The Survey Corps — a specialized division of the Ministry of Stone responsible for geological mapping and subterranean exploration — discovered the entrance on the fourteenth of Sunsteel, forty-three kilometers northeast of the Athenaeum's capital city, Scholar's Rest.
The surveyors had been conducting routine geological assessment — mapping mineral deposits in the foothills of the Eastern Ridge, the mountain chain that separated the Athenaeum province from the Cinderlands. The work was unglamorous and essential: the kingdom's industrial capacity depended on mineral extraction, and mineral extraction depended on knowing where the minerals were. The Survey Corps had been mapping deposits for decades, producing the geological intelligence that told the Ministry of Coin which mines to invest in and which mountains to leave alone.
