Silence held the second-floor room of the guest house. Darwin had installed an improvised air humidifier, cobbled together from Iron’s rough sketches.
Albert, the old doctor, sat in an armchair by the window. He held a notebook covered in tight, cramped script.
"Day three," he muttered to himself, not looking at his notes. "Pulse fifty-two. Body temperature thirty-five point four. I fear that when you finally choose to come back, Iron, you won't like what you see."
Cassian’s "gravitational needle" had left its scar. Where the artisans' quarters and grain warehouses once stood, a shallow crater now yawned. A jagged bowl filled with pulverized stone, splintered timber, and ruined household belongings.
Count Wayland stood at the lip of the depression. He wore a plain leather doublet, heavily splattered with lime dust.
"Your Excellency," Walter approached him, looking entirely drained. "We've cleared the main access road to the water pump. But the foundations of the adjacent houses have shifted. If we don't reinforce them now, the mill will collapse by dawn."
Wayland stared at the mounds of rubble. His guardsmen were working shoulder to shoulder with the surviving townsfolk, but manual labor wasn't enough.
"Where is he?" the Count asked, looking around.
"Right here," a cold voice cut in from directly behind him.
Noah stood atop a heap of debris. He wore a simple worker’s shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows.
"We need to raise the warehouse's central beam," Wayland said, gesturing toward the wreckage. "The access mechanism for the sluice gates is pinned beneath it. Darwin says we can't restore water to the remaining quarters without it. It needs twenty men with winches. Or just you."
Noah stepped up to the massive, iron-bound oak log jammed between two granite slabs. He wrapped his fingers around the wood.
A low, guttural crack groaned through the air. The stones beneath Noah’s boots began to crumble, grinding into the dirt under the sudden weight. With a sharp, sudden exhale, he wrenched the beam upward, balancing it on his shoulder.
"Get your braces under it," he spat at the guards, who stood staring, mouths open. "I have no intention of holding this forever."
While the workers scrambled to jam temporary piles beneath the timber, a sudden gust of warm air swept over the rubble.
"Too much noise," Elyria's voice rustled.
She materialized directly on top of the lifted beam. Today she looked different—her dress was woven from withered leaves and brittle bark, her hair resembling a tangle of dry roots.
She pressed her palms against the cracked foundation of the nearest house.
"The earth is angry," she said sadly. "It doesn't want to hold these stones anymore."
"Then talk it into it," Noah grunted, adjusting his grip on the beam.
Thick, ropy roots rapidly tore out from the fissures in the foundation. They laced together, packing the voids and binding the masonry in a tight, living grid.
"Better?" Elyria looked down at Noah. At the center of the fractured stone, a pair of delicate, pale blue snowdrops instantly bloomed.
"You’re hopeless." Noah dropped the beam onto the newly set braces and wiped his hands on his trousers.
"We will rebuild all of this, Wayland.
Walter! Direct the carpenters to the east bridge. And tell Darwin to stop trying to crank the pumps by hand—he’s only going to strip the threads. Tell him to wait until Noah is free," Wayland commanded.
Night fell over the town abruptly, burying the ruins in blue twilight. Inside Iron’s workshop, the air was bright—Darwin had lit every single lamp within reach. He sat hunched over the workbench, buried under shredded blueprints. His arms were caked in fuel oil up to the elbows, and tears ran down his face.
"Why is everything so damn complicated, Iron?" he whispered, staring hard at the diagram of a distribution valve. "Why couldn't you just write like a normal person? 'Etheric resistance vector minus the square root of steam pressure'... What the hell does that even mean?"
Darwin was trying to overhaul the main steam boiler that fed the plumbing, but Iron’s technical formulas read like pure delirium.
The workshop door creaked open, letting in a draft of cold air and Noah. He walked silently to the bench, picked up one of the schematics, and flipped it around.
"You’re looking at it upside down," Noah said.
"What difference does it make?!" Darwin snapped, leaping up and flinging his calipers across the room. "He’s been out for three days! People have no water, the College mages could hit us again at any second, and I... I can't even figure out how this miserable valve works!"
Noah placed a hand on Darwin’s shoulder.
"We do what we can. Wayland spent half the day writing to the neighboring duchies, bluffing with the 'Iron Boar' when he knows damn well the machine is dead weight right now. Elyria is binding the soil so the walls don't buckle. I’m hauling stone."
Darwin sniffled, then slowly sank back into his seat.
While Dornheim pieced itself back together, the political storm was gaining momentum. Wayland remained locked in his study with Walter, his desk buried under a mountain of intelligence reports.
"The College is furious," Walter reported. "But they’re terrified. Rumors are spreading through the capital that you have an ancient demon and a forest deity under your command. The King remains silent, but his inner council is demanding an investigation."
"Let them demand it." Wayland pressed a cold glass of wine to his temples. "I’ve declared Dornheim a zone of supreme Crown interest. That buys us two weeks. If Iron doesn't invent something even more terrifying by then..."
"Forgive me for interrupting," Walter interjected quietly, "but he's still not telling us the whole truth, even about 'Point Number One.' I don't think this man can be trusted unconditionally."
"Correct. That's precisely why, if he continues to hide the true nature of the 'Point,' we'll simply join forces with the entire Collegium."
The Count looked out the window at the dark, jagged silhouettes of the rising houses and added:
"Those strange creatures... watch your step around them, Walter."
"You mean Noah and Elyria?"
"Exactly. You never know what they might pull."
Midnight came and went. In Iron’s room, Albert drifted off in his chair, his notebook slipping from his fingers onto the floor. The oil lamp flickered low, throwing long, warped shadows across the walls.
Darwin, who had come to relieve the doctor on watch, sat quietly on a stool beside the bed. He brought along a small gear he had spent the afternoon milling himself.
"Look at this," he whispered, setting the gear down on the nightstand. "You’d absolutely tear me apart for craftsmanship this bad. So come on. Wake up and scream at me. Tell me I’m a hack, that I shouldn't even be allowed to touch a file. Please."
"Idiot..." Noah thought, watching the scene from the sidelines.
But suddenly, he froze.
His sharp hearing caught it. Iron’s heart, which had been beating with a sluggish, dragging rhythm, missed a beat.
Then it hammered. Faster. Forty... fifty... seventy beats.
Deep inside the right prosthesis, something clicked. A clean, mechanical snap. The index finger of the steel hand twitched, dragging against the bedsheet.
Darwin caught his breath. Albert snapped awake, his head jerking up instantly.
Iron drew a ragged, heavy breath, finally breaking the surface. His chest rose, locking tight for a single, frozen second.
His eyelids fluttered. And slowly, he opened his eyes.
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