A Blade of Black Glass

They left the four corrupt watchmen trussed shoulder to heel in hemp rope behind the altar, gathered their packs—reeking of damp wool, spilled lamp oil, and rusted mail—and slipped through the shrine's low rear casement before the bells or the regular patrol could raise an alarm. Grave Hollow lay drowned in evening mist. They kept to the narrow cart ruts between the slag heaps, boots sinking into black coal mud until the timber shacks gave way to the tangled fringe of the eastern woods.

Under the shelter of a dripping ridge of pines, they stopped to draw breath and struck a solitary shuttered lantern. Osric held the shutter cracked barely an inch while Clement turned the stiff, blood-hardened vellum of foreman Darric Voss's expedition journal. The entries grew frantic toward the end. Voss had written of cold drafts moving against the ventilation shafts, men screaming in their sleep from shared nightmares, and miners vanishing between shifts—all ignored by the town mayor, who had signed daily orders compelling the picks deeper into the black vein on pain of gallows and debt.

An icy gust cut beneath the branches, snapping the lantern's flame out in a hiss of hot wick. Pitch darkness fell over the hollow, and with it came the drag of claws through pine needles and a wet, rasping breath directly behind their shoulders.

Halward swung his iron blindly into the void, the heavy blade meeting nothing but whistling air. Padraig murmured a guttural syllable, fingers snapping open to loose a sphere of faerie fire that broke across the dark in cold, lilac brilliance. The pale violet light caught a shadow-stalker mid-crouch, all sinew and oily hide. Before the thing could lunge, Osric found purchase on the rough bark of an overhanging bough, vaulting onto the limb with effortless balance and releasing a heavy canvas sack filled with river ballast directly onto the creature's skull. With a dry crack and a truncated hiss, the beast crumpled into the roots, its flesh collapsing inward and dissolving into a mound of black ash that reeked of bitter ozone.

Padraig prodded the smoking heap with his scabbard until iron struck iron. He reached down and lifted a heavy band of dark iron set with a dull, unpolished amethyst. As soon as the stone cleared the cinders, the damp earth beneath the pine's knotted roots shifted, fine lines tracing themselves through the pine needles like needlework on cloth. Osric held the relit lantern close: the dirt had formed a crude survey diagram pointing across the gully toward a hidden grotto recessed directly beneath the foundational drift of Mine No. 3.

They moved swiftly, skirting the slope until they reached the collapsed timbers of an old haulage cut. Rusted ore rails lay buckled across the wash, pointing into the hillside where a gap in the shale was masked by a rotted canvas flap.

A low, rhythmic cadence drifted from behind the fabric—dozens of voices joined in a guttural chant that vibrated the loose slate underfoot. Halward wedged his shoulder against the rock and hooked two fingers into the torn hemp, drawing the curtain back an inch.

In the torch-lit hollow within, half a dozen hooded figures circled an iron ring set into the floor. In the center, chained flat to the wet limestone, lay Hobb, shivering and hoarse. Above him stood the mayor, his town-wool coat discarded, clutching a dagger carved from gleaming, razor-edged black glass. Before any man outside could draw steel or scream a warning, the mayor raised the blade in both hands and drove it down into the miner's chest.