. I didn't try to break the rock. I turned the wrist, applying the slow press. The stone answered with a low grind. The shale shifted. I molded the collapse, pushing the sharp edges outward, compacting the rubble against the tunnel walls. Dust cascaded from the ceiling. A gap opened near the floor, three feet wide. I picked up the torch and went through. The structure changed past the collapse. The timber beams disappeared. This wasn't the Guild's work anymore — these were the old veins, hacked out by starved men looking for a payday. The floor angled sharply downward. Thirty yards later, my torchlight caught a flicker of movement. I stopped. Ten paces ahead, a shape hunched over a pile of loose coal. It looked like a man, if a man had been stretched on a rack and left in the dark for a year. The skin was grey leather stretched tight over bone. The spine tore through the shirt in jagged humps. One arm ended in a stump fused with a jagged shard of blue quartz. A walker. The thing turned its head. The eyes were milky white, but they tracked the firelight immediately. It opened a jaw that hung loose on broken hinges and let out a sound like two stones grinding together. I dropped the torch. It hit the dirt, casting long, erratic shadows. The walker lunged. It crossed the distance in two erratic, jerking leaps. The quartz-fused stump came down in a sweeping arc. I raised my left hand. "Ken." The blue barrier flared. The quartz hit the shield with a sharp crack. The impact sent a shock of pain up my elbow. The barrier shattered into blue dust. The walker stumbled from the recoil but didn't stop. It lunged again, teeth snapping for my neck. I stepped inside the arc, brought the iron hammer up, and drove it into the walker's kneecap. The joint snapped sideways. The creature collapsed onto its good leg, screeching. I didn't stop moving. I pivoted, brought the hammer down on the back of its skull. The bone caved in. The walker hit the floor and stopped moving. I stood over the twitching body, breathing through my teeth. My arm throbbed where the shield had taken the hit. Sloppy. The Voice in my head hummed, sharp and clear. You let it swing first. What happened to the ruthless bastard from the forest? Gone soft carving rocks? I ignored it. I wiped the hammer grip on my trousers and picked up the torch. Further down the tunnel, another grinding scrape echoed in the dark. Then another. The sound of shifting rocks and dragging feet. The fight had been loud. The magic had been a beacon. From the shadows ahead, three more shapes detached themselves from the walls. One dragged a rusted pickaxe behind it. The other two had the same crystalline growths protruding from their shoulders and forearms. No room to run. The passage was too narrow. I set the torch down again. I needed both hands. "Come on," I muttered. The first one rushed me, swinging the pickaxe wild. I sidestepped, letting the heavy rusted iron bury itself into the dirt floor. I gripped my right hand tight, pulling the mana, focusing the heat into a single point. "Ignis." I thrust my palm forward. The fire bolt snapped across the three feet separating us, punching straight through the walker's chest. Smoke and charred flesh erupted from its back. It crumpled over the pickaxe. The remaining two attacked together. I pushed mana into my left hand, sweeping it across the floor. The stone rippled. I pulled a sharp, jagged spike of rock upward. The creature on the left impaled its foot on it, pitching forward with a shriek. I drove the hammer into its temple before it hit the ground. The last one was on me. The crystal shard on its forearm grazed my shoulder, tearing the leather jacket. I ducked underneath the next swing, drove my shoulder into its chest, and pinned it against the tunnel wall. It thrashed, gnashing its teeth inches from my face. I dropped the hammer. Pushed my bare hand against its throat. Pulled the heat. "Ignis." The bolt blew its throat out. Black blood splattered across the stone. I stepped back, chest heaving. The tunnel was quiet again, save for the crackle of my torch on the ground. I picked it up. Held it high. The passage curved downward, spiraling deeper into the mountain. The crystals embedded in the walls began to shift in color — from pale blue to a dull, sickly violet. The pressure in the air was tangible now, pressing against my eardrums like diving too deep into water. I picked up the hammer. Adjusted my grip. Walked down into the violet glow. * * * The heat was the next thing to change. Mines were supposed to be cold. This deep, the chill should have bitten through my clothes, into the bone. Instead, the air grew thick, suffocating. Sweat trickled down my back. The walls widened into a larger cavern, the ceiling lost in the shadows overhead. Discarded picks and rusted ore carts lay half-buried in the uneven floor. I heard them before I saw them. A dozen shuffling steps. A wet, tearing sound. I pressed my back against an overturned cart and peered over the rusted rim. Five walkers were circling a jagged column of stone in the center of the cavern. They didn't look like the starved wretches in the upper levels. Two of them wore the remains of heavy boiled leather — standard Mercenary Guild issue. The others had thick canvas coats favored by deep-shaft miners. And they were organized. They moved in a loose perimeter, not aimlessly wandering. I reached down, touched the dirt floor, and pulled the mana. A sharp scrape of leather against stone made me turn my head. One of the mercenary walkers had broken off from the group. It was standing ten feet to my right, staring directly at the overturned cart. Its jaw was missing. The lower half of its face was a jagged mass of flesh. It raised its right hand. Pushed its palm toward the ground. "Ershol," it rasped. The word was a wet gurgle, half-drowned in blood and rot. The rock beneath my boots instantly shifted, the stone wrapping around my ankles like a closing jaw. It tightened, pinning my feet to the ground with a sickening crunch of pressure. Magic. A dead man casting spells. Silas had left that part out. The noise brought the rest of them. The other four walkers turned as one and charged. I was stuck. I couldn't dodge. The nearest miner-walker swung a heavy sledgehammer, coming straight for my ribs. I twisted from the waist, throwing up my left arm. "Ken," I gasped. The blue shield flared just as the heavy iron hit. The impact felt like a horse kick to the shoulder. I stayed upright, the shield absorbing the heat but barely the kinetic force. I needed to break the floor. I dropped to one knee, pressed my bare palm against the rock that held my feet, and pulled as much mana as I could safely channel. "Shape Stone." I didn't try for finesse. I thrust my hand upwards. The ground beneath the charging walkers convulsed. A slab of rock the size of a door shot upward at a steep angle, catching them mid-stride. Two of them slammed into the jagged stone, tumbling backward in a tangle of limbs and rusted tools. The same surge cracked the stone holding my ankles, freeing my boots. Nasty-jaw didn't stop. He stepped around the slab, pointing his fingers toward the ground again to recast. I didn't wait. I grabbed my hammer, closed the distance, and swung it like an axe. I hit him in the neck, severing the spine. He collapsed. The others were scrambling over the rock slab. I stepped back, pulled the heat into my palm. Don't throw it. Push it. I shaped the line. Aimed it at the cluster of bodies scrambling over the stone edge. "Ignis." The bolt was thicker this time, burning white-hot. It hit the first walker in the chest and passed straight through, igniting the canvas coat of the second one behind it. They went down screaming a terrible, breathless sound. The last one cleared the slab and leaped at me. I stepped back, let it fall short, and brought the iron hammer down on the crown of its skull. Silence rushed back into the cavern. I leaned on the hammer, gasping for breath. The torch lay on the ground twenty feet away, still burning. Dead men casting spells. Magic trapped in the flesh, running on an endless loop without a soul to direct it. I checked my shoulder. The jacket was ruined, but the bruising from the sledgehammer was superficial. I picked up the torch and kept walking. * * * The tunnel narrowed again, but the air grew hotter. The violet glow became a steady, pulsating light. The passage bent sharply to the left and opened into a natural cavern — not carved, not mined. Raw stone, shaped by water over centuries. The ceiling hung low with dripping stalactites. The floor was uneven granite, cracked and buckled by the pressure of the deep rock. And there, running through the far wall like a dark artery, was the vein. Black crystal. A thick seam of it, cutting diagonally across the raw stone from floor to ceiling. The surface was smooth, glassy, swallowing the torchlight whole. No reflection. No glow. Just a deep, pulling absence of light, as if the rock itself had opened a wound and bled something darker than shadow. The mana rolling off of it was dense enough to taste — metallic, heavy, pressing against my teeth. A man sat on the ground with his back against the vein, legs stretched out, arms resting on his knees. He didn't look like the other walkers. He wore the rusted chainmail and tabard of an Ashford city guard. The tabard was mostly rot, but the man underneath was disturbingly intact. Too pale. The skin stretched tight over his cheekbones was blistered in nasty patches, but thick, dark veins pulsed visibly underneath his jaw. His eyes were milky white, fixed on the dirt between his boots. I stopped ten feet away. Tightened my grip on the hammer. "I remember," the former guard said. His voice didn't gurgle. It didn't scrape like rusted iron. It sounded... warm. Resonant. It hit the air like a heavy blanket, settling comfortably over my shoulders. I didn't move. "You remember what?" "The hunger of the surface," he said softly, raising his head. The dark veins pulsed at his throat. "The constant noise. The orders. The copper coins. The cold." He smiled. A genuine, relaxed smile. "It's so quiet down here. So complete." I stared at him. The air in the cavern felt suddenly soft. The suffocating heat retreated, replaced by a gentle, soothing pressure. "Stay," the guard said, extending a hand covered in broken blisters. "You're tired. I can feel it. The stone feels it. Hide from them. Join the mind of this place. We hear everything together down here." Every instinct in my body screamed to drop the hammer. My muscles loosened. The urge to just sit down on the floor, to lean against the smooth rock and close my eyes, was overwhelming. His words were perfect. They made total, undeniable sense. Why fight? Why go back to Greyve, to the miserable barracks, to the screaming in my head? Because he's rotting meat, you half-wit. The Voice snapped like a whip across my mind. Sharp, ugly, furious. He's using mental magic. Break his skull before you start holding hands. I gritted my teeth. The spell was a physical weight pushing me down. I forced my arms up, fighting my own relaxing muscles. I didn't want to do this. It felt like a crime. It felt wrong. I swung the hammer. The heavy iron arced toward his temple. The guard didn't flinch. His expression shifted instantly from serene comfort to twisting outrage. He caught the iron head of the hammer with one bare, blistered hand. The impact cracked a bone in his wrist, but he didn't even blink. He shoved the hammer back, knocking me off balance. "Inhuman!" he spat, assuming a perfect, drilled combat stance. "You are offered peace, and you choose slaughter! Mindless butcher!" He didn't have a weapon. He stepped into my guard faster than any dead thing had a right to, driving a heavy fist straight into my solar plexus. The wind rushed out of my lungs. I stumbled back, tasting blood. He didn't stop. He moved with the trained precision of the city guard, throwing a calculated cross that caught me in the jaw. Mindless butcher? The Voice laughed inside my head. Show him what a real butcher looks like! I ducked his next hook. Dropped the hammer. Pushed my left hand against the dirt. "Shape Stone." A thick column of rock shot upward, catching him squarely beneath his chin. The impact lifted him off his feet. As he fell backward, I pulled the heat into my right hand. I didn't wait for him to recover. I stepped over him, pinned his chest down with my knee, and pressed my palm directly against his rotting tabard. "Ignis." The fire bolt blew straight through his chest, incinerating his heart and spine and blackening the dirt beneath him. His corpse convulsed once, his milky eyes staring at the ceiling, before going entirely still. The quiet returned. Just the crackle of my torch, burning down to a stub. I rolled off his body, breathless. The soothing pressure in the air was gone, entirely replaced by the choking heat of the cavern. I forced myself onto my knees, clutching my ruined ribs, staring at the black vein cutting through the far wall. I had made it. Then the pain hit. It didn't start in my chest. It started behind my eyes. A molten spike driving through my skull. No, no, not now— The pain swallowed me. The darkness rushed in from the edges of my vision. My head hit the stone floor. And then nothing.

Chapter 26: The Descent