Grimm's Journal — Jun 24

I’ll tell ye, the pickaxe biting into that stone in the East Mine near Minoc—it’s a sound that lives in your bones. Not the clean clink of good iron ore splitting just right, but that dull, stubborn thud when the vein’s played out and you’re just chipping at the world’s patience. I’d been down there near fifty swings deep, sweat stinging my eyes, the torch on the wall flickering like it was losing faith in me too. My arms were lead, pack near bursting with the weight of nearly fifty ingots, each one a little heavier than the last. I could smell the damp stone, the faint sulfur from deeper tunnels, and under it all, the ghost of coal smoke clinging to my tunic from the forge back in town. I kept thinking: one more strike. Just one. And by the gods, it cracked—revealing a pocket of dark, glassy ore that sang when the pick hit it. Felt like the mountain itself exhaled.

I hauled myself out near sunset, boots caked in red dust, only to find Veda the provisioner waving me off before I could even open my pack. “No iron today, Grimm,” she said, not even looking up from her ledger. Like the weight in my pack meant nothing. I stood there, suddenly aware of every ache, every bruise from the tunnel roof brushing my shoulders. I thought of the forge behind the blacksmith’s shop in Minoc, how the coals would be cool by now, how I’d have to wait till morning to work any of this. I wandered toward Saxon’s, then Taima’s—just to feel like I was moving, like I wasn’t just another fool with a pack full of metal no one wanted.

Sat on a bench near the stables, watching the sky bleed orange over the roofs. Fifty ingots. Enough for a decent blade, a suit of armor, a month’s meal if I could just sell them. But the world don’t care about what you carry. It cares about when and where you carry it.

Tomorrow, I’ll wait at first light by the forge. Let the fire wake before I do. And when the town stirs, I’ll be there—hammer in hand, making something they can’t refuse.