The cold was a cruel thing in the Low Pits of Drazh-Khar.
It wasn't the kind that numbed, but the kind that bit deep and stayed with you long after the sun rose. Thin rags did little to shield Kael's narrow frame from the early morning wind. His bare feet sank into the damp earth as he stumbled toward the quarry line, the iron collar rattling softly with each step.
Around him, a hundred other slaves moved in silence. No one spoke. No one dared. Eyes were cast down, shoulders hunched—not just against the chill but against the weight of the lash that always waited. Overseer Gorrak stood atop his watchpost, a thick-shouldered brute wrapped in fur and arrogance, his spiked whip hanging at his side like a promise.
Kael was twelve, or so he guessed. He didn't know for certain—birthdays weren't counted in the slave pits. He was small for his age, thinner than the others, his bones too sharp beneath skin too pale. He had no family here, no friends. Just work, pain, and the cold.
And thoughts.
Too many thoughts.
"Pick up the pace, filth!" a guard snarled as Kael paused to adjust the weight of his tool basket. A thick wooden shaft smacked him across the back, sending him sprawling.
He didn't scream. He hadn't screamed in months.
He stood without looking at the guard. Looking was dangerous. Looking for invited attention.
But in his mind, he etched the man's face into memory—crooked teeth, scar over the left brow, a black burn-mark on his neck just under the collar. Details. Details mattered.
Kael got back in line.
The morning labor began with hauling broken rock from the mining shafts up to the melt-furnace. The blackrock they dug wasn't ordinary stone. It shimmered faintly when touched by flame, and the overseers called it felshard. A cursed mineral. Rare. Valuable. Dangerous.
Kael didn't care what it was. All he knew was that the shards sliced skin like razors and that anyone who bled too much was left for the scavenger birds beyond the fence.
As he lifted a shard into his basket, he noticed the veins inside it pulsing faintly, like threads of red light. Magic. He knew the word, though he'd never seen a spell cast. Slaves weren't allowed to learn. Magic was power and power belonged to the dominors—those who wore the sigils of the Order, who rode in on crystal-armored beasts and spoke in tongues that bent air and stone.
Still, Kael watched. Always watched.
Every third day, a Dominor came to the pits to inspect the felshard. The others bowed low, trembling. Kael did, too. But his eyes remained open, slitted beneath his lashes, memorizing the strange glyphs carved into the Dominor's staff and remembering the rhythm of his words. The way the felshard glowed brighter when he spoke.
Patterns. Everything had a pattern.
When the sun reached its peak, a shrill horn signaled the short reprieve—ten minutes for water and a handful of dry barley mash. Kael sat on a stone slab, nursing his blistered hands, and scanned the perimeter.
Four guards. Two north, two south. Gorrak on the tower. One hound loose, sniffing the eastern fence.
Twelve paces from the water trough to the edge of the old tool shack.
He wasn't planning to escape. Not yet. But he was preparing. Someday, the cracks in the wall would be wide enough to slip through. Someday, he'd find the space between the breaths of his captors and run before they inhaled again.
But not today.
"Kael," someone whispered.
He looked to his side. A girl—Mira. Older, maybe fifteen. Her face was hollow from hunger, eyes too big for her skull.
"You've been watching them," she said. "The guards. The mages."
Kael said nothing.
"You think you can escape?"
"No," he whispered. Then, after a pause: "Not yet."
Mira blinked. A spark of something passed between them—hope, or maybe the remnants of it. But it faded quickly as the horn blew again.
Back to work.
As they trudged toward the lower shaft, Kael's thoughts returned to the Dominor's chant. He mouthed the syllables silently, shaping them in his mind like clay. The words had power, yes—but more than that, they had structure.
He imagined the glyphs written on the walls of his skull, connected by invisible threads. If he could truly understand them, maybe he wouldn't need to be strong or fast.
Maybe his mind could be his weapon.
Maybe that was his escape.