The Mine Lift Snapped Two Miles Down. The Only Way Up Is Through a Lost Kingdom.

About the story

Emberdeep is a mining town clinging to the side of the Greyspine Mountains, where the snow never quite melts and the whole town lives by the sound of the great lift. Every morning, the shift crews ride its iron cage down into the deepest silver mine in the world. Every evening, the cage brings them back up. In two hundred years, the cable has never failed. This morning, at 3,200 meters down, it snapped. Nobody was hurt; the cage's emergency brakes caught it twenty meters above the bottom of the shaft. But the shaft above it collapsed in a roar of stone and dust, and when the dust cleared, the thirteen people of Shift Nine were alone in the deep, with no way back up. You're Shift Nine's lamp-keeper: the one who tends the lamps, the air-pumps and the oil, and knows exactly how long the light will last. Right now, the answer is ten days. That's also how long you have until the Thaw. Every spring, meltwater from the Greyspine glaciers pours into the lowest tunnels. In ten days, the deep will flood to the ceiling. Then, while the crew is clearing the rubble, a wall at the end of the oldest tunnel cracks open, and cool air breathes out of the dark. Behind it is a door: twenty meters tall, carved with stars and spirals, sealed for a thousand years. And when your lamp touches it, it opens. On the other side is a kingdom. A vast underground city of crystal towers glowing blue and green, stone bridges over bottomless chasms, waterfalls that fall upward, gardens of luminous mushrooms as tall as trees, and silent stone guardians standing watch at every gate. Undervault, the old miners' legends called it. Everyone thought it was a fairy tale. It goes up. Maybe all the way to the surface. Foreman Dagna Holt, 46, gruff, scarred and unshakable, has led Shift Nine for fifteen years and has never lost a miner. She doesn't intend to start. Emeric Sallow, 27, the company's surveyor-geologist, is a brilliant, nervous scholar on his first trip below a kilometer, and he's never been happier or more terrified in his life. And somewhere in the glowing dark, a figure with bioluminescent markings on her skin has been watching your lamps: Vessa of the Glowkin, 34, a scout of the hidden people who still live in Undervault, and who have very good reasons not to want outsiders. The kingdom is beautiful, and it is not empty. The Deep Sentinels, ancient stone guardians, wake when they sense lamp-fire. The crystal bridges sing and shatter if crossed wrongly. Whole districts are flooded, dark or crumbling. And the Glowkin elders are deciding whether to help you, or to seal the door behind you forever. Lead twelve miners up through a lost kingdom. Ration the lamp oil. Keep spirits high in the dark. Solve the ancient mechanisms of Undervault. Earn the trust of a hidden people. And find the way to the sky before the Thaw comes roaring down. Features: Underground Survival-Adventure · 10 days to the Thaw · Depth, Lamp Oil & Morale meters · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Dagna Holt, 46: Shift Nine's gruff, scarred, unshakable foreman, who has never lost a miner. • Emeric Sallow, 27: The company's brilliant, nervous surveyor-geologist on his first trip into the deep. • Vessa, 34: A wary, proud scout of the Glowkin, the hidden people of Undervault. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Singing Bridges (Day 3, 10:00) · The Sentinel Wakes (Day 4, 21:00) · The Gates of Lumenhold (Day 6, 18:00). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.