The Coldhum Deep

A meltwater cavern the Stoneborn Coldhand Pans opened into a buried Imperium colonnade — half natural ice-throat, half drowned bronze-vaulted hall, fungus-lit, with one working still pulsing warm underwater.

Brokka's last pan-crew went in with lamps and picks and only the lamp came back out. The cave smells of cold iron and something lower, a warmth that has no business being there, that the diggers call the heat-below. Glowcap fungi ring the waterline; the Imperium arcade the pans broke through is flooded to the chest and the pulsing working beneath the surface has never been explained.