The clatter of wooden clogs echoed through the fractured tunnel.
Kaelen Vance strolled out of the inner forge cavern, tying the hemp belt of his faded gray bathrobe. In his left hand, he carried a cooling cup of roasted barley tea. A scrap of parchment marked page one hundred and twelve in the paper pamphlet tucked beneath his arm.
He paused just past the shattered remnants of the ice wall.
The air smelled of boiled brine, scorched iron, and old blood. Crushed chunks of blue glacial frost lay strewn across the basalt floor like broken glassware. Ten feet ahead, High Executioner Vane-Korr stood wheezing, his chest heaving under his shredded leather armor.
Boiling crimson mist hissed from the executioner’s pores, filling the cavern with the foul stench of oxidized copper.
Kaelen did not look at the executioner. Instead, he tilted his head back and inspected the cave ceiling.
A jagged fracture ran across the limestone arch directly above his four-ton iron stele. Powdered stone drifted downward in a lazy white drizzle, dusting the neatly painted letters that read DO NOT DISTURB.
Old Barnaby spent two hours hauling that slab from the tide pool.
