Chapter 27 · Rust and Relic - Chapter 27: Survivors in the White Furnace

"Don't touch it." Liv's hand clamped around my wrist before my fingers reached the black box.

The jammer sat on a stone shelf, half-buried in ash. Clean edges. Military-grade casing. The kind of gear that didn't belong in the Iron Age, same as the relic burning hot against my ribs.

"That's what we came for," I said.

"Look left."

I turned. The chamber opened into a wider space, and the firelight from the corridor behind us caught on metal. Chains. Dozens of them, bolted into the rock face. And at the end of each chain—

"Oh, hell."

People. Fifteen, maybe twenty. Collared. Kneeling. Too still.

"They're breathing," Liv said. Her voice was flat, but her hand was shaking on my arm.

I stepped closer. The nearest one was a woman, maybe mid-thirties, head down, wrists raw from the manacles. Her lips were moving.

"Can you hear me?" I crouched in front of her.

Her head lifted. Eyes open but unfocused, like she was looking through me at something miles away.

"The stone," she whispered. "The stone is dreaming."

"What?"

"They've been here three weeks," Liv said from behind me. She was reading something carved into the wall.