An hour before dawn, the frost on the eastern window glass was thicker than a thumb.
Noll Vey gathered his perception into the mortar joints between the cellar wall and the cold foundation flags, feeling the chill bite deep into the lime. Outside, the wind off the northern pass drove sleet against the ruined parapet with the steady rattle of dropped beans. Inside the cellar niche beneath the treasure-lens pane, the air smelled of turned earth, damp wool, and the bitter vinegar Tessa Dene had used to scrub the grease off her pry-bar.
“Shift that corner slab two inches left,” Tessa whispered. She was down on her knees in the dirt, her sleeves rolled past her red elbows, the tip of her iron bar jammed into a seam between two tumbled granite blocks. “Fen, catch the edge before it drops into the ditch. If that falls on your boot, you’ll be prescribing yourself splints until midsummer.”
Fen braced his shoulder against the rough stone, his boots finding purchase against the cellar curb. Together, with a short grunt from Fen and a sharp scrape of iron against shale, they levered the broken masonry away.
Beneath the rubble lay the hatch.
It was not iron, and it was not oak. It was a single slab of pale grey limestone, six feet long by four feet wide, bedded flush into the foundation bedrock. There was no ring-bolt, no keyhole, no slot for a crowbar. Around its perimeter ran a recessed channel three fingers…
