The Steady Stoker

The coal dust clung to your skin like a second layer, gritty and warm after twelve hours beneath the earth. You coughed once, wiping your brow with the back of a hand that left black streaks across your forehead, and stepped from the coal bin into the boiler room's amber gloom.

Then you froze.

The sealed door—the one Silas swore led to nothing but brick and memory—stood ajar. A sliver of darkness, then a woman's silhouette, gaunt and watchful. She moved like a ghost, and for a heartbeat you thought the firelight had conjured her from the soot and your own exhaustion.

But Maren Vance was no ghost. Not anymore.

She crossed the room in three swift strides, her hand closing around yours. Something cold and metal pressed into your palm—a key, heavy and old. Her eyes, pale as winter ash, held yours for one breathless moment.

"Find the ledger in the old chapel," she whispered, her voice raw as smoke. "Before he burns it with everything else."

Then she was gone, swallowed by the dark passage, and the door clicked shut behind her as if it had never opened. The key burned against your palm like a confession.

Silas's footsteps echoed from the stairwell above.