The climb to the surface took another hour.
An hour of burning legs and screaming ribs. An hour of rusted ladder rungs that threatened to give way beneath his weight. An hour of maintaining the Ash Cloak while his body begged him to stop, to rest, to give up.
Callum climbed anyway.
Shaft six stretched upward like a throat trying to swallow him in reverse. Emergency ladders were bolted to the walls every hundred feet—safety measures that saved exactly no one when the mountain decided it was hungry. The metal was rusted, the bolts loose, but they held. Barely.
Each rung was a small victory against gravity and his own battered body.
"You're slow," Morrigan observed. She floated beside him, unburdened by trivial concerns like physics or pain or the constant threat of falling three hundred feet to a very messy death.
"I'm injured," Callum gasped out between breaths.
"You're Stage One. The Flesh Covenant should have healed most of that by now."
Callum glanced down at his ribs—or rather, at where his ribs were beneath his torn and bloody shirt. They still hurt, but... differently now. Less like broken glass grinding together and more like a deep ache. The grinding sensation was gone. They were knitting themselves back together.
Slowly. Too slowly for comfort, but faster than any mortal could manage.
"How long?" he asked.
"A day, maybe two. Depends on how much you eat." Morrigan's ember eyes gleamed in the sickly yellow light of the glowstones. "And I don't mean bread."
Right. Death cultivation meant consuming death. The five miners he'd already taken had barely made a dent in his hunger—both the physical kind and the stranger, colder hunger that had settled into his bones alongside the death qi.
He'd need more. Stronger remnants. Cultivators, preferably.
The thought should have disgusted him more than it did.
I'm already changing, Callum thought, pulling himself up another rung. Already becoming something else. Something that thinks about consuming people like it's shopping for groceries.
Was that the death cultivation? Or just survival?
Did it matter?
They emerged into the staging area, and Callum's breath caught.
It was a wide cavern carved out of living rock, its ceiling held up by massive support pillars that always looked on the verge of collapse. Dozens of glowstones cast everything in harsh yellow light, making shadows pool in the corners like spilled ink. Usually the space would be packed with miners—hundreds of them, coming off shift or heading down, a constant press of exhausted humanity.
Now it was nearly empty.
A handful of overseers stood near the main tunnel. A few workers moved equipment, their movements mechanical and tired. The collapse must have shut down operations for the day. Too dangerous to keep working. Too many dead to ignore.
Good. Fewer witnesses.
Callum stepped off the ladder and immediately dropped into a crouch behind a pile of equipment crates. His heart hammered against his ribs—the ones that were still healing, still tender. The Ash Cloak wavered, his concentration slipping for just a moment.
Focus, he thought desperately, pulling the death qi back into its disguise. Don't let it slip. Don't let them see.
"Relax," Morrigan said, her voice cutting through his panic. "You look guilty."
"I am guilty," Callum hissed. "I just ate five people."
"You consumed five corpses. There's a difference." She drifted through the crate like it wasn't there—and for her, it wasn't. "And if you don't calm down, someone's going to notice you're radiating death qi like a bonfire."
Callum took a breath. Held it. Let it out slowly.
Calm. I need to be calm. Just another slave. Just another piece of property trying to survive.
His heartbeat steadied. The Ash Cloak settled back into place, wrapping his death qi in the memory of fire and ash. To anyone looking—to any cultivator who might sense his spiritual energy—he'd just seem like a very weak fire cultivator. Barely worth noticing.
Maybe.
He peered around the crates, taking stock of the area. Three exits. The main tunnel to the surface—too visible, too many guards. The supply shaft—possible, but it led deeper into the complex. And the overseer's office, closest to him but surrounded by—
His breath caught.
Overseer Kaelen stood outside the office, talking to another overseer. Laughing about something.
Callum's hands curled into fists hard enough that his fingernails—dark now, almost black—bit into his palms.
Kaelen. Six feet of muscle and casual cruelty, with a scar running from his left eye to his jaw like someone had tried to cut his face off and given up halfway. Stage Two cultivator. Earth element. Strong as an ox and twice as mean.
Fifteen years working the Blackvein Pits. At least a dozen slaves beaten to death in that time. Sometimes for breaking rules. Sometimes for looking at him wrong. Sometimes just because he was bored and they were convenient.
And there he stood. Laughing. Like the mountain hadn't just killed dozens of people. Like it was just another day.
"That him?" Morrigan asked. She looked completely solid to Callum now—as real as anyone else, though he knew that to the rest of the world she was invisible. A ghost only he could see.
"Yeah."
"You want to kill him."
It wasn't a question. Callum could feel his own desire like a physical weight in his chest. Hot and sharp and demanding. The death qi inside him seemed to respond to it, growing colder, more eager.
Yes, something whispered. Not his voice. Not Morrigan's. Something between them. Something hungry. Yes, I want to kill him. I want to watch the life leave his eyes. I want to consume his remnant and make his strength mine.
"Yes," Callum said out loud.
"Can you?"
That was the real question, wasn't it? Could he kill Kaelen? The man was Stage Two. Callum was barely Stage One—freshly cultivated, with almost no experience, his body still healing from nearly dying. In a straight fight, Kaelen would break him like kindling.
In a dirty fight—the only kind Callum knew—Kaelen would still probably break him. Just slower.
The math was simple and brutal: Stage Two versus Stage One. Experience versus desperation. Cultivator versus corpse-eater.
Callum would lose. And losing meant dying. And dying meant Morrigan went back to her prison for another ten thousand years and Kaelen kept laughing and nothing changed.
"No," Callum admitted, and the word tasted like ash and failure. "Not yet."
"Smart." Morrigan's expression was unreadable. "He'd kill you in seconds. Stage Two isn't just stronger—they're faster, tougher, and their spiritual sense would detect you before you got close enough to matter." She paused. "Survive first. Revenge later."
Callum watched Kaelen clap the other overseer on the shoulder. Watched them share some joke he couldn't hear. Watched the man who'd killed so many people just... exist. Unpunished. Unworried.
Later, Callum promised himself. The word felt like a brand burning into his mind. When I'm strong enough. When I'm powerful enough that Stage Two doesn't matter anymore. I'll come back. And I'll make him regret every moment he spent breathing.
"So how do I get stronger?" he asked quietly.
"Find someone you can actually kill. Another Stage One cultivator. Or a lot of mortals." Morrigan gestured toward the staging area with one pale hand. "But not here. Too many witnesses. You need to leave first."
Right. Escape now, revenge later. Survival first, settling accounts second.
Callum turned away from Kaelen—it took more effort than it should have—and headed toward the supply tunnel.
The equipment storage was a long chamber carved into the rock, filled with crates and tools and the accumulated debris of twenty years' mining operations. Usually it would have guards stationed at both ends. But the collapse had pulled everyone to more important duties—rescue operations, body recovery, damage assessment.
The dead could wait. They always could.
Callum moved quickly through the shadows, taking what he needed. A worn cloak—brown, nondescript, large enough to cover his slave clothes and hide the brand on his shoulder. A belt knife that was more rust than blade, but sharp enough to cut if he needed it. A canteen that still had water sloshing inside. Some dried meat that tasted like leather and ash, but food was food.
Then he found the body.
One of the guards. Young—maybe twenty-five, though life in the Wastes made everyone look older than they were. Stage One cultivator, judging by the faint traces of qi still clinging to the corpse. He'd been killed in the collapse, crushed when a support beam fell. No one had moved him yet.
Fresh corpse. Cultivator. Alone.
Perfect.
Callum knelt beside the body, and something in his chest—something that might have been conscience once—twitched. This man had a name. Had a life. Had dreams, probably. Maybe he'd been cruel, maybe kind. Maybe he'd deserved this death, maybe not.
But he was dead now. And Callum was alive. And that was what mattered.
The guilt was quieter this time. Still there—he didn't think it would ever disappear completely—but easier to ignore. Easier to push down beneath the cold, practical need for power.
I'm getting used to this, Callum thought, placing his hands on the dead man's chest. That should terrify me more than it does.
He channeled his death qi into the corpse.
The spiritual remnant was stronger than the mortals he'd consumed. Not by much—Stage One was still barely above mortal level—but enough to feel different. More substantial. More real. The battle of wills was quick, almost perfunctory. The dead guard had no fight left in him, no resistance to offer.
The power flowed into Callum like cold water poured into a cup.
His cultivation base deepened. Not dramatically, but noticeably. His meridians—those shattered, broken channels that had made him worthless his entire life—expanded slightly, accepting more death qi, growing stronger. His flesh grew denser, his bones harder.
Every consumption made him more than he'd been. Every death he took made him stronger.
The memories came with the power, as they always did. The guard's last moments—surprise as the ceiling gave way, pain as the beam crushed his chest, then nothing. Darkness and ending. Before that, fragments of a boring life. Guard duty. Watching slaves work. Dreams of saving enough money to leave the mines and become a mercenary in Ember's Rest. Maybe make something of himself.
Dreams cut short by bad luck and worse timing.
Callum stood up slowly. Looked at his hands—grayer now than before, the skin taking on more of that ashen quality. Looked at the corpse—emptier now, somehow. Less real. Like the act of taking its spiritual remnant had stolen something essential, leaving only meat and bone behind.
His hands were steady.
I'm getting used to this, he thought again. I'm getting good at it.
That should have horrified him.
It didn't.
The main gate was a problem.
Two guards, both Stage Two cultivators. They stood on either side of the massive wooden doors, checking everyone who left. Making sure inventory matched manifests. Making sure slaves stayed where they belonged.
Callum's brand marked him as property. A simple mark burned into his right shoulder blade—a stylized pickaxe over crossed bones. The Blackvein Consortium's mark. Their claim on his body, his labor, his life.
He couldn't just walk out. They'd stop him. Question him. Check the brand. Send him back to the pits or worse.
"Go around," Morrigan suggested, drifting beside him. "The palisade isn't perfect. There'll be gaps."
Callum circled the complex, staying in the shadows, keeping the Ash Cloak pulled tight around his death qi. The wooden palisade rose twenty feet high—designed to keep the Wastes' beasts out, not to keep slaves in. But it served both purposes well enough.
Usually.
At the eastern corner, where a recent lava flow had come too close, the supports were charred and weakened. The heat had warped the wood, cracked it, made it brittle. A gap maybe two feet wide gaped at the base, where the wall didn't quite meet the ground.
Narrow. Tight. But possible.
Callum squeezed through, the rough wood scraping against his shoulders, catching on his stolen cloak. Pain flared where it pressed against his still-healing ribs. He bit back a grunt and pushed harder.
Then he was through.
Out.
Free.
The Blackvein Pits sprawled behind him—a complex of buildings and mineshafts and human misery that had been his entire world for twenty years. Ahead, the Ashen Wastes stretched to the horizon. Volcanic mountains belched smoke into the perpetually gray sky. Rivers of lava glowed red in the distance like veins of molten fury. The ground was black stone and gray ash, lifeless and hostile and utterly indifferent to human suffering.
It was the most beautiful thing Callum had ever seen.
"Now what?" Morrigan asked.
Callum took a breath of the ash-laden air. It burned his throat, tasted like sulfur and distance, but it was the air of freedom. The air of possibility.
"Now I find somewhere safe to cultivate," he said, starting to walk. Each step took him farther from the mines, farther from slavery, farther from the person he'd been. "And I get stronger."
"And then?"
Callum glanced back one last time. At the mines. At the place that had been his prison for twenty years. At Overseer Kaelen, somewhere in there, still alive. Still laughing. Still unpunished.
"Then I come back," Callum said quietly, and there was something cold and final in his voice. "And I settle accounts."
Morrigan's answering smile was sharp as broken glass and twice as dangerous.
"I knew I chose well."