Descent

The ladder descended into darkness. Heavy darkness.

The wooden frame of the mine entrance sagged inward like broken ribs while two maintenance racks flanked either side of the abyss, holding rusted sledgehammers and timber wedges—tools for shoring up the tunnels.

Drala’s hands found iron rungs slick with condensation, and her body remembered: twelve years old, arms burning, the endless climb up and down and up again until movement became prayer.

Twenty feet down and the smell hit—rock dust copper-sweet like old blood, lamp oil rancid enough to coat her tongue, and ammonia sharp from waste ground into stone over decades.

The air pressure changed. It grew heavier, pressing against her eardrums—the natural mass of the Greymark Range bearing down on the hollow spaces men had carved into its roots.

Her throat closed.

She forced it open.

Twenty-two years since she’d climbed this ladder.

Twenty-two years building a new life as a tracker, dragging murderers back to Gallows Hill, never failing a contract, never going underground. She swore on Tharos that she’d never come back here again.

But a poor farming collective six days north had pooled four silver marks for an eight-year-old child named Enna. Taken three weeks ago by the same man who’d owned Drala once.

Overseer Khor-Baal.

Forty feet down. The darkness pressed closer. Her shoulders tried to hunch inward. She forced them back. She was almost thirty-four. Six feet of scar tissue and controlled violence. She wasn’t that child anymore.

Sixty feet. The ladder ended.

The main chamber opened around her: thirty feet across, hewn from living granite. To her right, three tunnel mouths gaped open like wounds. The ceiling was lost in shadow, but she could hear the drip drip drip of water finding its way through a mile of stone.

Pick-work echoed from the west gallery—rhythmic, mechanical, the heartbeat of mountains being unmade.

Clink. Drag. Clink. Drag.

She knew the sounds. Four years of strike and gather, strike and gather, until the east gallery ceiling came down and crushed eight children. She remembered the sound of the timber snapping—like a god breaking a finger bone—and then the silence. She had crawled out through a gap barely wide enough for her shoulders, dragging herself over bodies whose names she could no longer remember.

Lamplight bobbed in the west gallery tunnel. She moved toward it, keeping to the wall where darkness was thickest, her boots silent on the damp stone.

The gallery opened ahead. A cavernous space, held up by timber that looked too thin for the weight it bore.

Six children worked the seam. Small bodies, small tools, small targets for small rations. Drala watched them for a moment, hidden in the shadow of the tunnel mouth. She saw the way they moved—efficient, minimal gestures to conserve energy. The way their skin was gray with dust, turning them into statues before death took them. The way they didn’t look at each other, because looking meant acknowledging that someone else was suffering. They had no room for anyone else’s pain. Drala remembered it too well.

She scanned the faces. She saw a dark-haired girl moving slower than the others. Her movements were jagged, untrained. She hadn’t learned the rhythm yet. An older boy worked beside her, swinging his pick with a fluidity that spoke of years underground. He was doing extra work, shifting his pile to hers when the guards weren’t looking. Protective. That would be Enna. The boy was just another unknown face in the shadows.

Movement in her peripheral vision. The Overseer emerged from a side passage.

Drala’s breath stopped, and her skin grew clammy.

Twenty-two years older but unchanged: thick through the chest and gut, arms corded with muscle gone soft at the edges. Still heavy with power. His face was pale as a fish, eyes adapted to the gloom. He moved through the gallery like he owned the stone itself, checking work faces, grunting approval or discontent.

He stopped at Enna’s station.

“Slow,” he said. Voice like millstones grinding grain. “Your new friend’s carrying you.”

Not friend. Guardian. The boy—maybe fifteen—kept his head down, kept working. He knew the rules: eye contact was a challenge, and challenges were crushed.

The Overseer raised something: braided leather wrapped around a lead weight. It broke ribs without breaking skin.

Enna closed her eyes. She braced herself, shoulders hunching, waiting for the pain.

Drala moved.

She didn’t run. Running attracted the eye. She flowed. Three long, silent strides into the lamplight. Her hand closed around the Overseer’s wrist just as the muscle tensed for the backswing.

She twisted.

Bone ground against bone. The Overseer grunted, a sharp intake of breath, and tried to pull free. Drala stepped into his space, twisting harder, angling his arm up and back until the shoulder joint popped, threatening to dislocate.

“Drop it,” she said.

The leather weight hit the stone floor with a heavy, wet thud.

The sound shattered the gallery’s rhythm. Every pick stopped. Every child froze. The silence was absolute, heavier than the rock above.

The Overseer’s face went through a series of expressions—pain, shock, rage—and landed on something colder: calculation. He looked at his trapped wrist, then at Drala’s face. He didn’t panic. He had owned this dark world for three decades; he didn’t fear intruders.

“Private mine,” he said through clenched teeth. “You’re trespassing.”

Drala released his wrist and shoved him back. She stepped away, creating distance, her hand drifting toward the blade across her back. “I’m the contract. The collective paid four silver marks for the girl. I’m taking her back.”

The Overseer rubbed his wrist, rotating the joint. His eyes never left her face. He was really looking now, dissecting her. His gaze traced her stance, the way her weight was perfectly balanced, the scars on her arms, the controlled violence in every line of her body.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

The fire in Drala’s spine turned to ice, then to something hotter. A rage so old it made her taste copper.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of my work,” she said.

“No.” He stepped closer, squinting in the dim light. “But I do know the eyes. You move like a soldier.” His head tilted, like a bird inspecting a worm. “But you stand like a slave.”

Silence stretched. The children were watching—pale carvings calcified by terror.

The Overseer’s eyes widened. A grin split his pale face. “The collapse. You were the one from the east gallery collapse. Twenty-some years back. Eight children buried and you crawled out through rubble narrow as a coffin.”

Recognition flooded his face, followed by something uglier: satisfaction. Pride.

“I remember thinking: that one’s got spine,” he said. “So I trained you harder. Figured if you were strong enough to survive that, you’d be valuable. Broke you proper.” His voice dropped to something intimate, almost gentle. “And what did you do? You ran. Wasted my investment on a debt-child.”

“I owe you nothing,” Drala said.

“You owe me a decade of projected labor. Plus interest.” He gestured, a subtle flick of his hand.

Movement in the tunnel mouths. Guards materialized from the shadows. Four of them. Big men, carrying cudgels stained dark with use. They fanned out, blocking any exit.

“Plus the cost of daring to take what’s mine,” the Overseer continued, his voice smooth. “I figure that adds up to another twenty years of work. Sound fair?”

Drala’s hand found her sword hilt. “Last chance. Let me take the girl.”

“Or what? You kill me?” The Overseer laughed, a dry, barking sound.

“I don’t want this to get messy.”

“You’ll hang for it. Murder on registered mine property. The guards here will testify. You think the Magistrate in Gallows Hill cares about a dead slave-master? He cares about output. He cares about the silver tax I pay. He doesn’t give a damn about your contract.”

“Wait.” Enna’s voice, small but clear.

Drala froze.

“Please,” Enna said. She stepped forward, putting herself between Drala and the Overseer. “I’ll work harder. I’ll do more. Just don’t hurt her.”

Drala’s chest cracked open.

Enna stood there with the older boy—both small and scared. They watched her with the hollow, haunting eyes of the abyss. There was no innocence there, only a grim, silent tallying—the frightened instinct of the cornered cur weighing the strength of the new hound against the cruelty of the old master.

There was something else. Drala saw it plain. They were trading themselves for her safety, because they had learned that adults who cared were rarer than daylight in the deeps. They were trying to save her.

Drala had tried to save another child once. The Overseer had beaten them both. The child had died.

“No,” Drala said. She looked at Enna, then at the boy. “Both of you. The tunnel. Run.”

She snapped her head toward the other children. “To the tunnel. Up. Now.”

She moved before anyone could react. She grabbed Enna’s wrist, shoved her toward the single tunnel that connected the gallery to the main chamber. The boy and the others followed.

“Get them!” the Overseer screamed. “Break their legs if you have to!”

Guards surged forward.

Drala drew her sword—steel hissing against leather—and planted herself at the tunnel mouth.

The tunnel was narrow—barely six feet wide, ceiling low enough she could touch it without stretching. The walls wept moisture. The floor sloped slightly upward toward the main chamber. Behind her, small footsteps retreated: Enna and the others running for the ladder.

The first guard came.

He swung his cudgel in the confined space. Nowhere to swing properly. Drala ducked, the wood whistling inches above her head. She drove her blade up under his ribs. He gasped, dropping his weapon, his body wedging in the tunnel mouth.

The second guard tried to climb over his fallen comrade. Drala caught him in the throat. His gurgled scream echoed off the stone, croaking and amplified, bouncing back and forth until the tunnel rang with it. Blood sprayed, hot and metallic, making the floor slick.

The two remaining guards pushed forward, climbing over their own dead, driven by the Overseer’s rage.

Drala backed up. One step. Two. A fighting retreat toward the main chamber. The ceiling scraped her shoulders. The walls were close enough to touch on both sides.

One guard got through—young, fast, desperate. His cudgel caught her ribs. Something cracked—a sharp, hot flare of agony that nearly dropped her. She twisted, biting back a scream, and drove her blade through his gut, shoving him back into the guard behind him.

The Overseer’s voice echoed through the tunnel, distorted by the stone: “Take her alive! She owes me twenty years!”

Drala kept backing up. Ten more feet. Five.

The tunnel opened into the main chamber.

She spun, gasping for air, and ran for the ladder, wincing in pain. Enna and the others were already climbing—thirty feet up, moving steady. The iron structure rang with each frantic step.

Behind her, the last guard spilled from the tunnel mouth like vomit. The Overseer followed, close enough she could hear his ragged breath.

Drala hit the ladder first. Started climbing. Hand over hand, ignoring the fire in her cracked ribs, ignoring the exhaustion screaming in her muscles.

Ten feet up. Fifteen.

A hand closed around her ankle.

The guard had reached the ladder. He yanked down, trying to rip her from the rungs. Her grip held but her body swung out, shoulders wrenching. She looked down. He was steady, one hand still locked on her boot, the other reaching for her belt.

She couldn’t kick free—he had her. Couldn’t climb higher—he was too strong.

She let go with one hand. Drew her sword. Drove it down through his upturned face.

The blade punched through his eye socket. His grip released. He fell, taking the sword with him, the body crashing onto the stone below.

Below, the Overseer tore her sword free of the fallen guard and started up after her, the bloody blade clamped in his teeth.

Twenty feet. Thirty. The ladder rang against stone, iron complaining with every shift of weight.

“You can’t escape!” The Overseer’s voice followed her like smoke. “This is what you are! This is your home! You belong in the dark!”

Drala sucked air and screamed down into the shaft until her throat burned raw. “Children! Anyone! Out! Run! Get out—now!”

Forty feet. She looked down—mistake, vertigo seized her—and saw him twenty feet below, climbing methodically, eyes fixed on her heels.

Above, Enna and the others reached the rim first—small hands vanishing over the edge, scraped knees, then open air swallowing them.

Fifty feet. Drala’s hands found the upper rim. She pulled herself up into the dim light that smelled like wind and pine and freedom.

The children huddled against the mine entrance, staring down into the abyss.

“Run,” Drala gasped, collapsing onto the dirt. “North. Fast as you can.”

They didn’t move. They were paralyzed, watching the Overseer climb.

Drala forced herself up. She turned back to the shaft. To the support timbers framing the entrance—massive oak beams locked against the stone with heavy wooden wedges.

The weight of the mountain rested on those wedges.

She’d learned mason-craft in the deeps. Had to. Your life depended on knowing when ceilings would hold and when they’d kill you. If the wedges held, the mountain held. If they slipped...

Drala snatched a heavy sledgehammer from one of the maintenance racks that sat at the entrance.

The Overseer looked up. Fifteen feet below. He saw the hammer. He saw where she was looking. Understanding flooded his face, wiping away the rage. He pulled the sword from his mouth and screamed, “No—”

He scrambled faster. Up. Lunging for the rim.

Drala stomped his fingers and swung the hammer.

Crack.

The first wedge shattered. The timber groaned, a deep, resonant sound like a cello string snapping. Dust sifted down from the ceiling.

“Stop!” The Overseer screamed, just below the opening. “You’ll kill us all!”

Drala raised the hammer again as the beam shuddered. The sound of wood remembering it was holding back a granite monster.

For one heartbeat, she looked past the Overseer.

She thought of the north tunnel. The sleeping quarters where more children lay curled together for warmth, waiting for a morning that would never come.

She opened her mouth to scream a warning again. But the Overseer was five feet away, his body emerging from the pit. If she waited, he’d pull himself out. He would kill her. He would hunt Enna. He would hunt the children.

She closed her mouth.

She had no choice. She had to end this. Drala closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the dark.

She swung the hammer and knocked the Overseer back into the gaping maw. Then with everything she had left, she swung the hammer again.

The second wedge exploded.

The support beam slipped.

For one perfect moment, silence.

Then the mountain groaned. Bass-note deep, the sound of stone remembering it was older than names, older than the hands that had carved wounds into its flesh.

The Overseer’s scream was nothing against it. An insect sound. Brief and meaningless.

Then the mountain fell.

Stone sliding on stone. Timber splintering like kindling. Darkness becoming absolute. The Overseer’s scream cut off mid-breath. The ladder’s death-rattle lasted five seconds—metal shrieking as bolts tore free, iron twisting, the whole structure folding in on itself like a corpse’s hand.

Then just rumble. Crash. Thunder of the ground reclaiming what it had always owned.

The shaft collapsed. The galleries collapsed. The sleeping quarters. The Overseer’s station. Everything below, everyone below—buried under tons of weight that had waited thirty years to fall.

Dust billowed up from the crater, choking and final.

Drala stood at the rim and watched the mountain erase the wound.

She turned away and found Enna staring at her. The girl’s face was a mask of horror.

“The other children,” Enna whispered. “They were still—”

“I know,” Drala said.

They walked north through the morning gloom of dawn.

Early morning found them three miles from the mine, standing at a ridge overlooking the Greymark Range. Behind them, smoke rose from the collapsed shaft—dust, not fire, but visible for miles. A gray tombstone against the sky.

“Where do we go?” the boy finally asked. It was the first words he’d spoken since the mine, his voice flat and hollowed out by what he had seen.

“What’s you name?”

“I’m Bren.”

“Well, Bren.” She paused to catch her breath. “You and the others go north with Enna. Back to the collective.” Drala looked at him. “They’ll take you all as well.”

“What about you?” Enna asked.

Drala looked down at her own hands. Calloused. Scarred. Steady as stone. Hands that had collapsed a mine and buried dozens in darkness because she couldn’t think of another way to save six.

“I go back to Gallows Hill. Take new contracts.”

“That’s all?” Enna’s voice was small. “You just go back?”

No. Drala wouldn’t go back. Couldn’t. Twenty-two years of gut-twisting dread had been met with the blank stare of a butcher who had forgotten the lamb. But Enna’s plea had breached the inner fortress; now Drala felt everything—the cold wind and the pain in her ribs. The numbness was gone, replaced by the bite of the gale and the heavier iron of the ghosts she would carry to her grave.

“I don’t know,” Drala answered.

They walked. The sun rose behind them, turning the Greymark Range into shadow-layered distance. Smoke still rose from the mine, thin and pale against the sky.

Enna’s hand slipped into hers: small, cold, trembling.

Drala flinched, then held on.

But right now, Drala felt the cracks spreading through her careful control and chose not to seal them.

It hurt.

She held on anyway.