Chapter 33: Ashford’s Winter Crisis

The dining hall was warm, heated by a massive stone hearth, but it did nothing to dispel the chill of the blizzard howling against the frosted windows.

Lord Roderick Ashborn sat at the head of the table. He looked like a man who had dragged himself out of a collapsed tunnel. His hands were heavily bandaged from forge burns, his eyes were sunken, and a faint layer of soot still clung to his hairline.

But for the first time in days, Arthur saw him smiling.

“Pour the wine,” Roderick commanded a servant, his raspy voice carrying a profound, exhausted relief. “The crates are in the capital. The King’s quota is fulfilled.”

A collective breath left the table. Aria offered a small, polite nod of respect from her seat, while Cecilia let out a long, shuddering sigh, her shoulders visibly dropping.

“They won’t strip our mining rights,” Roderick continued, raising his goblet. “The Ashborn family keeps its land for another season. The forgers worked themselves dry, day and night. But the fires are out now. The blast furnaces will shut down for the winter.”

Arthur paused, his fork hovering over his plate. “Shut down? Why?”

Roderick’s smile faltered, the heavy mantle of lordship settling back onto his shoulders. He set his goblet down, the victory suddenly turning bitter. “To keep the furnaces burning hot enough to forge that much Umbral Iron in a single week… we had to burn the territory’s winter wood reserves.”

Arthur’s mind immediately flagged it. “What are those reserves usually for?”

“It’s a policy my father started, and one I still uphold,” Roderick explained. “During the three months of deep winter, the Ashborn estate distributes free firewood to the citizens of Ashford City. If we do not, they will freeze to death in their homes, especially the poorest in the outer rings.”

Arthur did the mental math, a knot forming in his stomach. “How much wood is left in the storehouses?”

“Enough for one month. Perhaps less, if this blizzard holds,” Roderick admitted, looking down at his plate. But then he straightened his posture, his jaw tightening with stubborn resolve. “But I will not let my people freeze. Tomorrow morning, I will ride to the inner city to meet with the Merchant Consortiums and the Lumber Guilds.”

“Roderick, the winter mark-ups will be astronomical,” Cecilia said softly, her face pale.

“I know,” Roderick replied firmly. “I will negotiate emergency lines of credit. I will leverage the spring yields if I must. Whatever the cost, we will buy enough wood to see Ashford through the winter.”

Arthur sat silently, eating his meal, but his mind was racing.

He’s a good lord, Arthur thought, watching his father. But it’s economic suicide. If he leverages the spring yields to buy overpriced wood, the family will be completely bankrupt in four months instead of one. Wood is a dead end anyway. It’s a terrible, inefficient thermal fuel.

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An hour later, Arthur locked his bedroom door. He knelt beside his bed, pulled up the loose floorboard, and retrieved the territorial maps Layla provided him long ago.

He spread the heavy parchment across his desk, uncorking a bottle of ink and grabbing his quill.

To save the city without bankrupting his father, Arthur needed a denser fuel source. He needed coal. His eyes scanned the maps, landing on the jagged markings at the very edge of the lower rings.

There, Arthur thought, tapping the parchment. The Ashborns did have coal veins.

But Arthur remembered why they had been abandoned from his frantic research in the library. Decades ago, the family shifted all their resources to mining the different variants of iron to meet the increasing demand. The upper coal mines were left to rot, and the lower tunnels had severely flooded over the years.

Even if he could figure out a way to pump the water out and get the coal, there was a second, deadlier problem.

Arthur dipped his quill and began to sketch in his notebook. At first glance, the solution seemed obvious—why weren’t the peasants already burning coal? The answer was just as obvious. Standard homes in Ashford City used open stone hearths. Burning raw coal in an open room would fill the house with toxic smoke and carbon monoxide.

Entire families would suffocate in their sleep.

The young heir’s quill flew across the page, drawing sharp, precise geometric lines.

He didn’t just need to mine coal. He needed to engineer a way to burn it safely. He sketched out a thick, enclosed box with a hinged door, an air-intake vent at the bottom, and a drafted chimney pipe at the top. A cast-iron belly stove.

He immediately started running the logistical math in the margins.

Material: The Umbral Iron was gone, but the estate’s scrapyards had to be full of low-grade pig iron and broken tools.

Production: He couldn’t have blacksmiths hammer thousands of stoves by hand. But with the blast furnaces shut down, the estate had a massive, idle workforce. If he carved a wooden prototype, he could use sand-casting—pressing the wood into wet sand to create a mold, then pouring molten scrap iron inside to mass-produce identical plates in minutes.

Installation: The peasants likely already had crude chimneys or holes in their roofs for their open hearths. As long as they created enough draft, the smoke would pull upward instead of leaking into the room.

Arthur dropped the quill, leaning back to look at the blueprint.

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The math worked, and the theory was sound. But he was operating entirely on assumptions. He had no idea how badly the mines were flooded, or what the architectural layout of the peasant homes looked like. He couldn’t build a massive industrial supply blindly.

He looked out the window at the howling blizzard.

Tomorrow morning he would return to Ashford City.

And this time, he was going as an engineer with a plan that could change how the entire city survived winter.

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The blizzard had settled into a steady, biting snowfall by morning.

Arthur dressed in heavy winter wool, strapped a thick cloak around his shoulders, and exited his room only to find Layla, his personal maid, about to knock on the door.

“Ah… Young Master, I’m sorry. I came to call you for breakfast.”

“Don’t worry about it. I will be heading to the library, and save my breakfast for later.”

Layla looked confused by her master visiting the library this morning in clothes meant for a blizzard, but she bowed her head nonetheless. “Understood, Young Master.”

After the small encounter, Arthur descended the stairs and walked directly to the library. Marcus was already there, poring over a ledger with a steaming cup of tea. He barely glanced up as the heavy oak doors clicked shut.

“I need to go into the city,” Arthur said, skipping the usual pleasantries. “Specifically, the outer rings and the abandoned coal drops.”

The High Mage stopped reading and looked up, his ember eyes narrowing. “The outer rings are a slum, Oliver. Lord Roderick has already departed for the inner city to secure the wood. You have no business in the freezing mud.”

“My father is fighting to buy us a month or two,” Arthur replied smoothly. “I am going to buy us the rest of the winter. But I can’t do it sitting in this library. I need to see the architectural layout of the dwellings and also the water level in the old coal shafts.”