Ironreach was built on noise.
Steam shrieked through pipes like dying animals. Gears crushed metal into submission. Airships groaned overhead, their shadows slicing through the smog-choked sky.
But inside the abandoned clocktower in Sector Twelve—
There was silence.
Kael opened his eyes.
For a moment, he thought he was still inside the void.
The image lingered behind his eyelids:
The colossal mechanical eye.
Rotating planetary gears.
The voice calling him Subject Noctis.
His chest tightened.
Tick.
A slower rhythm now.
Controlled.
Artificial.
"You're awake."
The voice was soft but steady.
Kael turned his head.
The girl from the cathedral sat nearby, sleeves rolled up, oil lamp glowing beside her. Tools and dismantled machinery lay across a wooden table. She wore a brass monocle device over her right eye—its inner lens faintly glowing blue.
Up close, she didn't look like a soldier.
She looked like someone who studied storms instead of fighting them.
"You were unconscious for nine hours," she said. "Your internal core destabilized after the resonance spike."
Kael blinked. "My… what?"
She stood and approached slowly, like someone calming a wounded animal.
"Your heart," she said gently. "It's not fully biological."
He stiffened.
She noticed.
"I didn't open your chest," she added quickly. "The readings were external. My lens detects Aether fluctuations."
Aether.
Void.
Subject Noctis.
The words scraped inside his skull.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She hesitated for only a second.
"Lyra Veyne."
The name felt familiar.
Too familiar.
Like a song he almost remembered.
Outside, bells began ringing.
Not church bells.
Alarm bells.
Lyra's eyes darkened. "They've tracked you."
"Tracked…?"
"The Gear Church," she said quietly. "They don't ignore Void signatures."
Her monocle flickered as she glanced toward the window.
"They're sweeping the district."
Kael tried to sit up fully. Pain lanced through his shoulder—the bullet wound.
He looked down.
It was already closing.
Skin stitching itself unnaturally fast.
Lyra noticed his expression.
"That's not standard regeneration," she said. "Your core is rewriting damaged tissue."
Kael's voice dropped. "Am I… human?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she asked something stranger.
"When you were inside the fracture… what did you see?"
His breath hitched.
He remembered.
The endless dark.
The mechanical eye.
The voice.
"I saw something watching me," he whispered. "Something… bigger than the world."
Lyra's hand trembled slightly.
"That confirms it."
"Confirms what?"
Her gaze met his.
"You're synchronized with the Oblivion Engine."
The name felt heavy.
Ancient.
Wrong.
A distant explosion shook the clocktower.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
Lyra cursed under her breath. "They're closer than I thought."
She moved quickly, packing tools into a leather satchel.
Kael swung his legs off the table.
"I don't even know what I am," he said quietly, "Why are they hunting me?"
Lyra stopped.
For a moment, her confident investigator mask cracked.
"Because," she said softly, "the Church believes Void Cores are fragments of a failed god."
Kael's pulse quickened.
"And if someone can control one…"
She didn't finish.
Another explosion—closer.
Wood splintered below.
Bootsteps.
Mechanical limbs whirring.
"They're here."
Lyra grabbed his wrist.
The contact sent a strange warmth through his chest.
Tick.
The sound softened.
She led him up a spiral staircase toward the upper platform of the tower.
"We can't fight them head-on," she said, "You're unstable."
"How do you know that?"
She glanced back.
"Because I've been searching for you."
He froze.
The words hit harder than the explosions.
"What?"
"I didn't know your name," she said quickly, "But I've been tracking Void distortions for three years."
Three years.
"But I just woke up—"
"Yes."
That single word silenced him.
They reached the top of the tower.
Through broken glass windows, Ironreach stretched endlessly—smoke, gears, distant patrol airships scanning with searchlights.
Below, Church enforcers flooded the streets.
White coats.
Brass masks.
Rifles glowing with Aether rounds.
A man stepped forward from the crowd.
Tall. Calm. Mechanical arm gleaming in polished silver.
Archdeacon Malrick of the Gear Church.
"Void anomaly detected at upper elevation," he announced coldly, "Containment authorized."
His mechanical eye rotated upward.
It locked onto Kael.
Even from this distance, Kael felt it.
Recognition.
Lyra's voice dropped to a whisper.
"They'll dissect you."
Kael swallowed.
"Why do you care?"
She didn't look at him when she answered.
"Because I've seen what they do to people like you."
Her brother's face flashed in her mind.
Strapped to a table.
Eyes empty.
She pushed the memory down.
A rifle fired.
The bullet shattered the window beside Kael's head.
More followed.
The tower shook.
"Jump," Lyra said.
Kael stared at her.
"We'll die."
"No," she said firmly. "Trust me."
Something in her eyes silenced his doubt.
Not blind faith.
Not desperation.
Certainty.
He stepped toward the edge.
Below them—an impossible drop into smog and steel.
Lyra activated a device on her wrist.
Steam pressure built.
Wings of mechanical brass unfolded from her back.
Prototype glider system.
She grabbed his hand.
"Now!"
They jumped.
Wind tore past them.
Kael's stomach lurched.
Gunfire chased them downward.
Lyra angled the wings, steering through narrow gaps between buildings.
Searchlights locked onto them.
An airship roared closer.
Kael felt it again—
The distortion.
Fear triggered it.
The ticking accelerated.
TickTickTick—
The air around them warped.
The pursuing bullets slowed.
Not fully stopped.
Just… delayed.
Lyra noticed.
"You're bending space," she breathed.
"I'm not doing it on purpose!"
"I know!"
A cannon blast from the airship ripped through the tower behind them, sending debris raining down.
Lyra veered hard left.
Steam pressure fluctuated.
Warning alarms blinked on her wrist.
"We won't make it far like this," she muttered.
Kael looked back.
Archdeacon Malrick stood atop a distant rooftop, coat billowing.
His mechanical eye glowed crimson.
"Subject Noctis," his voice echoed through amplified speakers, "Return peacefully, Your existence is a deviation."
Deviation.
The word stabbed deeper than any bullet.
Kael's vision blurred.
For a split second—
He saw another world layered over this one.
Ironreach stripped away.
Beneath it—massive machinery.
Infinite gears.
As if the entire city were just surface decoration over a cosmic engine.
And deep below—
Something sleeping.
Something waiting.
His chest burned.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Lyra shook him. "Stay with me!"
The distortion faded.
Gravity snapped back fully.
They crashed onto a lower rooftop, rolling hard.
Lyra's wings shattered on impact.
Silence fell except for distant sirens.
Kael lay on his back, staring at the smog-filled sky.
"You saw it again, didn't you?" Lyra asked softly.
He nodded.
"The world isn't… real," he whispered.
Her expression didn't show surprise.
"Not entirely," she said.
He turned to her.
"You knew?"
She looked toward the horizon, where the Celestial Ring glowed falsely above the clouds.
"I've seen fractures," she said. "Places where reality thins. Places where you can see the machinery underneath."
She faced him fully now.
"And every time… your signature appears nearby."
The wind howled between buildings.
For a moment, the chaos felt distant.
"Kael," she said carefully, as if testing the name.
"When I was twelve… a Void incident destroyed my district."
His breath caught.
"There was one survivor pulled from the center of the distortion."
His mind felt like cracking glass.
"A boy," she whispered.
"Without a heartbeat."
The ticking inside him stopped.
Silence.
Then—
THUMP.
A single, unnatural pulse.
Her eyes shimmered—not with fear.
With recognition.
"I think," Lyra said quietly, "you've died before."
Searchlights swept the rooftop.
Voices shouted below.
No time left.
Kael pushed himself up.
"I don't know what I am," he said.
Lyra stood beside him.
"Then we'll find out."
The sirens grew louder.
Ironreach trembled beneath the turning of unseen gears.
And far below the city—
The Oblivion Engine rotated one fraction faster.