Minoc’s mine forge was still warm when I stumbled in, shoulders aching like I’d been wrestling trolls instead of rock. The air smelled of old coal and scorched iron, and the anvil—bless that pitted, faithful thing—was slick with soot from the last poor sod who tried to shape cold steel without heating it proper. I dropped my pickaxe by the door, the clatter too loud in the quiet. Outside, the wind howled between the cliffs like it had a grudge, but in here, it was just me and the ghosts of a hundred smiths who came in just as beat, just as loaded down. I counted nearly fifty ingots in my pack—forty-nine, actually, if you care for precision—and each one had clawed its way out of the stone, bite by stubborn bite.
One ore, though… that last one nearly broke me. I swung the pick just as the rock shifted beneath my boot. The metal glanced sideways, sparked hard against the wall, and my wrist twisted with it. Felt like the bones screamed. I stood there, breathing through it, staring at the tiny trickle of blood where a shard of stone had nicked my thumb. The taste of copper in my mouth, maybe from grit, maybe from biting my cheek. Nine times in the last hour the pick had met empty air or cursed rock that wouldn’t yield, but that last failure—the one that made my arm go dead—was the one that stuck. I leaned my forehead against the cool stone wall and just breathed. Felt the weight of every ingot, every swing, every damn near miss.
But then I lit the forge. Coals glowed back to life with a whisper, then a roar. The heat climbed up my arms as I fed the fire, watched the ingots blush red, then orange. I didn’t make anything fine—just a simple hatchet head, rough but honest. Still felt good to shape something, to pull order from the raw. Makes you remember why you swing the pick in the first place.
Come morning, I’ll haul this lot to the blacksmith near the stables. He knows my work. Might even smile this time. And after? Back to the deep tunnels. There’s more in the stone. I can feel it.
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