I’ll tell ye, the pickaxe started feelin’ like an old friend by the time I hit the third vein down in the mines near Minoc. Not the friendly kind that buys you a round, mind—more the kind that’s always there, chipped teeth and all, ready to crack your knuckles if you’re not payin’ attention. I’d been at it near all shift, chipping away at the stubborn stone, the clang-clang-clang ringing in my skull like a bad bell. Fifty times that pick struck true—fifty good hits that sent ore skittering across the floor, each one carryin’ that dull, heavy promise of gold and flame. My arms were near gone numb by the time I hauled the last load up to the surface, the sun just peekin’ over the ridge like it didn’t care one whit for my labor.
But it’s not the mining that sticks in my gut—it’s the forge. Back at the smithy just off the main road in Minoc, I stoked the coals till they were white-eyed and angry. That heat, now—that’s a thing a man can feel in his bones. I fed the ore in slow, two chunks at a time, the tongs slick in my grip. On the seventh go, they slipped—clatter—and one bar tumbled into the ash. I cussed loud enough to scare a stray dog outside. Bending down to fish it out, I caught my reflection in the half-polished anvil: soot-streaked, red-eyed, lookin’ like some forgotten wretch from a bard’s sad tale. Nearly fifty ingots in my pack by then, each one weighing a soul or two.
Sold most of ‘em to Yale the tinker later—quiet fella, doesn’t haggle, just nods and hands over coin like it means nothin’. Got seven gold for a single bar, which ain’t much, but it’s more than Ash gave me last week before she vanished mid-transaction like she’d never been there. Ghost in a blue apron, that one.
Come dawn, I’m headin’ back. Not for the gold, not even for the craft—though the ring of steel on steel’s got a song all its own. I go ‘cause the fire remembers me. And maybe… I remember me too, standin’ in its light.
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