Chapter 4: The Deeplight Mines

Ironvale was a city built into the side of a mountain, its buildings stacked in tiers like the shelves of a great stone library. It had been a mining hub for centuries, its wealth drawn from veins of precious metal that ran deep into the earth. But the frost had reached here too. The upper tiers were abandoned, their stone facades cracked by ice, their windows dark. The lower levels still functioned, heated by geothermal vents that rose from the mine shafts below. The miners were wary of outsiders but warmer toward Kael when she demonstrated her gift. She heated a frozen water pipe with a touch, and the foreman stared at her hand as though she had performed surgery. He agreed to guide her to the Moonsilver vein in exchange for thawing the mine's primary ventilation shaft, which had been blocked by ice for a week. The Deeplight Mines lived up to their name. Below the first hundred feet, the tunnels were lit by clusters of bioluminescent crystal that grew from the walls like frozen flowers. Their light was pale blue and steady, casting no shadows. The air was warm and mineral-rich, carrying the scent of wet stone and something faintly metallic that Kael recognized as kin to the ember inside her. The Moonsilver vein was three hundred feet down, a seam of brilliant white metal that ran through black granite like a river through a canyon. Tam waited at the entrance while Kael descended with the foreman. She placed her hands on the vein and felt it respond. The metal was cold, impossibly cold, a counterpart to her fire. Extracting it required balance. Too much heat would destroy its properties. Too little would leave it bonded to the rock. She worked slowly, patiently, drawing the Moonsilver free with the precision of a jeweler and the endurance of the blacksmith she was. When she emerged three hours later, her hands shaking and her ember dimmer than before, she carried enough Moonsilver to forge a crown fit for a dying world.