Young Miner

A laborer among the cursed crystal miners of Zeta Minor, he moves with the efficient precision of exhausted routine. His work—collecting the venomous crystals, feeding them through the pulverizer, and passing the resulting dust to his partner—demands silent endurance rather than skill. The dim mine lights flicker over his hunched shoulders as the unseen predator feeds on their labor, its hunger growing with every cycle. His obedience is mechanical, a small cog in Sorenson’s doomed scheme, yet his presence in the suffocating dark marks him as one among many trapped in the expedition’s spiral of futility.