Chapter 3: Undercurrents
There's still a month until the super sandstorm.
The sky remained azure, the temperature comfortable, and butterflies could even be seen fluttering among the ore waste heaps outside the fortress. No one knew disaster was imminent, no one believed anything could destroy the world.
Except for me.
The renovation of the Furnace Fortress has entered its final sprint. The three underground bunkers have been expanded to accommodate 8,000 people, the water circulation system has completed its final trial run, and deep exploration in the mines has reached a layer rich in iron ore. All three lines of defense—explosives, electric fences, and incendiary arrays—have been laid, and the traces on the surface have been deliberately erased. From the outside, the fortress looks no different from what it was three months ago.
But the place has been turned upside down.
Vera expanded her security team from thirty to two hundred men, replacing them entirely with veterans and reliable members of the miners. The thugs, mine bullies, and those receiving salaries without working were all purged. A group of people attempted to cause trouble, storming into the security team's office with machetes. Vera single-handedly took them all down, breaking six ribs and knocking out twelve teeth.
From then on, no one dared to cause trouble again.
“Boss,” Vera came over with two glasses of water and handed me one, “the matter you asked me to investigate has yielded results.”
I took the water and said, "Go on."
“Over in the primeval forest, the number of people living there is still decreasing. Emily recently increased the quota for gathering herbs, and several more have died.” Vera’s tone was calm, but I could hear the anger she was suppressing. “There’s an old herbalist locked up in the water dungeon. She’s been there for two months, and they say she’s nearing her end.”
"She won't survive the sandstorm," I said.
Vera glanced at me but didn't press the matter. She knew I wasn't asking about the old woman's life or death, but rather about Emily's whereabouts.
“There’s another piece of news,” Vera paused, “Emily bought a batch of weapons on the black market—not for hunting, but military crossbows with a range of two hundred meters.”
"Who are we guarding against?"
“I don’t know. But her brother Thomas has been patrolling the perimeter of the forest lately, as if he’s keeping something out.”
I put down my water glass and walked to the map on the wall. To the north of the primeval forest was a wasteland, to the south a mountain range, to the east a trade route, and to the west—
My gaze fell on the area to the west marked "unexplored".
That's where sandworms live.
In her previous life, on the thirtieth day after the sandstorm, sandworms swarmed into the forest from the west. Emily locked the cave entrance, using the forest dwellers as human shields. They screamed outside all night, then fell silent. The next morning, Emily looked through the peephole and saw only sandworm slime and bone fragments. She vomited, but afterward, she continued counting her medicinal herbs.
The fact that she's buying weapons means she already knows there's something to the west. But she doesn't know what it is, or when it will come.
I picked up my phone and scrolled to a message Emily had sent a few days ago: "Brother, do you feel like the mountains to the west are moving? Haha, I must be seeing things, it's so boring here."
I did not reply.
It's not that I didn't want to warn her. It's that I wanted to see her die.
In one month, Emily sent twenty-seven messages.
The first fifteen entries are boasts: how many gold pounds she sold her herbs for, what jewelry she bought, and how beautiful the forest scenery is. The middle eight are complaints: the forest is too damp, her skincare products are insufficient, and Thomas is disobedient. The tone begins to change in the last four entries.
"Brother, something's really wrong with those hills to the west. We can hear sounds coming from underground at night."
"Brother, we've lost three patrolmen. They've disappeared without a trace, neither alive nor dead."
"Brother, Father wants you to reply to me. What exactly are you busy with?"
The last one had no text, only a video. The video showed the ground at the edge of a forest, the soil churning, as if something was moving underneath. After about ten seconds, the image shook violently and then cut off.
I watched the video three times, then deleted it.
It's not that I'm indifferent; it's that I don't want her voice to waste my phone's storage space.
Inside the underground bunker of Furnace Fortress, 5,300 people had completed their first evacuation drill. The entire evacuation from the surface to the third underground level would take eight minutes. Vera timed it precisely to the second with a stopwatch.
“I’ll practice again,” she said. “I need seven minutes.”
No one complained. The miners and their families had come to regard Vera as a goddess. She had saved their lives—during the last mine collapse, she was the first to rush in and dig seven people out of the rubble. Her left arm was fractured by falling rocks, and she was still training new recruits with it bandaged.
That night, I sat on the highest watchtower of the fortress, looking at the distant sky.
Vera climbed up, sat next to me, and handed me a compressed biscuit.
"What do you come here to see every night?"
"Look at the sky."
What's so interesting about the sky?
I took a bite of the cookie, chewed it, and swallowed it.
"In forty days, you will no longer be able to see the sky."
She was silent for a moment, without asking why. She simply said, "Then I'll take a few more glances while I can."
Then she leaned on my shoulder and closed her eyes.
The night wind blew across the fortress walls, carrying the smell of slag and rust. In the distance, the large lights deep in the mine shone, which the miners called "the inextinguishable sun."
That cookie was hard and tasted terrible.
But at that moment, I felt like I wasn't afraid of anything anymore.
