The ruins of Stormhaven were exactly as the Army of the Broken had left them ten years ago: a jagged scar of blackened stone and rotted timber along the southern coast. Nature had tried to reclaim it—vines choked the shattered watchtowers, and moss carpeted the cratered streets—but the memory of the massacre kept the place cold, even in summer.
Now, it was about to die a second death.
Kael Light stood on the roof of the old Harbor Master's office, the highest point in the ruins. The wind whipped his grey cloak around his legs, carrying the taste of ozone and iron filings. Beneath him, the Iron-Guard battalions were digging in, turning the rubble into a desperate line of defense. Steam-tanks were hull-down in the debris, their Radiant Cannons humming with a high-pitched anxiety.
But no one was looking at the defenses. Every eye was fixed on the horizon.
The Great Engine did not look like a machine. It looked like a geological event.
It was a mountain of riveted black iron, two miles wide and towering a mile into the darkened sky. It moved on twelve colossal tread-belts, each one wider than the Royal Spire. As the treads rotated, they didn't just crush the ground; they pulverized the bedrock, turning forests and hills into a flat, grey wasteland of compressed dust. The sound of its movement was a low-frequency vibration that rattled the teeth and made the vision blur—a constant, rhythmic THRUM-CRUNCH, THRUM-CRUNCH that felt like the heartbeat of a dying planet.
Smokestacks the size of redwoods belched thick, oily clouds that blotted out the sun, creating an artificial twilight. But the most terrifying feature was not the iron or the smoke.
It was the Eye.
Embedded in the center of the forward hull, surrounded by a lattice of pulsing copper veins, was a massive, crystalline lens. Behind it swirled a vortex of deep, bruised violet light. It wasn't fire. It wasn't electricity. It was raw, weaponized Void.
IT IS A SICKNESS, the God in Kael's mind whispered, its voice sounding nauseous. THEY DID NOT JUST DIG UP A FRAGMENT. THEY ARE TORTURING IT. CAN YOU HEAR IT SCREAMING, KAEL? IT SOUNDS LIKE A CHILD DROWNING IN OIL.
"I hear it," Kael whispered, clutching the hilt of his Soul-Steel sword. "And I'm going to silence it."
"Range check!" Kaelen Thorne's voice crackled over the comms, tense and clipped. "Target is at ten miles and closing. Speed... God, it's doing forty miles an hour. It shouldn't be able to move that fast. It defies physics."
"It's not using physics," Ignis replied from the command walker. "The Void reduces the mass of the chassis. It's floating on a cushion of entropy. If it hits our lines at that speed, kinetic impact alone will wipe out the vanguard."
Kael looked at the Solar-Vessel hovering silently above the ruins. The white ship looked like a toy compared to the approaching leviathan.
"Castor. Pollux," Kael spoke into his wrist-link. "Are you ready?"
There was a pause. Then, Castor's voice came back, trembling with a mixture of fear and adrenaline. "It's... it's so loud, Kael. The energy... it tastes like spoiled milk."
"Focus on the heat," Kael commanded, his voice dropping to the Sovereign's tone. "Ignore the taste. Focus on the heat. Pollux, lock the magnetic field. Castor, prime the plasma. We hit it before it hits us."
"Understood," Pollux whispered.
Kael raised his hand. "Iron-Guard! Braced positions! Moon-Scarred, into the shadows! Wait for the signal!"
The Great Engine roared. A horn blast from its upper decks shattered the windows of the ruins three miles away. It was a challenge. A declaration that the Age of Kings was over, and the Age of the Machine had come to eat the world.
"Binary Protocol: ENGAGE!" Kael shouted.
High above, the Solar-Vessel opened its bay doors.
Two figures dropped into the sky. They didn't fall; they floated, suspended by opposing fields of fire and ice.
Castor raised his arms. The "Focus-Point Limiters" on his wrists hissed as they unlocked. A sphere of blinding white-gold plasma erupted from his chest, growing instantly to the size of a small sun. The heat was so intense that the clouds above him evaporated in a perfect circle.
Pollux extended her hands. A lattice of teal frost-light wove around the plasma, compressing it, shaping it, turning the chaotic explosion into a focused spear of destruction.
"Binary Art: The Spear of the Equinox!"
The twins fired.
A beam of spiraling fire and ice shot across the sky. It was brighter than the sun, a lance of pure mana that screamed as it tore through the atmosphere.
It struck the Great Engine dead center, right on the Violet Eye.
BOOM.
The impact was blinding. A shockwave of steam and light swept over the plains, flattening the trees for miles. The Army of the Broken cheered. No material on earth could withstand that kind of thermal shock. The Lead-Bismuth should have melted. The iron should have vaporized.
But as the smoke cleared, the cheering died.
The Great Engine was still moving.
The violet light in the Eye swirled faster. The metal around the impact site wasn't melted; it was glowing with a hungry, purple aura. The beam hadn't damaged the Engine.
It had fed it.
FOOLS, the God hissed. YOU CANNOT BURN THE VOID WITH LIGHT. THE VOID EATS LIGHT. YOU JUST GAVE IT BREAKFAST.
Ignis's voice screamed over the comms. "Energy spike! Massive surge in the Engine's core! It absorbed the plasma! It's redirecting!"
The Eye of the Great Engine pulsed. The violet light condensed, focusing into a beam of absolute darkness.
"EVASIVE!" Kael roared at the Solar-Vessel.
The pilot banked hard, but the Void-Beam was instantaneous. It didn't travel; it simply connected point A to point B.
It clipped the wing of the Solar-Vessel. The white metal didn't explode. It simply ceased to exist. The wing vanished into nothingness, the clean cut revealing the hollow interior. The ship spun violently, smoke trailing as it plummeted toward the eastern hills.
"Castor! Pollux!" Kael screamed.
"We... we're okay!" Castor gasped over the link. "We caught the fall! But the ship is down! Kael, it ate it! It ate the sun!"
The Great Engine didn't stop. It accelerated. The "thrum-crunch" of the treads grew louder, a deafening drumbeat of doom. It was five miles away. Then four.
"It's invulnerable to energy," Kaelen Thorne shouted, panic edging into his voice. "If we fire the Radiant Cannons, we just make it stronger. We can't shoot it!"
"Then we trip it," Kael said.
He jumped from the roof, landing in the mud beside the command walker. "Thorne! Take the Iron-Guard and target the treads! Use the pneumatic pile-drivers! Use the physical shells! No magic! Just iron and explosive!"
"And you?" Ignis asked, leaning out of the walker.
"I'm going inside," Kael said, staring at the colossal treads churning the earth. "If the skin eats magic, we have to kill the heart. I need to get to that fragment."
"You can't get close," Ignis warned. "The entropy field around the hull will age you to dust."
"I'm already dust," Kael muttered. "Garret!"
The Alpha Wolf materialized from the rubble. "Father."
"Gather the Elite Pack. We aren't fighting on the deck. We're going under."
Garret looked at the crushing treads, each one a relentless wall of grinding steel. "Under? That is death."
"That is the blind spot," Kael corrected. "The Void Shield protects the hull and the front. But the treads... they have to touch the ground. There has to be a maintenance hatch in the undercarriage. We ride the mud."
Garret grinned, a terrifying display of teeth. "Into the belly of the beast. Good. I was getting cold."
The battle for Stormhaven was a massacre of scale.
The Iron-Guard fought with the desperate bravery of men defending their homes. As the Great Engine rolled over the outer perimeter, the steam-tanks fired solid-shot shells at the massive treads. The explosions were like firecrackers against a mountain. The iron plates barely dented.
The Engine didn't even fire its main weapon again. It simply drove.
It rolled over the ruins of the outer wall. The stone crunched like dry bone. It rolled over a line of steam-tanks, flattening them into metal pancakes, the screams of the crews cut short by the screech of tearing steel.
Underneath the chaos, in a trench dug deep into the mud, Kael and twenty Moon-Scarred waited.
The ground shook so violently that Kael's teeth rattled in his skull. Dirt rained down on them. The sky above the trench went dark as the shadow of the Engine passed over them.
"Wait for it," Kael signaled, holding his hand up.
The first tread-wheel passed overhead—a roaring ceiling of moving iron plates, dripping with oil and mud. The heat was suffocating.
"NOW!"
Kael leaped.
He didn't jump up; he jumped onto the moving tread as it began its upward rotation at the back of the cycle. He dug his Soul-Steel sword into the gap between two plates. The blade sparked, then bit. He was yanked upward, hanging precariously as the tread carried him up into the undercarriage of the machine.
Garret and the pack followed, sinking their claws into the metal. Two wolves missed their grip. They fell into the grinding gears below and were gone in a mist of red.
Kael didn't look back. He climbed hand-over-hand, traversing the moving metal mountain. He was upside down now, hanging beneath the belly of the Engine.
The undercarriage was a dark, oily cathedral of gears and pistons. The noise was deafening—a constant screech of metal on metal. But here, the violet light of the Void was dim.
"There!" Kael shouted over the roar, pointing to a circular hatch located near the central drive shaft. "The maintenance port!"
They swung across the struts, dodging massive pistons that pumped with the force of hydraulic presses. Kael reached the hatch. It was sealed with a wheel of rusted iron, crusted with twenty years of grime.
He grabbed the wheel. The "Stable Agony" flared.
Thud-Crack.
His humerus snapped. He channeled the burst of strength into his grip. The wheel screamed in protest, rust flaking off, and turned.
The hatch popped open. A blast of hot, stagnant air hit them—the smell of the Engine's interior.
It didn't smell like oil. It smelled like meat.
Kael pulled himself inside, followed by Garret and the remaining twelve wolves. They stood in a dimly lit corridor, the walls pulsing with a faint, biological rhythm.
"What is this?" Garret whispered, wiping slime from the wall. "This isn't a machine. It breathes."
Kael touched the wall. Under the iron plating, there was something soft. Something warm.
"The fragment," Kael realized, horror dawning on him. "It's not just powering the engine. It's growing into it. The Void is turning the metal into flesh."
They moved deeper. The corridors twisted like intestines. Pipes leaked not steam, but a dark, violet fluid that hissed when it touched the floor.
And then, they heard the screaming.
It wasn't the scream of the Void Fragment. It was human. Thousands of voices, layered into a single, low-frequency moan of absolute despair.
"The fuel," Kael whispered.
They reached a viewing grate overlooking the central chamber.
It was a cavernous space, dominated by a massive, beating heart of violet crystal—the Dark God Fragment. But feeding into it were hundreds of glass tubes. Inside the tubes flowed a liquid that glowed with a pale, white light.
Soul-Liquid.
And at the base of the chamber, in rows upon rows of iron cages, were people. Prisoners of war. Captured villagers from the Sultanate's own lands. The "hollow" ones. They were hooked up to extraction machines that drained their life-force, distilled it, and fed it to the Void Heart.
The Great Engine wasn't running on coal. It was running on genocide.
Garret growled, a sound of pure revulsion. "They are juicing them. Like fruit."
Kael gripped the grate until the metal bent. The "Stable Agony" in his chest wasn't just physical anymore. It was a resonance. He felt every single person in those cages. He felt their slow, cold death.
"This ends," Kael said, his voice trembling with a rage that shook the very air. "Right now."
"Saint," Ignis's voice cut through the static of the comms, weak and distant. "We can't hold... Stormhaven is gone. The Engine is... it's turning toward the Capital. It will be at the walls in... two hours."
"I'm in," Kael said. "I see the heart."
"Can you destroy it?"
"If I destroy it, the explosion takes out half the continent," Kael said, looking at the pulsating crystal. "I can't blow it up. I have to kill it."
"Kill a rock?" Ignis asked.
"It's not a rock," Kael said, watching the biological walls pulse. "It's alive. And if it's alive... it can feel pain."
Kael turned to Garret. "Take the pack. Find the prisoner control room. Release the locks. When I give the signal, get those people out."
"And you?" Garret asked.
Kael looked at the Void Heart. He looked at the Soul-Steel sword in his hand.
"I'm going to introduce the Emperor to the concept of empathy," Kael said.
He kicked the grate open and dropped into the central chamber.
High above, in the Command Deck of the Great Engine, Emperor Valerian stood watching the destruction of Stormhaven.
He was a man of logic. A man of science. He wore a suit of pristine white armor that hummed with life-support systems, keeping his frail, aged body alive. He despised magic. He despised the messy, unpredictable nature of the "Sun-Blooded."
"Efficiency," Valerian muttered, watching the Iron-Guard retreat. "That is the only true god. Look at them run. They cling to their superstitions, while I have harnessed the chaotic variable."
"Sir!" a technician shouted from the console. "Hull breach in Sector 7! Intruder alert in the Core Chamber!"
"Intruder?" Valerian turned. "Impossible. The entropy field would dust anyone who touched the hull."
"Sensors identify the target as... Kael Light."
Valerian's eyes narrowed. "The Weeper. He boarded us? How?"
"He came up the treads, sir. He's... he's standing on the Core Walkway."
Valerian smiled. It was a thin, cruel expression.
"Let him stand," Valerian said. "Activate the Internal Defense Grid. Vent the chamber with Soul-Gas. Let's see if the Immortal King can breathe despair."
In the Core Chamber, the air turned green.
Vents opened in the walls, spewing a heavy, toxic gas that smelled of old graves. It was concentrated despair—the byproduct of the soul-extraction process.
Kael didn't hold his breath. He inhaled it.
The gas hit his lungs and tried to stop his heart. It tried to tell him that hope was a lie, that his friends hated him, that Sam Willer was right.
Kael laughed.
He coughed, spitting out a glob of violet phlegm. "Is that all?" he shouted at the ceiling. "I've lived with a God in my head for twenty years! You think a little gas scares me?"
He walked toward the Void Heart. The crystal pulsed faster, sensing him. It recognized the flavor of his soul. It recognized the "Main Body" fragment inside him.
BROTHER, the Crystal whispered—not in words, but in a vibration that cracked the glass floor. YOU HAVE COME HOME. JOIN ME. WE CAN EAT THIS WORLD TOGETHER.
"I'm not your brother," Kael said, stepping onto the dais. "I'm your surgeon."
He raised his Soul-Steel sword. But he didn't strike the crystal. He turned the blade inward.
He stabbed himself.
He drove the sword through his own left hand, pinning it to the surface of the Void Heart.
CRUNCH.
The pain was absolute. But Kael didn't pull away. He pushed deeper. He fused his blood, his nerves, and his "Stable Agony" directly into the crystal lattice of the Engine's power source.
"Ancient Art: The Nervous System of the Damned!"
He didn't attack the Engine. He connected to it.
He shared his curse.
He took the cycle of "Break and Heal," the infinite loop of suffering that defined his existence, and he uploaded it into the Great Engine.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The Void Heart screamed.
It wasn't designed to feel. It was designed to consume. Suddenly, it felt a broken rib. Then a shattered femur. Then the heartbreak of a betrayal. Then the weight of a thousand years of waiting.
The violet light of the crystal flickered violently. The biological walls of the corridors began to spasm. The pistons seizing up. The gears grinding to a halt. The massive treads outside locked up, digging deep furrows into the earth as the mountain-sized machine screeched to a halt.
In the Command Deck, Emperor Valerian was thrown from his chair. The screens exploded.
"What is happening?!" Valerian screamed. "Diagnostic!"
"The Core... it's in shock!" the technician yelled. "It's registering... pain! Massive, structural pain! The hull is fracturing! The metal is trying to heal itself, but it keeps breaking!"
Down in the chamber, Kael knelt, his hand still pinned to the crystal. His body was convulsing, acting as the conduit for the agony. He was sharing his hell with the machine.
"How does it feel?" Kael whispered to the crystal. "Heavy, isn't it?"
The Great Engine groaned—a sound like a dying whale. The lights died. The violet eye went dark.
The Earth Shaker had stopped.
Kael pulled his sword free. His hand healed instantly, but he fell back, gasping for air. The connection was broken, but the damage was done. The Engine was catatonic.
Garret's voice came over the comms. "Prisoners released. We are exiting the rear vents. Father... the machine is crying. The walls are leaking fluid."
"It's over," Kael wheezed. "Get them out."
He looked up at the darkened Core. The fragment was dormant now, traumatized into silence.
Kael stood up. He had to find the Emperor. He had to end the war.