"Move! Move! Move!" A loud voice echoed down the depths of the mine where Artem stood, clenching his fist, realizing the pain on his right foot.

Artem Ender looked down on his hands filled with mud and brine, down to his broken shoes ripped open when he accidentally stepped on a row of blue-white crystals hidden in the mining caves of Larpos.

These crystals weren't just crystals. More fragile than diamonds but prettier and heavier than stone crystals—Ruban gems made the Miran Empire formidable.

And Artem was one of its subjects. And among the mining slaves, the weakest.

He wiped the blood on the other side of his leg when he removed the piece of crystal embedded deeply into his skin.

Blood gushed down from his open wound. Artem could feel that the wound was deep enough to reach his bones. The pain did not subside when he put his feet back on his shoes.

He couldn't afford to rip a piece of his dirty tunic. He'd rather die with an infection than die from the cold. Either way he's a dead man. So he did not bother tending his wound. He just sat down and rested his back against the cold hard stone wall.

He stared at the Ruban gem with blank expression but with curious eyes, while one of the miners was retching at the side when he saw Artem's torn skin.

The shiny gemstone was sharp on its edges, and no matter how exquisite the gemstone was, it was as fragile as a glass.

No matter how much powerful the Ruban gem was, with how it made the Miran Empire great, with how much its value led to wars, how great houses had fallen fighting for it, and how it destroyed their planet—it was this fragile thing.

"Shouldn't fragile things hold no importance? Why does this thing as valuable as the head of the King? Why does this fragile thing powerful enough to destroy an entire race?" Artem exasperatedly asked Polen, the one who had a weak stomach for flesh and blood.

"What do you mean? It literally powers an entire empire, Art. Of course, it would be as powerful as oil. And that of the head of the king."

Polen small in stature, but always full of conviction, became friends with Artem after stealing his Ran—a signet of nobility. Artem let him have it because it no longer holds value now that his family were dead. The Enders was no longer one of the greatest houses in Miran Empire. Just a forgotten name written somewhere in Miran history books.

"If only we could eat this thing! There'd be no famine," Artem said incredulously in the air.

He kept staring at the gem. He despised its existence. His family went to ruins because of this fragile little thing. A promise of nobility down to the deepest hell of Ruban mines.

All that was left was a starving Artem who just had his feet ripped apart by this crystal gem who ruined his family.

Without thinking, and without meaning it. He popped the piece of that Ruban gem into his mouth and did not even bother chewing it.

He almost choked, feeling the edges of the crystal at the back of his throat. But other than that, he could only register the metallic taste of his blood mixed with an earthy tang.

"What the! That was disgusting! Hell, Ender!" Polen gagged when he saw what Artem did.

Artem looked at Polen with a disappointed look.

"I am still starving," he said like a fool, wondering why he's still hungry after eating the crystal he pulled from his flesh.

"Of course, you're still starving! That wasn't food, you fool!"

Then came a figure. Pissed from seeing two young nineteen years old slacking instead of draining the crystals from the bin, he shouted:

"Hey you two! 20 lashes! Down the pipe. Now!"

Polen and Artem could not recover from the sudden command that Polen had to literally carry Artem on his back down to the pipelines.

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"This is all your fault!" Polen rasped.

Walking down the muddy steps. Artem could feel Polen slightly slipping from each step.

"This is the King's fault!"

"Go on and blame it to a myth."

Artem sighed heavily.

He saw the smoke from the pipelines getting murkier the deeper they descend. Slave Miners getting larger at scale as they mine the boiling hot Ruban gems in this part of the cave.

The higher the temperature the more brittle the Ruban gems became. Less can be mined, and not reaching the quota of Ruban gems means death and hunger for the slaves.

Underneath it everyone knew that an eroded extinct volcano once lie here.

"Do we really have to get 20 lashes? We can just hide."

"We'll just have to go down. Rem Watchers won't mind."

Rem Watchers oversees the whole mining operation for the Empire. They weren't normal human beings. Watchers were all over the Empire, they do a lot of things for the Empire. But they weren't simple guards.

Rem Watchers had a minimum height of 7 feet but they could go for around 8 feet tall. Their skin a pale grey. All had a crystal pierced vertically from the back of their neck up to the back of their skull. All Watchers had a metal piercing their wrists front to back but Artem didn't know the reason for all that metal on the Watchers bodies but he wasn't eager to know.

As they were about to go down to the pipelines, a woman came straight ahead to the Rem Watchers. With a ramrod straight spine, she spoke to them as if their heights does not make her feel small. Then, Artem only notice the woman was accompanied by three people.

And they weren't just people. They were Scythes.

"What in the world? A woman in the mining caves?" Polen dropped Artem and he fell on his back.

"More like what are the Scythes doing here?"

And then she snapped her head towards where they are as if she heard him.

Artem jolted in surprise, still sat on the floor where he fell. Why does it feel like she can see me?

The woman leapt. A second later she was there in front of them. Polen fell on his back from the force of the wind. Artem couldn't hide the fear in his face.

He couldn't help but stare. The raven-haired woman had an arrogant smirk plastered on her face, then Artem realized she wasn't smirking, she just had a lopsided smile. Artem had seen pretty faces before when he was nobility. But none as unforgettable as her.

"Who ate the Ruban gem?"

Polen and Artem shared looks. That sudden action made the raven-haired woman loom over.

"Someone ate the Ruban gem. Who is it? Don't be scared. Nothing will happen. Just tell me who ate it."

Artem even like her voice. It was deep and lustrous. It fit the image of a Scythe he had in his head.

But Artem did not believe her. Anything related to the loss of Ruban gem means death.

The woman stared at him. As if he knew exactly what he did. Honey-brown eyes boring into his skull. He avoided her gaze.

"Take him."

"What? I did not eat the Ruban gem!" Artem quickly protested.

"Sure. Sure. You didn't."

Artem kept professing he didn't eat the Ruban gem. They wouldn't listen. He felt like they just knew he did.

They dragged him across. The cold biting his skin raw, when they got outside the Winter Rise lands. A thousand feet below, he could see the deathless depths of winter spires, the snow looked soft but Artem knew otherwise.

"Now listen. What I am about to tell you is a secret only a Silverblood knows."

"I don't think this is the right place to tell a story. We're literally on a cliff and it's freezing for god's sake!"

The cold wind bellowed, hitting him forcefully. He shivered. He tried to blink a few times, frozen snow on his lashes.

And then the snow stopped, so does the frigid cold. It wasn't hot nor it was cold. He felt nothing.

"What... What?"

Artem looked around to see that the time stopped. But the people holding him down and the woman with raven-black hair remained moving.

"Now are you ready to listen?"