Arthur stood his ground at the mouth of the cavern. The freezing wind whipped at his cloak, but inside his mind, the situation was a simple equation.

  He thought he had leverage, authority, and logic.

  He only needed to present the variables.

  But that was a grave mistake.

  "I am Arthur Ashborn, the son of Lord Roderick Ashborn," he projected, forcing his posture straight and pitching his voice into the deepest, most authoritative register his thirteen-year-old vocal cords could manage. "You are trespassing on sovereign land. However, I recognize your predicament. Surrender this cavern, and you will be permitted to—"

  Thwip. Riiiiip.

  Arthur didn't even see the movement.

  He just felt a sudden, violent tug on his sleeve, followed instantly by a line of white-hot fire tearing across his upper arm.

  The rusted iron bolt hadn't hit square, but it grazed him hard enough to shear through his heavy wool cloak and slice a deep, burning groove into his flesh before shattering against the stone wall behind him.

  For a fraction of a second, his mind registered what just happened. Then, the frail nervous system of a thirteen-year-old boy caught up.

  The shock of the sudden, stinging pain completely bypassed his adult composure.

  He stumbled backward, clutching his bleeding arm.

  Blood began soaking through the shredded wool of his sleeve, warm against the freezing cold.

  He opened his mouth to shout a command, but what tore from his throat wasn't a roar of a noble defiance.

  It was a high, thin, childish yelp.

  What a disgrace.

  For a second, the cavern was dead silent.

  Then, a low chuckle echoed from the shadows.

  It multiplied, spreading through the dark tunnels until the entire mercenary camp was roaring with coarse, mocking laughter.

  Arthur gritted his teeth, his face flushing hot with humiliation. In his head, he was still the brilliant engineer. But to them, he was exactly what he sounded like: a kid who had just been swatted.

  "Gods damn it, Jorek!" the massive mercenary boss barked, stepping forward and backhanding a twitchy, rat-faced man in the shadows.

  The smaller man stumbled, his crossbow lowering.

  The boss shifted back his attention towards Arthur, not an ounce of remorse on his scarred face. He gestured dismissively with his heavy gauntlet.

  "Calm down, boy, it's just a scratch," the boss sneered, his voice dripping with condescension. Take your little scrape and run back to your nursemaid before we decide to keep you for ransom. Now get off our porch."

  A terrifying hiss of steel cut through the laughter.

  Elias moved.

  He didn't shout.

  He didn't threaten.

  He simply stepped in front of Arthur, his longsword clearing its scabbard in a single fluid motion.

  The servant's aura shifted from a disciplined guard to an apex predator unchained.

  "Elias," Arthur gasped, gripping his bleeding arm. He grabbed the hem of the servant's cloak.

  Elias didn't look down. "They drew noble blood, Young Master. They die."

  "No," Arthur hissed, swallowing his pride and forcing his breathing under control.

  He looked up the laughing men, committing their faces to memory.

  Diplomacy was officially dead.

  "Stand down. We are leaving."

  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ? ? ? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Back at the estate, Marcus tightened the linen bandage around Arthur's bicep, pulling it just firmly enough to make the boy wince.

  The High Mage let out a dry, raspy chuckle, shaking his head as he reached for a pair of iron shears to cut the excess cloth.

  "I must admit, it is a fascinating paradox," Marcus mused, his ember-colored eyes entirely devoid of sympathy.

  "You possess the intellect to deconstruct and rewrite the foundational laws of our magic system, yet you possess the profound stupidity to walk up to twenty cornered, starving cutthroats and politely ask them to vacate the premises."

  Arthur didn't respond. He sat perfectly still in the oversized leather chair, staring into the roaring hearth. The humiliation of his childish scream at the cavern was gone, replaced entirely by the cold, detached calculation of an engineer dissecting a structural failure.

  "Diplomacy was an error," Arthur stated flatly. His voice carrying an eerie calm. "I won't make it again. Elias, gather damp pine boughs and wet canvas."

  Elias, standing rigidly by the library door with his arms crossed, frowned. "For what purpose, Young Master?"

  "We are going to choke them," Arthur replied, not looking away from the fire. "If we burn them in an enclosed space and deliberately restrict the flow of air, it will produce a heavy toxic gas. We wait till they are in deep sleep, seal the draft, and let the smoke do the rest."

  Marcus exchanged glances with Elias before affirming with a slight nod.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Hours later, the freezing midnight air bit at Arthur's face as he crouched in the snow outside the upper mine.

  True to his design, the smoldering pile of damp wood at the cavern's mouth produced barely any flame, but it billowed thick, heavy smoke.

  The heavy canvas tarp Elias had stacked over the entrance forced the draft entirely inward, sucking the smoke deep into the tunnels.

  They sat in absolute silence.

  First came a few muffled coughs.

  Then, the chaotic, panicked sound of men trying to scramble to their feet, followed by the unmistakable thuds of armored bodies collapsing helplessly against the stone.

  Elias tore the tarp away, letting the violent winter wind flush the cavern.

  Tying wet cloths over his face, he rushed into the dark, dragging the unconscious mercenaries out into the biting snow one by one.

  The servant dropped the massive mercenary boss onto the frozen mud.

  Without a word.

  He drew his steel dagger, the blade gleaming in the pale moonlight, and stepped over the boss's chest to finish the job.

  "Stopppp!" Arthur commanded, his voice tight.

  Elias paused, the tip of the dagger resting an inch from the man's exposed throat. "They drew noble blood. The penalty is death."

  "Killing them is a waste of resources," Arthur said, forcing his tone to remain steady and pragmatic.

  "We need to drain the lower shafts and move tons of coal in freezing conditions. These men are already acclimated to the cold, and they are expendable. We chain them, and they work for their lives."

  Elias stared at his young master, his veteran eyes searching the boy's face.

  After a long, agonizing moment, he sheathed his dagger. "As you command."

  Arthur turned away, exhaling a shaky breath into his scarf.

  He told himself it was just a matter of resource management.

  He told himself it was the logical choice to accelerate their plan.

  But as he hid his trembling hands inside the cloak, the truth was much simpler.

  He was an engineer from a civilized world, no matter how cold his logic was.

  He simply wasn't ready to become a murderer.

  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ? ? ? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Arthur didn't sleep.

  Or rather, he couldn't sleep.

  The ride back to the estate had been completely silent.

  As they slipped through the side gates to avoid waking the household, Arthur turned to his servant.

  "Take two of the estate guards with you," he whispered, his breath pluming in the dark. "Take the mercenaries down to the underground cellars." He paused, looking down at his trembling hands.

  "And Elias… stop by the carpenter's shed. Bring me blocks of soft pine and a carving kit. Quietly."

  Elias hadn't asked questions this time. He just obeyed.

  For the rest of the night, Arthur sat at his oak desk, his injured arm throbbing beneath its fresh bandages.

  To stop his hands from shaking, he needed them to work.

  He focused entirely on the geometry of the wooden blocks—the draft angles, the filleted corners, and the small details. Letting the repetitive, precise physical labor drown out the memory of the mercenaries choking in the dark.

  By the time the pale morning sun crested the horizon, his desk was covered in wood shavings, and half a dozen perfectly carved wooden patterns sat before him.

  A soft knock at the door broke his trance.

  "Young Master?" It was Layla, his personal maid.

  Arthur quickly threw a blanket over the blood-stained tunic he had discarded earlier and cracked the door open just enough to show his face. "Yes, Layla?"

  "I won't be joining," he said, forcing his voice to sound groggy rather than exhausted. "I'm feeling incredibly tired this morning. Please bring a tray to my room, and let my mother know that I just needed some more rest. I don't want her worrying."

  "Breakfast is being served in the main hall, Young Master," she said softly.

  Layla curtsied, her face softening with sympathy for the frail boy. "Right away, Young Master."

  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ? ? ? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  An hour later, Arthur slipped out through the side door.

  Elias was already waiting in the courtyard, a silent shadow falling into step behind him.

  They walked toward the Ashborn foundries, situated on the far eastern edge of the estate. Built into a rocky incline to funnel the smoke away from the main manor, the stone buildings usually roared with life. Today, they were dead and cold.

  Elias pushed open the heavy iron doors.

  Only Master Smith and a handful of soot-stained apprentices remained, quietly sweeping ash in the dim light.

  Arthur marched straight to the primary anvil and dumped his burlap sack.

  The carved wooden blocks clattered loudly against the iron.

  The apprentices stopped sweeping. Whispers immediately hissed through the cold room.

  "Look at him… the spoiled brat."

  "The city is freezing, and the little lord is playing with blocks."

  "Throwing nonsense at the Master. Has he lost his mind?"

  Smith, a massive man with a beard like steel wool, stared at the wooden shapes and frowned. "Young Master? You should be in the manor. You look half-dead."

  "I need these cast in iron before heading back," Arthur said, his voice unnaturally flat.

  Smith picked up one of the blocks, exchanging a tired look with his apprentices.

  "With all due respect, Young Master. Pouring molten iron into pine will just give you a very expensive campfire. If you want complex, hollow shapes, we have to carve it in wax, encase it in clay, and bake it in a kiln for three days. That's how casting works."

  "What if there was another way?" Arthur mused, rubbing his eyes.

  "Sure. Show us Young Master," Master Smith replied, skepticism evident in his voice.

  Arthur reached into his sack and pulled out a two-part wooden frame—a flask. "Standard dry sand crumbles," he said, his voice gaining a spark of life as the physics took over. "But if you mix the sand with a precise ratio of raw clay and a small amount of water, the moisture binds the silica. It becomes 'Green Sand'. It won't collapse."

  Ignoring the incredulous stares of the apprentices, Arthur pointed to a pile of dirt in the corner. "Bring me clay, water, and your finest floor sand."

  Ten minutes later, the foundry was dead silent.

  Arthur had packed his prepared damp sand over the wooden pattern inside the flask, tamping it down violently.

  He carefully separated the two halves of the frame and pulled the pine pattern out.

  Master Smith leaned in.

  The damp sand hadn't crumbled. It held a razor-sharp negative impression of the stove plate.

  "Pour some iron in it," Arthur commanded.

  The head blacksmith used his thick leather tongs to pull a small, glowing crucible of scrap iron from the sole maintenance hearth.

  He poured the liquid fire into the pouring hole Arthur had carved into the sand.

  Sizzling heat radiated through the freezing room as the metal vanished into the dirt.

  Everyone waited in suffocating silence.

  The apprentices held their breath.

  If the sand had collapsed inside, the iron would just be a jagged, useless lump, and the arrogant young lord would become a laughingstock.

  Master Smith picked up a heavy iron hammer. He looked at Arthur, then down at the smoking, blackened pile of sand on his anvil.

  He raised the hammer high above his head and brought it swinging down.

  The hammer struck.

  The hardened crust of sand shattered with a dull crack, collapsing inward.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then a thin fracture split across the surface of the mold.

  One of the apprentices sucked in a breath.

  "Master… it cracked."

  Master Smith frowned and nudged the broken sand apart with the hammer's head.

  More grains spilled across the anvil.

  Then something dull and metallic caught the firelight.

  The apprentices leaned closer.

  The head blacksmith set the hammer aside and reached into the crumbling mold with his tongs.

  When he lifted the object free, a thin veil of steam rose from its surface as the cold air bit into the hot metal.

  It was a plate.

  Flat.

  Perfectly formed.

  The edges were clean, the shape identical to the wooden prototype.

  The murmuring in the foundry died instantly.

  Master Smith turned the plate slowly in the glow of the hearth, his thick brows knitting together as he examined every inch of it.

  No warping.

  No cracks.

  Just iron.

  Perfect iron.

  One of the apprentices swallowed audibly.

  "That… that's impossible."

  The master blacksmith didn't answer.

  He lowered the plate back onto the anvil with a heavy clang and looked up at Arthur again.

  This time there was no amusement in his eyes.

  Only calculation.

  "…Boy," Smith said slowly, his rough voice suddenly very quiet.

  "Do you have any idea what you've just done?"

  Arthur brushed the remaining sand from his hands and met the man's gaze calmly.

  "Yes," he said.

  Smith turned the plate again in his tongs, his voice quieter now.

  "If this mold can be reused… if the sand holds …"

  He looked around the silent foundry.

  "…we could cast hundreds of these."

  No one spoke.

  Arthur glanced at the dead furnaces, the idle workers, and the pile of scrap iron.

  "We're going to build a lot of stoves," Arthur said calmly.