They told stories about the mines of Virelia and none of them were true.
There were no diamonds, no silver veins. Only black rock that screamed when struck, tunnels that swallowed light no fresh air,no escape. Just ash-thick breath and the endless rhythm of pickaxes against stone.
Damaric Vireon had been in the mines, long enough to forget the sky,long enough to learn that silence was a kind of survival.
He moved in rhythm now—not just with the work, but with the beat that thrummed through the mountain.
"Pick up the pace, cave dogs!" barked Overseer Malvek from the rail above. "We've got a quota to burn!"The whip cracked once, twice. A slave next to Damaric flinched and dropped his pick. The boy was no more than sixteen, new, shaking.
Damaric bent, retrieved the pick, and pressed it into the boy's shaking hands.
"Swing," he murmured, low and firm. "Even if it hurts."
The boy's eyes were wide, rimmed red with coal dust and fear.
"They'll beat me if I drop it again," he whispered back, voice cracking. "They say they break fingers."
"They do," Damaric said. "But only if you stop swinging."
The boy swallowed hard, then gave a shaky nod."Work like you mean to live," he said. "But never forget you're not born of stone."
The boy blinked, confused—but the words settled somewhere inside him
Damaric's eyes flicked to the catwalk above. Overseer Malvek narrowed his eyes. "Helping others now, are we?"
Damaric didn't look up.
But his grip on the pick tightened.
He knew the rules: slaves fought for air, not for each other.
But the fire in his blood didn't care for rules. It never had.
That night, after the shift, Damaric lay awake on the stone shelf they called a bed. Around him, the moans of the dying mixed with the coughs of the living. Somewhere far above, thunder rolled, only there were no storms forecast, just the mountain groaning.
And in the dark, a voice stirred.
Aelana.
He didn't know how he knew her name. Only that it came with warmth. With memory. With a pull toward something beyond the stone and chains.
Something calling him.
"Damaric, child of ash... The hour grows near."
He sat up, breath tight, heart pounding.
And in the wall of his cell, something moved.
Not a rat.
A glyph,faint and pulsing, like a coal buried in stone.
He reached for it, and the world trembled.