The air clings damp against her skin, slick as a second, clammy shirt. It worms its way through seams in her gear, slips beneath her collar, and pools in her lungs. Every breath tastes like iron and old moss—wet, earthy, and somehow making her mouth feel dry.
Only the thunk of her pickaxe breaks the hush. Each strike jars up through the handle, a dull ache blooming in her wrists. Loose stone tumbles down the slope like startled creatures, quick and skittering, their clatter swallowed by the ravine’s depths. And then—silence again. Heavier than before. Like the earth is waiting for her to give up.
The solitude wraps tighter here. Pressing. Suffocating. A slow squeeze behind her ribs. Stone upon stone. Endless. Unforgiving. Always the damn sto—
Her jaw clenches hard enough to pop. She forces her eyes wider. Makes herself look.
Her gaze sweeps the jagged walls, searching. Her breath’s gone shallow, chest tight—trapped between rising frustration and the memory of Grant’s voice, soft but sharp. Patterns. Striations. Veins beneath the surface. Clues, he’d said. Stop fighting the stone. Learn to read it.
She presses her glove to the rock. Callused fingers slide across the gritty surface. The stone bites back, cold and rough through the leather, and the chill spikes up her spine. Her brow tightens.
How does he see it?
How does he peel meaning from this gray, lifeless sameness?
“Ember…”
His voice drifts through memory—light, patient, stubborn. “It’s the little things that matter.”
And there—just there—where the light hits at a stingy slant, she sees it. A whisper of reddish-brown. A sliver of copper, thin and stingy, almost nothing. But it gleams. And in the dull gloom, that’s enough. Enough to shift something inside her.
Her grip tightens. The pick swings again. Chips fly—sharp flecks that sting her arms like tiny wasp bites. The rhythm builds, clumsy but certain. The weight of the moment lifts, just slightly. A small victory. But hers.
As stone cracks and falls, her thoughts drift. Always back to him.
Grant.
His calm had once grated. That quiet steadiness. The way he helped people like it cost him nothing.
She remembers a river stone he’d once shown her—smooth, round, ordinary to her eyes, but not to him. He’d turned it over in his palm, thumb brushing the surface, voice low and soft, like it was something sacred. Like it whispered back.
That image clings now. A stubborn splinter.
The stone, resting in his scarred hands. Solid. Still. Beautiful in a way that made no sense to her.
Her grip slackens. The pick feels heavier. Shoulders sag, just a little.
He sees beauty in things I barely notice.
The thought cuts sharp. Strange. Bitter. Twisting tighter in her chest.
Like everything else these days.
Rounding the bend, Ember slows. Her boots scrape over loose shale—too loud in the silence. Dust puffs up in dry bursts, clinging to her leggings and damp skin. Ahead, the ravine yawns wide, raw and gaping like a fresh wound torn through the earth—unhealed and festering beneath a hard, uncaring sky.
Jagged boulders lie scattered like the bones of some long-dead beast. Shards of rock litter the ground, sharp enough to tear through leather if she steps wrong. To her right, the ravine wall bulges outward where a collapse once split the earth’s skin. Cracks vein the stone—deep, dark, like something is still straining beneath, trying to claw free.
And there—something. A glint.
At first, subtle. Then piercing, as she shifts her angle. Light catches on something buried. Not stone. Something else. A gleam cuts through the gray and brown, sharp and bright—like moonlight drawn from a hidden blade.
She stops cold.
Her breath catches. One hard thud of her heart, then silence inside. Total stillness.
Dust and iron coat her tongue. She swallows. Carefully, she moves forward, each step testing the ground like it might vanish. Loose stones shift beneath her, and every scrape sends a quiet warning up her spine. Her breath comes in short, uneven whispers—half prayer, half muscle memory.
The glint sharpens the closer she gets, until it resolves into a thin thread of silver running through a fractured boulder. Not dull or dead, but bright—alive. Its surface shimmers like liquid, like it might ripple at a glance. It pulses faintly. A quiet rhythm, steady and low, like it’s breathing. Like it’s watching.
Wonder rises, sharp and unwelcome, slipping past walls she thought were solid. Her breath hitches. For a moment—just a moment—it drowns out the weight of her doubt.
Her gloved hand reaches out, trembling. The leather creaks.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
And the ground moves.
A jolt. The earth bucks under her like it wants her gone. Pebbles tumble from above in a soft, whispering hiss that makes her skin crawl.
She stumbles back, breath snatched from her lungs. High overhead, a slab of rock groans. The sound—slow, wet, bone-deep—echoes through the canyon.
Time splinters.
Stone grinds against stone. Her breath rasps in and out. The air itself hums, tense and ready to break.
Fear grabs hold—raw, hot, older than memory.
And then... silence.
The tremor fades. But the hush it leaves is worse—thick and waiting, like the canyon is holding its breath.
Ember doesn’t move. Muscles locked. Heart pounding like it might break through her ribs. She stares—not just at the silver, but at what it’s done. To this place. To her.
The silver gleams back, cold and perfect. Unbothered. Too bright. Her jaw tightens until pain sparks behind her eyes.
The need to claim it burns in her—hot, reckless, stupid.
But fear twists beneath it. Cold, sharp, and real.
Her eyes flick to the cliffs. To the sky.
Where in the hells is Dad?
The silver glints again—sharp, merciless, bright enough to sting her eyes. It calls to her, gleaming like a promise whispered by some greedy god buried in the mountain’s bones. Richer, purer than the dull, crusted ore she’s clawed from dead rock day after day. But beneath the shine, a warning hums low and mean: the groan of shifting stone, the hiss of pebbles scattering like loose teeth from the earth’s jaw.
Ember’s gaze snaps upward. Her pulse skips. A jagged fracture line grins down at her, a cracked smile ready to split wide. The air tastes wrong—thin, dry, laced with dust and powdered stone. The whole ravine feels tight, like it’s holding a breath no one asked it to take.
Her thoughts stumble. One name crashes through the haze.
She sees him—too clearly. Callused hands, cracked at the knuckles, reaching to catch her without hesitation. That mouth, locked in a grim line. Eyes the color of overcast skies, heavy with the mountain’s weight. Always steady. Always watching the ground like it might turn on him. While she charges in—blind, headlong.
Something stirs sharp under her ribs. Not pride. Not shame. Both, maybe. Or something between—sour, electric. It makes her jaw lock tight.
She draws in a shallow breath through her nose. Dust rasps her lungs. Her glove trembles as she reaches out. Just once. Then it steadies, makes contact.
The silver is cold. Too cold. It drinks her warmth like it’s starving, and a shiver creeps up her arm. Heavy. The weight hums in her bones—charged, alive, like it knows her. Like it’s waiting.
Her fingers close around a jagged piece. The edge bites through the glove, pinpricking her palm. It feels alive. Not just rare or strange—but dangerous. This isn’t just another haul. This is a turning point. She doesn’t choose it.
It chooses her.
And still—it feels right.
“Ember!”
The voice cuts through her thoughts like a lash.
Her head jerks up.
His face wavers like heat through glass. Panic twists his features, mouth opening but making no sound for half a second—then again:
“Ember!”
His arms are full of glowing mushrooms—yellow—their colors flickering like caged stars. The glow streaks through dust-choked air. Her pulse spikes hard.
Memory stirs, slow and heavy. Like smoke off wet ash.
“Ember… honey, these are what the System calls Glow Caps.”
His voice, days ago. Calm. Firm. Edged in worry.
“Glow Caps?” she’d snapped, voice brittle with boredom.
Grant had sighed, brushing her hair back with that dumb karate-chop move that always made her scowl.
“Yeah. They glow. That’s the point. Different colors mean different things. I use blue and purple for light. But orange, red, yellow? Warnings. Field markers.”
“Why?” she’d muttered, picking at her boot.
His reply had come cold. Clipped.
“Because those colors usually mean danger. Yellow’s caution. Orange is hazard. Red is deadly.”
“HUH?!”
Another sigh—longer. Laced with something she hadn’t noticed back then.
Fear.
“Yellow’s ‘meh.’ Orange is ‘oops.’ Red is… you’re dead.”
“Oh.”
She’d said it like it meant nothing. But now?
Now she sees them.
Red and orange Glow Caps bloom like open wounds. The ground is bleeding warnings. And she—she had been blind. Stupid. Too slow.
In Dad’s shaking arms, only yellow caps remain. Flickering faint like dying embers. As if he’s already burned through every safer option just to reach her.
The thought forms—sharp and cruel.
Then the ground moves.
A low groan rises. Deep. Final.
Stone lurches sideways beneath her boots—wrong, jarring.
And the world splits open.
Ember falls.
The silver rips from her grip. Rock shatters like bone. A roar chases her down, sealing the opening before she can scream.
Too fast. Too final.
Dust floods the air, smothering the mushroom-glow. Gray swallows everything.
She tumbles. Limbs flailing, weightless. Gravity pulls her like a hook in her chest. Rocks streak past—too close. One grazes her shoulder.
Her heart slams wild against her ribs.
And through the spinning dark, she hears one thing:
Her father’s voice.
Faint. Distant. A ghost swallowed by stone.
“EMBER!”