Turns out dwarves take breakfast as seriously as they take rock.
We were served thick bread, slabs of sizzling ham, and a kind of egg I'm pretty sure came from something that once ate people. I nearly lost a tooth biting into it, but Iria nodded solemnly and said, "This is proper protein."
Velis stared into her cup of bitterroot tea like it had betrayed her.
Silas tried to barter his eggs for more ham and ended up getting both taken.
Lyra ignored all of us and forced me to eat my greens.
"Real adventurers have working intestines," she said flatly.
---
After breakfast, we split.
Iria and I were back in the mines. She went ahead with one of the heavy drilling crews while I was assigned to "cart prep"—basically, pushing ore around and not getting in the way.
Silas had vanished before sunrise, muttering something about "scouting the good-for-nothing tunnels." He'd probably turn up in the tavern again.
Velis went to the lower levels, where the oldest support beams were carved with tangled glyphs.
Lyra stayed above, helping the infirmary with a burn case involving molten copper and someone's extremely poor judgment.
The day started like any other.
Which is how you know it wasn't going to stay that way.
Two hours into the shift, I heard it.
A dull echo in the rock. Not the usual pickaxe rhythm. Something deeper. Thicker. Like a heartbeat under layers of stone.
I asked the dwarf next to me if that was normal.
He shrugged. "Rock moans when it's sore. Don't mind it."
I minded it.
Velis didn't come back up for lunch.
When she finally did, she pulled me aside and shoved a slip of charcoal-rubbed parchment into my hands.
The sketch showed a section of the runes she'd found.
"This symbol," she said, tapping one line, "isn't dwarven."
"What is it?"
"Similar to the root glyphs we saw in the elven grove. But... reversed."
"Reversed how?"
"Like someone tried to twist the leyline protections into something else. It's half-stabilizing, half-inviting."
"Inviting *what?*"
She looked me dead in the eye.
"Something that doesn't knock first."
Iria returned late.
She'd stayed past the final bell to help the drill team with a jammed tunnel press.
When she came back, she was smeared with black dust, armor dented, and frowning harder than usual.
"The wall cracked when we hit it," she said. "It bled."
"Excuse me?" Lyra asked.
Iria nodded once. "Not stone-blood. Real blood. The crew sealed the section. Said it was a cursed vein."
Velis stood. "Take me there."
"No," Iria said firmly. "You go back down there without backup, and we may be healing you by mouth."
"Not it," Silas said immediately from the doorway, sipping something that probably wasn't legal.
"You were gone all day," Lyra said.
"I was researching."
"You were drunk."
"Drunkenly researching."
That night, as the forgefires dimmed and the village quieted, it happened.
A deep tremor rolled through the canyon.
Soft at first. Like distant thunder. Then stronger. A few mugs tipped off tables. A lantern chain clinked out of rhythm.
Velis was out of bed instantly. Lyra grabbed her bag. Iria already had her sword in hand.
"It wasn't a quake," Velis said. "The resonance was pulsed. Something moved."
I got to my feet, heart hammering. "Something under the mine?"
"No," she said. "In the mine."
We went to the overseer.
He brushed us off.
"Old tunnels are always cranky," he said. "The deep stone grumbles when it's hungry."
"How deep?" Velis asked.
He paused. "Deeper than we go now. Old veins, sealed long ago. Ritual-masked."
"And you didn't think to tell anyone this when demons have been surfacing across the continent?"
He scowled. "Because they weren't our demons."
Lyra snapped. "Well, they are now."
At midnight, a runner arrived from the east tunnel.
Eyes wide. Covered in cuts.
He collapsed in front of the forgefire and whispered two words before passing out:
> "Eyes... blinked..."
The forge went quiet.
Outside, somewhere in the deep black of the canyon, something exhaled.
And didn't inhale again.