Kaela watched the lines forming under his hand. "You really think this world can be rebuilt?"
Adrian smiled faintly, eyes on the horizon. "No. I think it can be reborn."
The morning after his arrival in Redhaven, Adrian woke to the sound of hammers and generators.
It was the kind of noise that made his blood move faster — the music of people building.
Kaela met him by the edge of the camp, already wearing her travel gear. "Rurik wants you to see something," she said. "Something we found while mining the western ridge."
"More iron?" Adrian asked.
Kaela's lips pressed into a thin line. "Not exactly. You'll understand when you see it."
They hiked for nearly an hour up the jagged hill path, the wind whipping through the cracks of the cliffs. When they reached the top, Adrian saw the mouth of a collapsed tunnel. The walls shimmered faintly with iron dust and something else — faint lines etched deep into the rock, arranged too precisely to be natural.
Rurik waited near the entrance, torch in hand. "Found this two weeks ago," he said. "Miners broke through the stone and hit metal. Not ore — panels. Solid, smooth, like the old-world ruins."