Three days later, Dornheim had transformed into a well-regulated engine. The mud had baked dry, and the rhythmic bite of axes and the harsh clang of metal completely replaced the settlement's anxious silence.
Marek stood waist-deep in a trench along the southern perimeter.
"Take it to the right!" he roared at two laborers straining to hoist a scorched stone block with timber skids. "Your lever’s ashwood—it'll snap like a twig at that angle! Wedge some stone under the pivot point, double time!"
The men shifted silently, executing the order without a word.
In the makeshift infirmary, thrown together inside one of the few surviving stone outbuildings, the air was thick with the sharp stench of rubbing alcohol and dried wormwood. Albert, Dornheim’s sole physician, grunted irritably as he threw a tight, brutal stitch into a young woodcutter's forearm.
"Iron is a hard thing, lad. Your flesh is not," the old man muttered, snapping the thread with a sharp jerk. "You go checking cable tension with your bare hands again, and don't look to me to sew you back together. Wrap it in a clean rag and get out of my sight. Next! Who’s here for the splinter?"
Deep within the forge, the heat was suffocating.
Iron sat at a crudely assembled table in the far corner, safely removed from the roaring blast furnace. The surface before him was covered in sheets of heavy parchment, each lined with precise, immaculate blueprints—new winches, reinforced pickaxes, and heavy-duty axles for the transport carts.
"Darwin, the pitch angle on the teeth of this gear needs to be exactly fifteen degrees," Iron said, tapping the blueprint with the blunt end of a pencil. "If it's off by even a fraction, the chain will throw the moment it hits a real load."
Darwin brought his hammer down hard onto a white-hot iron blank, sending a violent cascade of sparks into the dark.
"I'll get to it. Let the steel breathe first."
"Fine."
Midday mess was the only pocket of silence Dornheim knew—the solitary hour when the mechanical cacophony died down, replaced by the hollow clatter of wooden spoons against bowls. Near the massive communal cauldron in the square, the air grew rich with the savory steam of wild herbs and the very boar they had hunted days before.
Iron sat a short distance apart beneath the shade of a canvas awning, his untouched portion resting on his lap.
Further down the way, lounging on a sprawling, fallen log, were the other two.
"Get your weed away from my bowl," Noah muttered lazily.
A pale green shoot had snaked out from the churned earth, coiling tightly around his boot and slowly inching its way toward the rim of his plate.
"It's not a weed, it's a sensor," Elyria replied smoothly. She was perched in a patch of direct sunlight, her face tilted up toward the warmth. "You spend so much time skulking in the dark I can't tell if you're breathing. I'm merely making sure you haven't rotted away. You radiate cold."
"It's called composure," Noah countered, casually flipping the vine away with the flat tip of his trench knife. "You, on the other hand, smell of damp soil."
"Look who's talking," Elyria scoffed, adjusting a wild bloom woven into her hair. "Who was whining for half an hour yesterday that his daggers were 'dulled by the air' just so he wouldn't have to admit he was exhausted?"
"The air in this forest is choked thick with your parlor tricks," Noah parried.
Iron let out a slow breath, watching them from afar.
How tired I am of their stubborn bickering... Yet, it's their way of keeping a safe distance. Still, a total pain in the ass.
"Cut the hissing, both of you," Iron said aloud, rolling his chair closer to the log. "In the last three days, you two have burned through enough of my nerves to last a lifetime."
"He started it," Elyria shot back instantly.
"She is, by definition, insufferable," Noah added in the exact same cadence.
Iron simply shook his head.
"Noah, once you're done eating, sweep the southern perimeter. Marek says the scouts spotted strange tracks down there. Elyria, go help Albert with his poultices—he’s completely out of antiseptics."
The pair exhaled a synchronized sigh, but they rose from the log in perfect unison.
Meanwhile, many miles away, the southern road was a torn and jagged morass, yet a massive carriage plated in blackened steel rolled over it with relentless momentum. Inside, nestled against heavy velvet cushions, sat a man. His fingers, heavy with signet rings, tapped a slow, rhythmic cadence against the pommel of his broadsword.
"Dornheim, then..." he murmured softly, his cold gaze fixed on the bleak, grey wasteland passing outside his tinted window. "Let us see what it amounts to."
Three months ago.
In a subterranean hall lit only by the guttering flame of iron torches, three men stood waiting—Valdes, Edriac, and Olgerd.
A voice came from the deep shadows at the far end of the long table.
"You are anxious. It is irrational. Fear clouds data."
"My Lord..." Edriac began, but his voice cracked, dying in his throat.
"Dornheim has unearthed what we have spent decades seeking," the voice from the shadows continued, cold and unyielding. "Ore. The fuel for what comes next. I require one hundred percent of the supply. Not ninety-nine. One hundred. This is not a request; it is the baseline for your continued existence."
The silhouette shifted slightly. The sharp, scratching sound of a quill carving into parchment echoed through the silence of the vault.
"Your mandate is simple. Negotiate. Offer gold, titles. If their leader proves... unamenable, eliminate him. And purge whatever mages have entrenched themselves there. Those parasites on the world's flesh only impede progress."
"And the small folk?" old Olgerd asked, his voice raspy and hollow. "If it comes to blood..."
The voice instantly dropped, heavy with a suffocating gravity.
"Leave the townspeople alive. At all costs."
The three kings swallowed hard, their throats dry.
"We understand, My Lord," Valdes answered for them all.
"Good. Leave us."
They backed out of the chamber slowly, careful never to turn their backs to the dark. When the heavy iron doors finally groaned shut, the voice in the hall spoke once more, barely above a whisper, addressing the empty air.
"Well then, Iron... let us see how clean your mind truly is of magical filth."
Dornheim. Present Day. Three hours later.
Elyria froze dead-center in the town square. Her fingers dug violently into the bark of a nearby tree.
"What is it?" Noah was at her side in a heartbeat, his hand already locked around the hilt of his dagger.
"The earth is trembling," the spirit whispered, her eyes wide. "Not the hooves of monsters. Shod horses. Heavy iron. Expensive timber. Someone... powerful is approaching our gates."
"Sound the alarm!" Noah bellowed, whipping around toward Marek. "Get the civilians to the bunker! Man the walls!"
Dornheim bristled instantly, a dozen heavy crossbows snapping into position along the wooden palisades. But when a single carriage rounded the bend instead of an invading vanguard—shining with gold leaf and bearing unfamiliar heraldry—a tense, breathless silence fell over the settlement.
The carriage door swung open. A boot of the finest, unblemished leather stepped firmly down into the mud.
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