The deadliest part of my day was this stone staircase.

Hunger clawed at my stomach as I trudged up the uneven catwalk toward the overseer behind the line of other miners. The weight of my pack turned my knees to jelly as my muscles threatened to dump me on my ass down the stone steps to the back of the line.

That was if I even survived. Nausea warred with hunger as I lifted my gaze from my feet to the gaping hole in the mountain, the coming night a warning more than anything else. The night...