The corpse had decomposed until nothing remained but a bleached skeleton; its original features were long gone.
Having watched plenty of forensic dramas in his previous life, Byrne could tell the skeleton was male and likely no older than thirty. The bones were fixed in a kneeling position, arms wrapped across the chest in a posture that resembled a devout believer. However, the object of this worship was, strangely enough, a furnace.
Could this person have been a member of the Cult Mechanicus? Byrne wondered.
But on second thought, he doubted it. In his understanding, followers of the Machine God almost always integrated themselves with machinery through bionic augmentations, their ultimate pursuit being "The flesh is weak, the machine is salvation." Yet this skeleton was perfectly intact, without a single trace of cybernetic enhancement.
Just then, Byrne spotted something. He knelt beside the remains, lowering his torch to get a better look.
As his gaze shifted down, he saw a ring on the skeleton's right index finger. It was made of solid red-gold, with a signet-like crest engraved into the ruby at its center. Under the firelight, the gem refracted tiny splinters of crimson light that danced against the metallic luster of the gold. Despite the passage of years and the bite of erosion, its noble quality remained undeniable.
Judging by the trail of bloody footprints, this person had walked here willingly. Was it murder, or suicide?
Byrne didn't touch the remains immediately. Instead, he circled the area with his torch. Aside from the central furnace and the skeleton, the underground space held nothing else of note. Rusted metal fragments were scattered across the floor, looking like the wreckage of some forgotten machinery. The maw of the furnace was pitch black, though faint charred marks and a lingering burnt scent clung to the interior—perhaps the residue of ancient fuel, or something else entirely.
Finding no signs of a struggle or damage to the bones, the likelihood of suicide grew. But why walk down to this subterranean furnace to end one's life in such a ritualistic pose?
Byrne's eyes returned to the red-gold ring. Its craftsmanship was exquisite, far beyond anything a commoner could own—finer, even, than any jewelry he remembered seeing on the wealthy. The engraving on the ruby was intricate yet orderly, radiating a sense of solemnity.
Looking at the pattern, Byrne was instantly reminded of the family crest on Selena's collar. Though the styles differed, the "feel" was remarkably similar.
Was this man a nobleman?
Byrne decided to take the ring; he would show it to Selena once he returned to the surface. As a high-born lady, she might recognize the heraldry.
Still, he remained cautious. Before reaching for the ring, he used his entrenching shovel to poke the skeleton a few times. Once he was sure no hidden traps or pressure plates were triggered, he safely retrieved the ring.
With the ring secured, Byrne turned his full attention to the massive furnace.
The structure was cast from a dark, somber alloy, its surface covered in scratches of varying depths—scars left by years of intense heat and the slow creep of decay. Standing at its base, the ten-meter-high furnace made Byrne feel incredibly small. He brought his torch closer to inspect the walls.
The furnace was etched with blurred lines, most of them rusted beyond recognition, though a few remained clear. They looked like ancient machine-runes, perhaps the work of a tech-priest. When he touched the engravings, the surface felt rough and cold, yet he felt a phantom trace of residual warmth—as if the furnace had been running quite recently.
"That's eerie. This place has been abandoned for at least seven or eight years. How could there be any warmth left?"
Puzzled, Byrne circled to the other side of the furnace. There, he found a mark unlike the rest. A section of the wall was lighter in color, as if it had been intentionally wiped clean, revealing a palm-sized recess. The edges were perfectly machined, clearly man-made rather than the result of natural erosion.
Leaning in with his torch, Byrne saw a ring of fine circuitry inside the recess. At the center sat a crystal battery—the exact same model he had found in the ore crate. However, the energy in this battery was completely spent.
"Strange. A furnace that runs on electricity?"
Byrne had been in the world of Warhammer for less than a month, but in his memories—and the time spent working alongside his father—he had encountered and repaired countless machines. He had never heard of a furnace requiring a crystal battery.
Standard furnaces relied on mineral fuel or large-scale energy cores. While a crystal battery provided stable storage, it shouldn't have been able to handle the massive energy consumption required to run a smelter—especially not one this size. A one-meter-tall hobbyist furnace was one thing, but a ten-meter behemoth? The energy required for full combustion was incalculable.
Byrne looked closer. The battery model, the specs, and even the energy conduction paths on the surface were identical to the ones in his crate.
He touched the collar around his neck and sneered. "Marcus... did you set all this up just to bet that someone would find this place?"
Truthfully, even without the connection to Marcus, Byrne was dying to see what would happen if he restarted the machine.
Having made up his mind, Byrne reached into the recess to pull out the dead battery. It was stuck tight. He had to use his shovel to slowly pry it out, moving carefully to avoid damaging the surrounding circuits. After several minutes of work, the spent battery finally popped free.
Byrne took a fresh crystal battery from his supply and slid it into the slot.
Click.
The battery seated perfectly.
In an instant, the silent runes surrounding the recess flared to life. A low hum began to vibrate through the entire furnace. One by one, the blurred ancient inscriptions on the hull lit up, a flow of blue light spreading through the carvings until the entire underground chamber was bathed in an eerie cerulean glow.
Byrne instinctively retreated a few steps, hand gripping the pistol at his back, watching the transformation.
The humming grew louder. An intake vent at the base of the furnace slowly ground open, belching a cloud of hot air that caused the temperature in the chamber to spike. More shockingly, the interior of the vent wasn't empty; it housed a translucent crystal panel. Across its surface, lines of Ancient Imperial Script began to scroll.
Byrne couldn't read all of it, but he managed to decipher the opening lines:
The Rift stirs; the Dark Crow shall fall. The Savior shall be born, and when the time comes, they must be tempered in the Pure Fire...
The prophetic text hung in the air for less than thirty seconds before flickering out and vanishing.