"Master, the abandoned mines are just ahead."
At Ogre's hushed guidance, Roland narrowed his eyes and gazed ahead.
The night was deep. The silvery light of a near-full moon struggled to pierce the thin clouds, casting its glow upon a desolate, rugged landscape.
They stood at the edge of a gentle slope, overlooking an abandoned mining district that stretched out below them like a series of scars upon the earth.
The first thing that caught their eye were vast swaths of exposed, craggy rock formations—grayish-white, rust-red, and dismal black—the scars of years of excavation.
Enormous mine entrances, like the gaping, pitch-black maws of giant, greedy beasts, were scattered across the landscape. Most were half-buried by collapsed earth and rock, exuding a dead, ominous stillness.
Yet deep within this seemingly dead and desolate land, a few faint, unnatural lights flickered like Ghost Fire near the entrance to a larger mine, which was situated in a ravine between two low mountains.
