Raphael stirred first, his eyes opening slowly as the grey dawn crept across the ruins like a hesitant breath. The fog had thickened in the early morning chill, blanketing everything in an eerie silence. Where trees once stood proud, now skeletal husks loomed, their twisted limbs draped in moss and wire. And beyond them, like a gaping wound in the earth—Cinderdeep.
They had arrived.
It wasn't a city. Not anymore.
From where they crouched on the ridge, Raphael and the boy could see the black basin of the ruin below. A fractured land, sunken and desolate, with broken towers jutting from the ground like jagged teeth. Once, long ago, Cinderdeep had been a proud mining colony, its streets carved beneath stone and iron. But now, it was something else. A place repurposed by cruelty.
It smoldered still—not with fire, but with memory. The bones of old machines littered the outskirts, collapsed into slag and rust. Drones buzzed high above, some twitching and broken, others sweeping in lazy, predatory arcs. The scent was metallic and faintly sour, like old blood on steel.
Charred statues lined the road into the city—burned effigies of those who once lived here, flash-burned into stone by holy fire or worse. Names were still etched into their bases, now barely legible beneath soot and decay. Whispers floated through the fog, rising with the wind. Some mechanical. Some not.
The boy stood beside Raphael, silent, staring down into the ruin.
"So this is it," he said softly. "The House of Ash... it's underneath this?"
Raphael nodded once.
"Yes. And something's still feeding it."
The boy didn't flinch. "Then we kill it."
Raphael's gaze flicked toward the crumbling spires in the distance. His wing flexed, pain flashing through his features. "Not yet. First we find the entrance. Then we burn the Ash Lord's name from the earth."
Together, they crept forward.
---
Getting inside was another matter.
Though crumbling, Cinderdeep's outer perimeter was guarded. Metal gates had been rebuilt from scrap, flanked by guards wearing patchwork armor and breathing through tarnished respirators. Each entrant was searched. Questions were asked. Fees were paid.
Mostly in coin.
Sometimes in blood.
Raphael and the boy watched from behind a collapsed girder as a merchant wagon rolled toward the checkpoint. It was loaded high with scrap, cloth, and crates of questionable contents. Two guards waved it through after brief inspection.
Without thinking, Raphael grabbed the boy by the arm. "Under. Now."
They sprinted silently across the alley, slipping beneath the wagon just as it creaked through the checkpoint. Wheels churned over broken stone as they clung to the frame in the shadows. One wrong move, one noise too loud, and it was over.
Boots stomped past.
A pause. A shout. A metal clang.
Then—movement again.
The wagon trundled forward. No alarms. No shouts.
They had made it inside.
---
Cinderdeep's interior was worse than Raphael had imagined.
The "streets" were little more than trenches between slum towers, each building stitched from refuse—sheet metal, bones, fabric, broken glass. Smoke choked every corner. Vendors with glassy eyes and scorched lips hawked meat of unknown origin. Children with hollow faces scurried like rats through sewer grates. Slaves were everywhere.
Chains glinted in the fog.
There were open auctions in the lower plazas. Men and women bound to poles, bartered for like animals. Their prices called out
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