The Reforged king

Chapter 3 : The Mines Collapse

POV : Draven Korr

Torvun did not take me back to the east hall. Instead, he marched me straight to the mining wagons, and I understood then that Vane's summons had only been a way to get me out of that chamber before Vessa said too much.

I was thrown into a wagon with a dozen other slaves, captive for Korrath Vale before the sun had fully risen.

Kade Fenrow sat across from me, saying nothing, though his gaze kept snapping at my hands as if expecting them to glow.

The mines had taken more lives than the war itself. Tunnels dug too fast, supports built too cheap, all so Vane could pull more ore from the ground before his rivals did.

I had pulled cart after cart through those shafts for two years before earning my place in the main house, and I still remember every collapse, every scream swallowed by falling rock.

We got to the pit entrance by mid-morning. Torvun assigned me to the lower tunnel, the deepest and least stable section, the one reserved for punishment work.

I did not need to ask why.

The tunnel was narrow, barely tall enough to stand upright, lit by torches wedged into cracks in the stone.

Mira Thoss’s older brother, a boy named Fennick I had spoken to only a handful of times, worked beside me, swinging his pick with the exhausted rhythm of someone who no longer expected rest.

We were three hours into the shift when the ceiling groaned.

I had heard that sound before. Every miner had, and it was the sound rock made right before it decided it no longer wanted to hold its shape.

Get out, I shouted, but the warning came half a second too late.

The support beam near Fennick cracked, and the ceiling above him began to make way.

I moved before I finished thinking, closing the distance between us faster than my body should have allowed and shoved him hard toward the tunnel mouth as the collapse came down.

Stone struck my shoulder, my back, my skull. Pain exploded through me, sharp and immediate, the kind that should have dropped me flat and left me buried.

Instead, something inside me responded to the pain the way it had answered Torvun’s staff.

Heat surged beneath my skin. My vision sharpened again, that same terrible clarity from the pit, and I felt my arms lift under a slab of rock that should have crushed my spine.

I do not remember deciding to push. I only remember the weight leaving my back and four other trapped miners crawling free through the gap I had created.

By the time the dust settled, six of us had survived a collapse that should have killed all twelve.

Torvun arrived within minutes, drawn by the shouting.

He got me on my knees, blood running from a gash above my eye, surrounded by miners who stared at me the way villagers once stared at soldiers coming from impossible battles.

He did not ask questions in front of them. He simply ordered me dragged out and thrown back into the wagon, alone this time, while the other survivors were left to explain the collapse to the overseers however they saw fit.

I expected punishment for the display. I expected chains or worse.

Instead, when the wagon got to the estate, Vane himself was waiting at the gate, his expression unreadable.

Word travels fast, even from the mines, he said.

I steeled myself for his anger. What I received instead was something colder.

You saved six men today, he said, rounding me slowly. Word of that kind of miracle does not stay quiet, Draven.

My sister will hear of it by nightfall. The other lords will hear of it within the week.

He stopped in front of me, his voice dropped low enough that only I could hear.

Which means I no longer have the luxury of deciding quietly what to do with you.

Before I could reply, a rider came to the gate, dust still clinging to his cloak from a long ride.

He carried Lord Bannerly’s seal, one of Vane's rival Lord's, from the northern hold, and demanded the audience immediately.

Vane's expression shifted from cold calculation to something closer to alarm.

Take him to the cellar, he told Torvun, gesturing at me. Quietly.

No one should know he survived that collapse until I decided what story we are telling.

As Torvun dragged me toward the cellar stairs, I caught one final glimpse of the rider dismounting and the emblem on his cloak, a broken crown circled by thorns, struck something deep in my memory I could not place yet.

It was the same emblem carried by the men who had slaughtered my army at the Sundered Fields.