In Iron-Peak, the mountains didn't just hold the sky; they crushed it.
The nation was a vertical hive of soot and iron, where every street was a staircase and every window looked out onto a drop that could turn a man into a memory. To live here was to live in a perpetual state of labor. The air was a thick soup of coal-dust and sulfur, vibrating with the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the Great Forges—the mechanical heart of a people who refused to be small, even in a world of monsters.
Jack Flint stood before a white-hot crucible, his face slick with a mixture of sweat and grease. To his left, a Colossal named Kael—a man standing eleven feet tall with shoulders like a mountain ridge—heaved a ton of raw ore into the furnace as if it were a bag of grain.
"You're over-tuning that core, Jack," Kael rumbled. The sound was like a rockslide, deep enough to make the water in Jack's canteen ripple. "The Blood Knights want reliability, not a miniature sun that might turn their hand into ash."
Jack didn't look up from the brass housing. He was delicate with the tweezers, adjusting the minute lead-fins that shielded the Rex Orb. "The Knights are dying because the standard housings can't bleed off the kinetic feedback of a Giant's skin. If the heat doesn't escape, the orb cracks. If the orb cracks, the Knight is just a man with a very expensive stick."
"And if you keep stealing military-grade orbs to experiment on, you'll be a man with a very short life," Kael grunted, though his tone held a rough, protective edge. "Go. The soot is clogging your lungs. Get some air at the Tier-Four vents."
Jack didn't go to the vents. He went higher.
He climbed the internal scaffolding of the Obsidian Wall, passing through the massive, arched tunnels built for Colossal transit. He stopped at the First Bastion—the "Lowest Reach." While the Obsidian Wall eventually pierced the clouds at 3,000 feet, the First Bastion sat at a mere two hundred feet above the killing fields. It was the only place where the air was thick enough to hear the world outside clearly.
He reached a narrow refuse-chute—a smooth, obsidian pipe used to jettison forge-slag outside the wall. He sat on the edge, his legs dangling over the two-hundred-feet drop.
Outside, the world was a jagged, grey nightmare of permafrost and mist. And there, sitting in the shadow of the wall's foundation, was a Speaker.
It was fifty feet of pale, stretched muscle, its skin the color of a drowned man. It sat cross-legged, its knees brushing its chin, watching the wall with a patient, predatory stillness.
Then, it spoke.
It didn't roar. It didn't growl. It whispered. The sound wasn't carried by the wind; it seemed to vibrate directly through the obsidian stones Jack sat upon.
"...Jack..."
Jack's blood turned to ice. He gripped the edge of the chute so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Jack... little spark... come and see."
Jack thought that this voice was his mother's. It was the exact melody she used to hum while she sharpened his father's Blood Knight blades ten years ago. It was impossible. She had died in the jaws of a Giant during the Siege of the West Gate.
The Giant leaned forward into the moonlight. In its massive, grey hand, it held a tattered, rusted piece of chest-plate armor. Even from two hundred feet up, Jack could see the faded, engraved letters on the steel: FLINT.
The Giants didn't just eat flesh. They harvested. They took the names, the tokens, and the memories of the fallen, using them as bait. They had been watching the wall for a decade, waiting for the child who survived to grow into a man who remembered.
"Give it back," Jack whispered, his voice cracking.
The Giant grinned. Its mouth unhinged, revealing rows of black, needle-thin teeth that looked like charred wood. "The metal is cold, Jack. But the memory is warm. Just... lean... further."
Above Jack, a sentry on the parapet—a young man no older than nineteen—was already leaning. His eyes were milky and unfocused, his hands fumbling with the latch of the heavy iron security gate. The Giant's voice was a psychic hook, reeling him in.
"Wake up!" Jack screamed, but the sentry didn't hear him. The Giant's "song" was too loud.
Jack reached into his satchel. He pulled out the unstable Rex Orb housing—the one he had "over-tuned." He didn't just throw it; he slammed it into the Pneumatic Refuse Chute.
He hit the manual release.
A blast of pressurized air hissed through the pipe. The housing didn't fall; it shot out like a cannonball, propelled by the forge's exhaust system. It bypassed the wind, cutting a straight, violet line through the mist.
It hit the Giant's outstretched palm—the one holding his father's armor—and detonated.
A blinding flash of violet energy erupted. This wasn't a clean burn; it was a "Core-Bleed." A shockwave of raw, ionized light slammed into the Giant's face.
The mother's voice vanished instantly, replaced by a shriek so guttural it rattled the window-slits of the entire Tier. The Giant recoiled, its pale skin sizzling where the energy had touched it. It dropped the armor, clutching its face with hands the size of houses.
The sentry above snapped out of his trance, collapsing to his knees and gasping for air as if he'd been underwater for an hour.
The Giant stood up, its massive head nearly reaching the level of the Bastion. Its eyes—two black pits of liquid hate—fixed on the refuse chute.
"I... will... remember... your... scent," it rumbled, its real voice sounding like grinding tectonic plates. It slammed a fist into the obsidian wall. The vibration threw Jack backward into the soot-stained corridor, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs.
"Don't move!"
The heavy clank-clank of iron boots echoed in the hall. A squad of High Wardens—massive Colossals in matte-black plate—surrounded him, their 10-foot halberds crossed over his chest.
Behind them walked a Blood Knight. His cloak was tattered, and his Rex-Orb sword hummed with a low, dangerous violet light. He looked at the smoking pneumatic chute, then down at the gasping blacksmith.
"You used a Grade-3 core as a kinetic slug," the Knight said, his voice a dry rasp behind his visor. "Do you have any idea how much that costs the Crownstorm treasury?"
Jack sat up, spitting a mouthful of blood and soot onto the floor. "Cost? That thing was five seconds away from convincing your sentry to jump into its mouth. I'd say the core paid for itself."
The Knight tilted his head, looking at Jack's grease-stained hands and the tools still hanging from his belt. He didn't call for the irons. Instead, he reached down and picked up a piece of the brass casing that had survived the blast.
"You didn't just trigger the orb," the Knight realized, his voice dropping an octave. "You modified the pressure-vents. You turned a battery into a bomb."
"Everything is a bomb if you're desperate enough," Jack spat.
The Knight was silent. Outside, the Giant let out one last, haunting howl before retreating into the grey mists of the Age of Rot.
"The Wardens want you executed for breaking the Silent Watch," the Knight said, sheathing his blade with a sharp clack. "But I've seen enough soldiers who know how to die. I need someone who knows how to kill. Pack your hammer, Flint. We're going to the Citadel."