When Ren Vale and Mira emerged from the Abyssal Ladder onto the floor of the First Well. The morning sun was rose over the glass cliffs of the crater. It filled the three-mile tiered arena with brilliant, blazing bright gold.
The scene that greeted them along the sapphire shoreline was a transformation that defied four hundred years of royal history.
The three hundred freed slave-miners and Low-Khorat refugees had not waited idly for their return.
Working through the night under the direction of Lord Ren and the veteran stone-masons, they had established the foundation of a permanent safe hall. Along the eastern terraces of the First Well, seventy canvas shelters had been erected using salvaged sailcloth and juniper poles. Smoke from twenty cook-fires rose straight into the clear, windless air. He carried the fragrant scent of roasted desert beans, boiled salt lentils, and chicory tea.
The news of Mira’s steadying spread through the Free Commune of the Crying Wells like a prairie fire.
Throughout the morning, hundreds of liberated miners and Low-Khorat refugees came down to the edge of the First Well to see the miracle with their own eyes. They stood on the sapphire beach in silent, tearful respect as Mira sat on a flat block of selenite, demonstrating the fluid grace of her crystal-clear fingers, laughing as she let the children touch the cool, polished facets of her smoky quartz palm.
