The descent from the Iron Peaks felt like falling off the edge of the world. As we moved away from the hum of the Thermal Engine, the warmth faded, replaced by a dry, sterile cold that didn't just chill the skin—it sucked the moisture from my very lungs. Below us, the horizon stretched into infinity, a blinding, crystalline expanse known as the Glass Sea. It wasn't water, and it wasn't sand. It was a desert of pulverized obsidian and ancient, shattered lenses, the remnants of a time when the mountain had used the plains as a giant magnifying glass to catch the stars.
"Watch your step," Kaelen cautioned, his voice muffled by a heavy scarf wrapped around his face. "The dunes here don't shift like sand. They're razor-sharp. If you fall, the ground will skin you alive before you can even scream."
I looked down at my bronze arm. The indigo fire was low, a dim ember pulsing beneath the metallic plates. The "Message" I had received at the engine's core was still vibrating in my marrow, a persistent, rhythmic signal that pulled my gaze away from the Sunken Library and toward a cluster of jagged, translucent spires to the east.
"The Node is that way," I said, pointing toward the center of the shimmering plain where the ruins of the Library lay buried. "But the signal... there's someone out there. Another Inheritor."
Borin stopped, leaning heavily on his hammer. His beard was frosted with white crystals, and his breath came in short, ragged puffs. "Vane, we're running on fumes. The Sunderers are already behind us, and the air out here is like breathing needles. If we go chasing ghosts, we might not have enough strength left to crack the Library's seal."
I felt the pull again—a sharp, magnetic tug on my bronze shoulder that made my white eye flare. "It's not a ghost, Borin. It's a part of the machine. The mountain said the Architect is not enough. We need the Crew."
Kaelen squinted at the eastern spires, his mechanical goggles clicking as he zoomed in on the heat signatures. "I see smoke. But it's not wood-smoke. It's... green. Chemical."
"Then that's where we're going," I decided, the metallic resonance in my voice leaving no room for argument.
The Ghost Signal
The trek across the Glass Sea was a slow torture. The wind here didn't just blow; it sang, a high-pitched, discordant shriek as it whipped through the millions of glass shards. Every gust threatened to shred our cloaks and scour the flesh from our faces. I had to lead the way, using my bronze arm to project a small, kinetic field that pushed the sharpest fragments aside, creating a narrow, shimmering path for Borin and Kaelen.
As we neared the spires, the green smoke became a thick, roiling fog. It smelled of sulfur and fermented bile—the scent of the Alchemist's Waste.
"Stay back," I whispered, the bronze talons on my hand extending instinctively.
In the center of the glass spires, we found a crashed air-skiff. It was an ancient thing, a ribcage of silver-wood and silk, its buoyancy tanks shattered and leaking a glowing green ichor. Standing in the wreckage was a figure draped in heavy, oil-stained leathers. They wore a mask made of a single, curved piece of smoked glass, and their hands were encased in gauntlets that looked like a tangle of glass tubes and copper wires.
The figure was surrounded.
Six Hollow-Walkers—Sunderer constructs made of translucent glass and pressurized gas—were closing in. They didn't have solid bodies; they were shifting, crystalline silhouettes that hummed with a lethal frequency.
The figure in the wreckage didn't look afraid. They raised a gauntlet, and I saw a flash of silver light within the tubes.
"Get back, you transparent bastards," a feminine voice snarled through the mask.
The Alchemist and the Architect
The figure threw a small, glass vial. It didn't explode with fire; it exploded with anti-frequency. The moment the glass broke, a shockwave of silence rippled outward. The Hollow-Walkers shivered, their crystalline forms cracking as the gas within them expanded violently. Two of them shattered instantly, their shards raining down like deadly hail.
But the remaining four were unfazed. They raised their arms, the glass limbs vibrating until they glowed a sharp, killing white.
"Now, Borin!" I roared.
We erupted from the glass dunes. Borin led with a frontal charge, his steam-mallet catching the nearest Hollow-Walker in what would have been its chest. The kinetic blast was magnified by the glass sea, the vibration shattering the construct into a million harmless splinters.
Kaelen was a blur of obsidian, his daggers passing through the gas-forms of the walkers. He couldn't kill them, but he was disrupting their internal pressure, making it impossible for them to focus their sonic attacks.
I went for the leader. I didn't use the hammer. I lunged forward, my bronze arm glowing with a fierce indigo light. I grabbed the Hollow-Walker by its translucent head.
I didn't strike it. I drank it.
I opened the intake valves in my palm—a function I hadn't known I possessed until this very moment. I felt the pressurized gas from the demon being sucked into the bronze lattice of my arm. It burned like ice, a freezing, chaotic energy that raced up to my shoulder. My arm began to vent white frost, the bronze plates expanding to accommodate the new pressure.
"CRACK."
The Hollow-Walker went limp, its glass shell collapsing into a pile of dull, lifeless sand.
The remaining constructs, sensing a predator they couldn't comprehend, dissolved into the wind, their gas dissipating into the green fog.
The Third Inheritor
Silence returned to the spires, broken only by the hiss of the leaking air-skiff. The figure in the leathers stood their ground, their gauntlet still raised, the silver light within the tubes pulsing warily.
"Who are you?" she demanded, her voice muffled by the glass mask. "Are you with the Sunderers? Did they send you to finish the harvest?"
I stepped forward, making sure the blue fire in my eye was visible. "I'm Vane. I'm an Architect. Or at least, I'm the one who woke up the Obelisk in Oakhaven."
The figure froze. She slowly lowered her gauntlet and reached up to unlatch her mask. As the glass plate fell away, I saw a girl no older than myself. Her hair was a shock of white-blonde, and her eyes were a piercing, chemical green. But it was her throat that caught my attention.
Fused into her collarbone was a silver device—a "Vocal Node"—that hummed with the same frequency as my arm.
"I'm Elara," she said, her voice now clear and carrying a strange, melodic resonance. "I'm the Alchemist of the Glass Sea. And I've been waiting for that signal for three days. My skiff didn't crash because of the wind, Vane. It crashed because the mountain told it to stop."
She held up her hand, and I saw it—the "Inheritance." It wasn't a sphere like mine. It was a silver cylinder, filled with a swirling, mercury-like liquid.
"The Alembics of the Ancients," Borin muttered, his eyes wide. "I thought those were just stories. Tools that could turn lead to gold and air to acid."
"They're not tools," Elara said, her eyes fixing on my bronze arm. "They're the Chemistry of the Soul. I can stabilize the Nodes, Vane. Your arm provides the spark, but without the right catalysts, the mountain's blood will turn to poison."
The Sunken Library
We didn't have time for a proper introduction. To the west, a massive, dark shape was rising from the glass dunes. It was a Sunderer Excavator—a moving fortress of iron and drills, the size of a small village. It was heading straight for the Sunken Library.
"They're going to dig it up," Kaelen said, his voice grim. "If they breach the Library's containment, the memory-pulse will wipe the minds of everyone in the valley. They'll forget their names, their homes... they'll be nothing but empty vessels for the Silver Rust."
"Not if we get to the core first," I said.
Elara looked at her ruined skiff, then at me. "I have a crate of stabilizers left, but I can't carry them across the dunes. Not with the Hollow-Walkers hunting."
"We carry them," Borin said, hoisting a massive crate onto his back with a grunt. "I've carried bigger loads than a few bottles of glow-water."
As we began the final trek toward the Library, Elara walked beside me. I could feel the resonance between my bronze arm and her silver node. It was a harmony—a perfect chord that made the air around us feel solid and safe.
"You're becoming it, aren't you?" she asked softly, her green eyes looking at the bronze lattice on my neck.
"I don't have a choice," I replied.
"There's always a choice, Architect. The machine wants you to be its hand. But you have to remember whose heart is still beating inside that cage."
I looked at my hand. The white light in my eye was reflecting off the glass dunes, casting a long, jagged shadow. I wasn't just a boy from Oakhaven anymore. I was a general of a forgotten war, and my soldiers were a blacksmith, a scout, and an alchemist with silver in her throat.
The Breach
We reached the Sunken Library just as the Sunderer Excavator began its primary drill. The sound was a physical assault—a grinding, bone-shaking roar that sent massive shards of glass flying into the air. The Library was a vast, inverted pyramid made of sapphire-glass, buried deep beneath the surface. As the drill bit into the sapphire, a scream of ancient data filled the air—a trillion voices crying out at once.
"The seal is breaking!" Kaelen yelled, shielding his eyes from the blinding white light erupting from the pit.
"Vane, the stabilizers!" Elara shouted, pointing to the primary coolant vents surrounding the pyramid. "If we don't dump the mercury now, the memory-leak will be permanent!"
I looked at the Excavator. It was guarded by dozens of Sunderer soldiers and at least three Centurions—the same massive, hydraulic monsters I had faced in the first vault.
"Borin, Kaelen—distract the Centurions!" I commanded. "Elara, follow me to the vents!"
I sprinted toward the pit, my bronze arm flaring with a violent, desperate indigo. I didn't care about the drills or the soldiers. I only cared about the Memory.
A Centurion stepped in my path, its massive shears snapping. I didn't dodge. I didn't slow down. I used the pressure from the gas I had absorbed from the Hollow-Walker.
"VENT!"
A blast of freezing, white mist erupted from my palm. The Centurion wasn't just hit; it was flash-frozen. The hydraulic fluid in its limbs turned to ice instantly, and the machine shattered under its own weight as it tried to swing.
I reached the vent, Elara right behind me. She handed me a silver vial, her hands steady despite the chaos.
"This is the Architect's Solvent," she said. "It will bond with your resonance. Pour it into the vent, and the Node will recognize your signature."
I took the vial. The mercury-like liquid within was singing—a beautiful, terrifying melody that matched the hum of my own arm. I poured it into the vent and jammed my bronze hand in after it.
The Library's Truth
The world vanished.
I wasn't in the Glass Sea. I was in a room of infinite books, each made of light. I saw the history of the world—the rise of the mountain, the first Architect, the betrayal of the Sunderers. And I saw the truth of the Silver Rust.
It wasn't a disease. It was a back-up.
The mountain was a seed-ship, and the Rust was the material it used to build a new world when the old one failed. But the Sunderers had corrupted the code. They weren't trying to destroy the world; they were trying to accelerate the reconstruction, turning all living things into raw material for their "New Heaven."
"No," I whispered.
I funneled my power, combined with Elara's solvent, into the Library's core. I didn't just stabilize the Node; I locked it. I encrypted the memory of the world behind a wall of indigo fire that only an Architect could breach.
"THOOM!"
The Excavator's drill shattered. The sapphire pyramid glowed with a soft, protective light, and the memory-leak stopped instantly. The Sunderer soldiers fell back, their masks cracking as the "Corrective Code" hit them.
The Aftermath
We stood at the edge of the pit, watching the Excavator retreat into the glass dunes. The Third Node was secure.
But as the indigo light faded, I looked at Elara. Her silver node was glowing a soft green, and for the first time, she looked terrified.
"Vane," she whispered. "The Library... it didn't just show you the past. It showed you the Fourth Node."
I nodded, my white eye fixed on the southern horizon, toward the Abyssal Forest.
"The Node of the Soul," I said, my voice heavy with the weight of the knowledge I had just stolen. "The one that gives the mountain its personality. And the Sunderers have already found it."
I looked at my hand. The bronze was now creeping toward my neck, its filigree forming a high, jagged collar. I was three Nodes in, with 337 to go. But for the first time, I wasn't alone.
"Let's move," I said, gripping my indigo hammer. "The forest is waiting. and it's been hungry for an Architect for a long, long time."