Chapter 1: The Ash Beneath Our Feet

The mines of Virelia didn’t weep, but they groaned. The metal hulls overhead shifted and creaked like the belly of a dying beast. Day and night blurred together in the dim artificial glow of heatlamps strung between scaffolding and jagged stone. Beneath the surface of Virelia not yet the scorched fireball of cosmic myth, but well on its way life had narrowed to one thing: survival.

Virelia, the second planet from their sun, sat in a scorched orbit between a dead rock and a blue pearl rumored to shimmer in the stars. Its skies were thick with sulfuric haze, its storms violent enough to peel steel. And yet, it clung to life. Here, in the planet’s deepest wounds, the last children of humanity labored where machines failed.

Under layers of rust and stone, The Hollow Wards housed generations of miners. Their homes were stacked cargo shells turned tenement blocks, lining narrow alleys that never saw sunlight. Grime coated everything. Creaking scaffolds ran overhead like veins. Children ran barefoot between food lines and industrial ducts, already scarred from labor they hadn’t been allowed to refuse. There were no schools only work, silence, and maybe, on lucky nights, laughter shared over boiled fungus stew. Street vendors sold recycled broth from dented cans; synthetic meat on wire hooks turned slowly over chemical flame. Between each shift, families collapsed into sleep while the walls hissed with pipe bursts and filtered exhaust.

Adamanite was born in this place. But no one called him that when he first came of age.

They called him Unit 1089. He lived in Block D-4, in a rusted bunk beside two other minors from the same intake. His mother had died giving birth. His father vanished two years later, taken by a patrol after whispering about rebel frequencies.

It was in his 9th year of service at seventeen that he uncovered something glimmering deep in the boreline of Shaft 14. Something different. Something the drills had skipped over.

A dense, crystalline ore that pulsed faintly with a cold inner light: Adamanite.

He had held it up as it hummed softly in his palm. Supervisor-9 had snatched it from his hand and walked away without a word. But the older kids in his sector saw it. The name stuck. "Adamanite." They started calling him Adam for short.

It was more than a name. It was the first thing he’d ever earned.

Adam’s current crew had three other regulars:

Toka: Fifteen, loud, and lethal with sarcasm. Her left hand had only three fingers, a mining accident she often joked about: “One for each of you morons."

Bren: Sixteen, wiry and twitchy, with a knack for wiring things that shouldn’t be wired. He wore goggles even when he slept. "Just in case."

Kael: Twenty-one, quiet and watchful. A protector. Everyone followed Kael. No one questioned why. They just did.

The first shift bell hadn’t rung yet when Toka barged into the bunkhouse.

"Rise and suffer, worms!"

Adam groaned. "It's not even heatcycle yet."

"Exactly. Early birds don’t get eaten by mutant ash-crows. That’s the saying, right?"

Bren sat up. "No. That is absolutely not the saying."

Kael was already lacing his boots.

Adam sat up slowly, his joints aching. He watched Toka toss a ration bar at Bren. The small routines, the shared exhaustion—this was what passed for family.

They left their bunk and joined the procession of bodies in Sector Passage 8. Overhead screens sputtered propaganda from Virela's high council: promises of prosperity, hollow calls for obedience. Beneath them, the children of the Wards kept moving. No one spoke unless they had to.

Their day began with a hike down three sectors to one of the newer veins near the canyon edge. It was hotter than usual. The kind of heat that makes you dizzy before you swing your first pick.

Miners around them wore duct-taped suits and filtered masks. Adam watched a group of smaller kids maybe eight or nine years old struggling to move a slag pile. One collapsed. A handler barked and moved on.

They worked without complaint. Even Toka. The clang of metal echoed through the shaft like distant thunder.

Adam listened to the walls. He could hear it the rumble beneath the rock. Not machines. Not gas lines. Something deeper.

Something alive.

When their cart was full, they returned through Sector 5. A newer rebel mural had been spray-painted on a tunnel wall: a figure standing between two suns, one red, one gold.

"Rebellion's getting sloppy," Kael muttered.

Adam looked longer. Something about the gold sun unsettled him.

They passed a group of wounded miners limping, coughing, eyes dull. A boy younger than Adam offered him a fragment of metal.

"Trade?"

Adam took it. A cracked medallion with the symbol of the old Venusian faith before the Baron erased it.

He nodded. "Trade."

They reached the drop point where armored collectors took their ore.

"Hand it over," barked a guard with mirrored lenses.

Adam hesitated. In his palm was a shard he hadn't reported. Glowing faintly. Like the Adamanite before.

Toka nudged him. "Don’t."

Adam slipped it into his pocket.

The guard stared, but moved on.

That night, the Wards felt colder. The metal walls wept condensation. Families huddled around vent lines for warmth. Someone was singing softly in a forgotten dialect.

In their bunk, Kael called a meeting.

"They’re collapsing shafts," he said. "Not because of cave-ins. Deliberately. They’re sealing something in. Or out."

He laid a cracked datapad on the floor. Schematics. Ancient ones.

"This sector V-Sector is sealed by code Omega. Even the guards won’t go near it."

Bren leaned in. "That's where the Vaults are. Where they say the first miners found her."

"Her who?" Toka asked.

"The thing the Baron wants."

Adam clenched his jaw. The Baron. No one had seen him, but his voice echoed through terminals. Promises of order. Punishments of silence.

Kael looked Adam in the eye. "You can get us into the tunnel. You’ve got the shard."

Toka let out a low whistle. "And here I thought I was gonna die of lung rot. Looks like we’re doing it the flashy way."

Bren grinned. "I’m in."

Adam looked around at them. His crew. His family.

He nodded.

"We go tomorrow."