Chapter 2: A Father’s Last Gift

Thomas always looked most like James when he slept. Hannah watched the pale light of morning touch his features – the same gentle curve of brow, the same stubborn set to his jaw even in dreams. He’d kicked off his blanket again, curled tight against the morning chill that crept through their hovel’s dirt floor. His breath caught slightly with each inhale, a whispered reminder of their desperate situation.

Through the single window, Coghaven’s fog painted the world in shades of gray. The damp air carried the distant sounds of the settlement stirring to life – the creak of cart wheels, the hiss of steam vents, the metallic groan of machinery awakening in the factories beyond their tiny corner of the world. Yet here in their hovel, time seemed suspended between heartbeats, between the boy Thomas was and the man he might become, if only they were brave enough to risk everything.

She gathered the thin blanket and drew it back over his shoulders, her fingers lingering on the worn fabric. James had traded his father’s pocket watch for this blanket last winter, when Thomas’s cough had grown worse with the cold. Everything has a price, he’d said that night, trying to smile through the loss of his last inheritance. And our boy is worth more than old memories. The watch had been beautiful once, its gears telling time in delicate copper and brass rhythms. Like so much else in their lives, beauty had been sacrificed for survival.

Now all their memories of James lived in fragments: the empty chair in the corner where he used to sit sketching airship designs for Thomas, the collection of tiny mechanical parts he’d saved for their son’s birthday, the patches on Thomas’s clothes that still bore the careful stitches of his father’s hands. Each piece is a testament to love measured not in grand gestures, but in the quiet sacrifices of daily survival. Even the walls held echoes of him – pencil marks tracking Thomas’s height, smudges of oil from his work clothes, the faint impression of dreams too big for their cramped quarters.

Hannah withdrew the power crystal from her pocket, letting its faceted surface catch the strengthening light. It pulsed with a faint inner glow, like a captive star fighting to break free from its crystalline prison. Thomas had never seen one up close before – Solomon’s Protectors kept tight control over such treasures, dealing harshly with any found in possession of unauthorized power crystals. The penalty for mere possession could mean exile to Ashen Falls, where the toxic fogs turned men’s minds to madness. Yet here it sat in her palm, James’s last gift to them, holding enough value to buy their escape or seal their doom.

“Mama?”

She turned to find Thomas watching her through sleep-heavy eyes, his father’s curiosity bright in his gaze. The crystal’s light caught in his irises, turning them from their usual brown to something otherworldly, as if already touched by the magic of far places.

“What’s that light?”

Hannah crossed their small room in three steps, settling beside him on his mattress. The crystal’s glow painted soft colors across his pale face, momentarily masking the shadows of illness that had taken up permanent residence beneath his eyes. “It’s something your father sent us,” she said softly. “Something precious.”

Thomas reached out one finger to touch it, then pulled back, as if afraid it might shatter like the fragile dreams they’d harbored for so long. “It looks like the lights we see sometimes, in the rich people’s windows up in Vanvale.” His voice carried no bitterness, only wonder. That was James in him too – the ability to find beauty without resentment, to see light in the darkest places.

“It’s called a power crystal.” Hannah took his hand, let him feel its warm pulse against his palm. The crystal seemed to brighten at his touch, as if recognizing the same quiet strength she saw in him every day. “And it’s going to help us get somewhere better. Somewhere you can breathe easier.”

He sat up straighter, excitement momentarily overtaking the morning cough that usually plagued him. “Like the house with the window boxes? The one Papa always said we’d live in someday?”

The hope in his voice squeezed Hannah’s heart. How many times had they walked past that house in Vanvale, Thomas pointing out where they could grow flowers, James promising someday with desperate conviction? She pulled him close, breathing in the lingering warmth of sleep in his hair, memorizing this moment of simple closeness knowing everything was about to change.

“Maybe, love. But first we must be very brave. Your father…” She swallowed hard, feeling the weight of James’s letter against her heart. “Your father found something valuable, something that could change everything for us. But it’s far away, in the Iron Mountains. We’ll have to go get it ourselves.”

Thomas was silent for a long moment, his fingers still tracing the crystal’s edges as if reading some secret message in its facets. Finally, he looked up at her with James’s quiet determination in his eyes. “Will we have to cross the Dread Wastes? Like in Papa’s stories?”

“Yes.” She watched his face carefully, searching for fear but finding only that inherited courage that sometimes broke her heart. “It will be dangerous. But staying here, watching you get sicker…” She touched his chest, feeling the slight rattle of his breathing. “That’s dangerous too.”

“I’m not afraid,” he said, though his hand tightened on hers. “Papa always said the Wastes were full of wonders, if you were brave enough to look for them.”

Hannah blinked back tears. James had filled their son’s head with tales of adventure, trying to paint beauty over the harsh realities of their world. She’d sometimes scolded him for it, fearing he was setting Thomas up for disappointment. Now she wondered if he’d been preparing their son all along for this moment, teaching him to see possibility where others saw only desolation.

Above them, the fog of Coghaven began to thin, offering a rare glimpse of pale sky beyond. Somewhere out there, across the wasteland’s deadly embrace, a better life waited. They just had to be brave enough to reach for it, strong enough to carry hope through the darkness ahead.

Thomas’s breathing steadied under her hand; his fever warm but not dangerous. Not yet. They had enough time for one more sunrise in the only home he’d ever known. One more moment of safety before they stepped into James’s last dream for them, following the light of a single crystal toward whatever fate awaited in the Iron Mountains’ embrace.