The descent into the deep roots of Stonewake Citadel began in the late afternoon of Day 141 and stretched through the cold, silent hours of the night into the morning of Day 142.
Kezra Venn carried an unlacquered brass lantern filled with cold-pressed rape-seed oil, leading Paxa Sel and Yseld Arken down the ancient spiral stair that plunged through the mountain’s core. Ahead of them walked two veteran basin miners from Alderfast, broad-shouldered men named Branden and Kael, who carried long iron scaling bars and extra canteens of drinking water. With every flight of stairs, the surface sounds of Stonewake—the shouted commands of patrol sergeants, the clinking of tether chains on supply wagons. The distant rattle of the armourers’ hammers—faded into a dense, stone silence that seemed to press against the ears like deep water.
The air shed its surface scents of woodsmoke, wet wool, and horse dung, taking on the ancient, sharp chill of deep bedrock. It smelled of crushed flint, cold slow leak water, and the faint, bitter metal tang of raw copper veins sleeping in the dark.
At the three-hundred-pace mark, the spiral opened into a narrow landing cut from dense grey limestone. In the wall opposite the stairs sat a low stone niche where a nameless miner from the last generation had been laid to rest beneath an unmortared slab. Carved into the damp rock above the niche was an antique survey-corps benchmark—a circle quartered by two crossed lines—and right beside it, etched into the limestone…
