"The tenth floor wasn't a mine. It was the belly of the earth. Sunlight was an alien concept here."
"Tenth floor. Bring back something useful," Fergaer ordered curtly. He tossed a worn pickaxe my way.
I caught the wooden handle. It was coarse. It carried the scent of dwarven sweat, dried and layered over decades.
I descended.
The darkness wasn't merely the absence of light; it was a physical substance pressing against the skin, heavy and damp. The air was thin, carrying the sharp, stinging stench of primordial metal and sulfur.
Silence. Even the sound of my own breathing felt foreign, like someone else standing right beside my ear.
CLANG.
My pickaxe struck the wall. Sparks flared for a fraction of a second before being swallowed by the pitch black. The vibration traveled from the metal tip, down the wooden shaft, slammed into my palms, and terminated at my shoulders. It hurt. But pain was an indicator of life.
I worked in a mechanical rhythm. Strike. Pull. Strike.
Beneath the dense layer of granite, I found them. Crystal veins. They emitted a dull, clear luminescence—transparent, like frozen water.
I pulled off my glove. Touched the surface.
Cold. Not the bite of ice, but the absolute chill of the void. Neutral.
It reminded me of myself. Was my soul just like these unpolished crystals? Hollow, devoid of an inherent identity, merely absorbing whatever the world decided to throw at me?
As my fingers pressed against the surface, that familiar sensation returned. My body, this insatiable vessel, began to siphon its contents. It felt like gulping raw water when parched. Refreshing, but it did nothing to satisfy the hunger.
I pried it out. A chunk of clear crystal fell into my palm. Within three seconds, its light died. Now, it was just a dead piece of glass.
I tossed the crystal's "corpse" over my shoulder.
Then, my eyes caught an anomaly.
Nestled among the igneous rock, there was a dark seam that refused to reflect the lantern's light. It was a dull black, as if it were absorbing the photons outright.
I struck it. THUD.
The sound was dense. Flat. Lacking any resonance. Its specific gravity had to be at least three times that of steel. Tungsten? Or perhaps this world's equivalent of Adamantite?
Whatever it was, this was a material with an extreme melting point. Perfect.
I began to chisel away at the surrounding stone, driven by a quiet avarice.
SCRAPE.
I froze. My pickaxe hovered in the air, halted mid-swing. That wasn't the sound of fracturing stone. It was the sound of chitin scraping against chitin.