The air in the Assembly smelled of sawdust, dried herbs, and the frantic, sweaty energy of a thousand bodies in motion.

  Zeen walked through the cavernous underground factory, his eyes wide. It was a marvel of engineering, though entirely devoid of the elegance of Gnome craftsmanship.

  Wooden conveyor belts clattered, a ceaseless river of industry powered by sprinting Rabbitlings on massive treadmill wheels. Hundreds of baskets moved along the line, passing from hand to hand.

  "These are reagents for the Ichor Healing Potion," said a Grey-Fur Rabbitling to Zeen, adjusting a gold-rimmed monocle that looked precariously loose on his twitching snout.

  He wore a crisp, pinstriped vest and a tailored suit jacket, though his thick, bent legs remained bare in true Rabbitling fashion. His large, fuzzy feet slapped against the packed-earth floor with professional urgency.

  "How does that work? Alchemy is precision, feel," Zeen argued. "You can't industrialize spellcasting."

  "Statistically, one in every two hundred reagents on this belt will be perfect for the high arcanas of Alchemy. Master Keroué sniffs out the successes and takes care of the brewing. Delegating to the Assembly allows her talent and time to be better spent."

  Zeen watched a Rabbitling in a white apron sniff the passing baskets. He discarded failures into a chute and sorted the successes into graded bins.

  "It’s… efficient," Zeen admitted, grudgingly.

  They passed through a set of heavy, reinforced wooden doors. The herbal scent of the alchemy floor vanished, obliterated by a physical wall of dry, suffocating heat.

  Zeen gripped the iron railing of the suspended gantry they had stepped onto. The ground floor had dropped away, revealing a sunken industrial cathedral dug deep into the earth’s bedrock.

  Above them, the ceiling was lost behind a choking haze of coal dust and smog. It was pierced by a dense, inverted forest of soot-stained brick chimneys—hundreds of them, arranged in a rigid grid.

  From this vantage point, the workforce was the internal mechanism of a vast, flesh-and-blood clock. Hundreds of Rabbitlings in thick leather aprons and smoked-glass goggles moved with terrifying synchronization.

  A network of iron conveyor belts crisscrossed the cavern floor like open arteries. Molten ingots traveled these tracks, violent cherry-red pulses cutting through the smoky gloom.

  They pulsed down the lines, passing from station to station in a rhythmic staccato of sparks.

  One Rabbitling hammered a curve. The next quenched it in a hiss of steam that was instantly sucked into the overhead flues. The third riveted a strap.

  They were manufacturing war, and the scale of it made the floor beneath Zeen’s boots tremble. His hand tightened on the strap of his musket.

  "Red Metal," Zeen muttered, his words lost in the rhythmic clang of a hundred hammers.

  "The One-Eye ordered us to rebuild the Golem force your lost friend wrecked," the Grey-Fur said, shouting to be heard.

  He pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket and dabbed at the sweat beading on his furry forehead. "The losses were... catastrophic. Production quotas have tripled."

  They walked down to the factory floor. Zeen watched a breastplate clatter onto a pile of identical pieces of forged metal.

  "It would be a lot easier if you didn't do everything that genocidal maniac tells you to do," Zeen snapped, turning his glare on the administrator. "You're arming the monster that's enslaving you. You have the numbers. You have the technology. Fight back."

  The Rabitling shook his head. "We can't. He controls the mist. If we fight, the mist never lifts. If we fill the quota... he gives us one day. One cycle of clear skies to evacuate our families."

  Zeen’s outrage faded. A slow, dangerous smile crossed his face.

  "Malevolent compliance," Zeen murmured. "That murderous scum is busy crowing his head out. He’s not doing quality control."

  The Rabbitling’s ears twitched. "Sabotage?"

  "Compromise the rivets," Zeen said, weighing a breastplate. "Use a high-sulfur mix for the pins. It embrittles the metal. It holds until impact, then the alloy shatters."

  The Grey-Fur’s face went askew, and twisted his fur. His gaze darted to the shadowed corners of the gantry, checking for unseen eyes.

  "If it found out..." he whispered, the words strangling in his throat. "It won't just be the mist. The One-Eye can force us to do things… Horrible things… To ourselves. To the people we love."

  "He's already burning you down," Zeen countered. He gestured to the exhausted workers. "Look at them. You are fuel for his furnace. You will burn regardless. You might as well choose the flames."

  The administrator looked down at the relentless river of fire and exhaustion. He watched a worker stumble and fall, only to be hauled up by another.

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  "If the fasteners on one side shear under impact... the sudden weight shift will snap the remaining connections. The armor will slide right off the statue."

  "Exactly," Zeen said, placing the plate back. "He gets his army. You get your day of freedom. And when the fighting starts..."

  The Rabitling stared at the exploited workforce, his face tight with conflict. He took a long breath, looking at the armor, then at Zeen.

  “This… will be considered by the Twin City Council.”

  The air was still, a profound silence that contrasted sharply with the industrial roar of the Assembly.

  Almitad sat cross-legged in the air, floating a few feet above the grass. The Necrotic Bloom within her patchwork ribcage pulsed with a low, steady rhythm, casting long, shifting shadows against the white surface of the weapon hovering before her.

  She positioned the tip of the bone chisel against the calcified surface. *Tink*. The small mallet in her other hand struck the tool, driving it into the dense material. *Tink*. A tiny white flake chipped away. She brushed the debris aside with a skeletal finger, adjusted the angle of the blade, and struck again to extend the curve.

  Under Zeen’s file and Almitad’s magic, the scavenged femur was transformed. The shaft was smoothed and tapered, mimicking the "baseball bat" shape Trenn had projected.

  Three heavy bands of White Metal, forged from the dog god’s armor, compressed the barrel of the club. A dense sphere of the same alloy capped the pommel; a counterweight that perfectly balanced the god-bone at its grip.

  As she connected the final arc of the containment rune, the coagulated ichor sealed inside the marrow cavity reacted. Runes carved along its length flared with diffused light. A low, throbbing hum vibrated from the weapon, dancing the bone dust across the table.

  "Almost finished?" Ezy asked, walking past the runescriber.

  The soft *clack-creak* of her new prosthetic marked her steps. Her foot was a complex design of Red and White Metal, hinged and articulated with the same mechanical logic she applied to her war machines' feet.

  She was struggling with her balance, but it didn’t stop her from dragging a heavy rod behind her. With a grunt, she lowered it onto the workshop floor, slotting it into a row of heavy struts arranged to form the skeleton of her new Stomper.

  She wiped grease from her forehead with her giant skeletal hand. She side-eyed the glowing weapon.

  "If we ever find Trenn," she said, her voice choked, "I'm sure he'll appreciate it."

  Zeen positioned a curved plate of black Husk chitin against the leather cuirass draped over a wooden mannequin. He lined up a copper rivet with a pre-drilled hole and struck it with a heavy hammer.

  "You have no idea how hard it was to carve these things," he muttered, running a thumb over the razor-sharp edge of the plate. "It splinters if you look at it wrong."

  Mara did not answer.

  She lay on a cot beside his workbench, her white fur matted with sweat. Her breath came in shallow, hitching gasps. The blanket covering her failed to hide the ruin of her right side.

  Her shoulder was hunched forward, frozen in a jagged shrug. The line of her hip was uneven, and her leg twisted inward at an unnatural angle.

  Ezy limped to the bedside, the clack-creak of her Red Metal leg soft on the floorboards. She dipped a rag into a basin of water, wrung it out, and gently placed the cool towel on Mara's fevered forehead.

  "She’s dying.” She stared at the Fox Kin’s mangled form. "We can’t keep feeding her regular Healing Potions."

  She gestured to Mara's arm, where the bone had knitted into a calcified, zig-zagging lump beneath the skin.

  "Without the Ichor Potion, she’s gone. The fever will take her."

  Zeen lowered his hammer. His gaze drifted from Ezy to the foot of the cot.

  Skate sat in the dust, a dull sphere of obsidian. It hadn’t softened or shone since Almitad had carried it back alone.

  Occasionally, it would vibrate—a weak, jagged pulse that sounded like a sob—before rolling an inch toward the door.

  Zeen clenched his jaw. He looked at the pile of black chitin plates, then at the broken warrior who was supposed to wear them.

  "I've seen their system. I trust them." He leaned toward the cot, watching Mara's eyelids flutter rapidly. "And so does Mara. Don't you, Mara?"

  Mara let out a low, delirious groan of pain.

  A burning, primal need had eclipsed Trenn’s rage. The golden beast did not care about the piles of gravel that used to be an army.

  It locked onto the distant scent of fresh water.

  It was a fever dream of red haze and shattering stone. Time had dissolved into a meaningless cycle of fog and thirst. How long had it wandered the grey void? Days? Weeks? The beast did not know.

  It had lumbered away from the carnage, walking blindly through the grey fog.

  The mist had cleared, as if recoiling from its divine presence; parting to let the god pass.

  It walked until the sun touched its scales. Until it felt mud under its jeweled feet.

  Water.

  The beast lowered its massive head to drink, but the water did not reach its tongue. The golden muzzle, the helmet of scales. Even if it opened its maw, it did not open Trenn’s mouth.

  Frustration spiked.

  Open.

  The stylized crocodile head split down the center. Scales uncoupled from his jaw and sliced back beneath his skin. Along his limbs, the living sheath of gold inverted. Thousands of scales tore their way back into his flesh, grinding against bone as they withdrew into the marrow.

  His elongated spine snapped back to human length with a wet crunch. The armor vanished inside him, leaving his skin raw and weeping in the cool air.

  Real sunlight, unfiltered and sharp, warmed the black sand of a wide, secluded riverbank. The sky above was broken only by the lazy drift of high-altitude clouds.

  A line of vibrant green willows wept into the current of a narrow river, their leaves dancing in a breeze that smelled only of pine and wet earth. The sound of water lapped against the shore.

  Trenn lay unconscious, his scarred face pressed into the sand. His breathing was shallow and ragged.

  His clothes were gone, shredded by the golden armor that had erupted from his skin. His body was a map of his ordeal—pale, bruised skin caked with dried mud and blood, shivering slightly in the cool wind.

  His left hand was a mangled ruin, the crude bandage gone, the stump cauterized and ugly in the bright light.

  At the base of his spine, the skin thickened. Pale flesh gave way to a ridge of golden, interlocking scales that lengthened into a massive tail trailing six feet behind him. Raw emeralds and rubies jutted from the metallic plates, catching the sunlight in a dazzling display.

  The tail twitched in his sleep, a heavy, muscular spasm that carved a deep furrow in the wet sand.

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