The kiln smelled of dead embers, sulfur, and three hundred years of baked mud.
It rose from the fiery floor of the volcano bowl like the shell of a stone-hard tortoise. A sprawling complex of seven interconnected dome-ovens and low firing galleries. It was built from dense, iron-rich river clay that had been glass-fused into maroon stone. Decades of ash storms had buried the lower stone props in grey drift. But the outer walls remained eight feet thick, impervious to wind and cold.
Inside the central gallery, the air was still and muffled. The sheer thickness of the fired earth acted as a natural dampener, deadening the whining time static that hummed always across the northern waste.
Four hundred refugees were packed into the arched bays where green bricks had once dried. They sat huddled on the dirt floor, shoulder to shoulder. They were wrapped in threadbare blankets and borrowed coats. The weeping had stopped, replaced by the hollow, vacant silence of people who had looked into a golden paradise and were now breathing the dust of a ruined fire.
“Move those carts to the eastern arch,” Lord Ren’s voice rang out, hard and metal as a struck anvil.
The Emperor stood at the intersection of the main firing tunnels, his wolf-pelt mantle dusted with red brick powder. His plate shin guards clicked against the flat stone slabs as he paced the defensive line, his scarred jaw set in a line of total, unmoving resolve.
