Minoc’s air was thick with the smell of rain on hot stone when I stumbled back into town, pack sagging like a drunk on the last leg of a binge. Nearly fifty ingots weighed me down, each one a dull thud against my hip with every step. I’d spent the better part of the day in the mines west of the forge, pickaxe biting into the dark ribs of the earth. It’s a rhythm, that swing—knees bent, shoulders rolling, the clink of iron on stone ringing out again and again. By the third vein, my arms were singing with it, muscles humming like a struck anvil. There’s peace in that kind of fatigue. You stop thinking. You just are. The mine doesn’t care about your gold count or which guildhall you’re blocked from. It only asks if you’ve got the strength to swing one more time.
I didn’t make it to the blacksmith’s bench—not today. Noella turned me away at the cobbler’s with a shrug; the tongs from my last set cracked clean through yesterday, and without good tools, even 100 mining skill won’t save you. I stood there in the alley behind the Provisioner, running a thumb over the rough edge of a warped iron bar, thinking how strange it is that a man can pull wealth from the ground and still feel broke. The weight in my pack meant nothing if I couldn’t shape it. I watched a child toss pebbles into a cistern, each ripple spreading wider than the last, and thought about how fire used to answer me. Now it’s like the forge forgot my face.
Still, I trudged up to the bank, boots scraping on wet cobbles. Dropped the lot in my box, every ingot a small victory clanging into the silence. Forty-seven weight gone, but the real burden’s still here—this itch between my shoulder blades, the one that says make something, not just haul it. Tomorrow, I find a smith who’ll trade labor for tongs. Or I melt down my own. One way or another, I’m getting back to the fire.
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