moke coils from the shattered turret in slow, smothering ribbons—dense, tar-thick, and unwilling to rise. It lingers, stagnant in the ruined air, choking the breath from her lungs. Selene inhales carefully, shallow and deliberate, and the taste of ash rolls bitter across her tongue like old grief. The soot clings to her throat, to her skin, to thought itself.
She sees Gorik through the haze—his broad frame doubled over in a fit of coughing, hand swiping across his face. When he straightens, his fingertips are blackened, smearing soot over skin already dark with grime. He doesn’t speak, but his eyes meet hers. A flicker of contact. Silent confirmation. Are you still standing?
Selene answers only by staying upright.
Her robes are in ruins. Once ceremonial tan and green—white silk, trimmed with silver sigils, tailored with precision for field use—they now hang in burnt, sagging layers. Ash has settled in every crease. The weight of it is almost ceremonial in its own right. She shifts, and the fabric rasps against her skin, a whisper of shame.
Her hair, always combed and kept in a neat tail, has escaped her pins. Now it clings in limp, orange strands across her cheek and jaw, dulled by smoke and sweat. She resists the urge to fix it. There is no dignity here worth preserving.
She lowers her gaze, deliberately, to where Lyra crouches among the rubble. The girl is too quiet. Too still. Her clothes—once bright, almost garish in hue—have dimmed to shades of charcoal, streaked and blotted by soot. There’s a jagged smear across her cheek, like war paint painted by a blind hand.
Selene feels it again—that twitch of unease along her spine.
Past them, the Fell-Hounds do not move.
Their bodies, massive and muscled, should be shifting constantly—tails flicking, fire-tipped, jaws parted in warning. But now, those tails lie limp. The flames at their ends gutter weakly, like dying candles in windless dark.
She watches them too long. Watches for breath. Watches for signs of death.
No. Not death. Not yet. But dimmed. Hollowed.
The necrotic blasts had done more than tear through stone and steel. The spells had stolen something vital. Something unseen.
She clenches her jaw, and her tongue grazes the roof of her mouth—metallic. Her spellwork still hums beneath her skin, but dimmer. Slower. Like her aether is struggling to draw breath too.
she tells herself. Like the weave itself recoils from contact.
She files the thought away. Later, she'll test the ley-thread. Later, she'll check for fracture points in her casting pattern. But now—now she simply watches. Measures. Records.
Because that’s what’s left to her. Observation in place of control. Reflection where precision once ruled.
The ruin breathes around them like a wounded beast.
And Selene listens.
Selene’s breath stills. Her thoughts seize mid-motion, caught like a thread snagged on rusted metal.
The sound reaches her first—mechanical, whirring, high and thin, slicing through the lingering smoke like a bone saw. Her ears twitch. The hairs on her arms rise. She turns, slowly, every movement calculated, though her pulse stutters beneath her skin.
Dozens of them. Automatons, perfectly polished, eerily pristine. Their smooth faces shine pale in the dark, dressed in stiff uniforms—formally cut, eerily domestic. Not soldiers. Not guards.
She thinks.
But even that term feels too human, too soft for what they are.
Two step forward with unnerving symmetry. Tall. Graceful. Cold. Bob and Crispin.
She knows them.
Not in passing. Not as theory or rumor. She knows them the way she knows spellcraft etched into her bones—intimate, implicit, unspoken.
And yet she has never seen these machines before.
Selene’s jaw locks tight. Her pulse pounds against her temples. The memory isn’t memory—it’s presence, weightless and invasive. As if someone has quietly rewritten the map of her mind and left the ink to dry in her sleep.
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The constructs unfold.
Their limbs extend with a soft hiss—jointed arms blooming outward, delicate fingers splitting into wide turbines. The blades hum to life. Spin. Accelerate. A windstorm bursts outward, scattering ash and smoke in great spirals. The sky clears above them, but her ribs still feel too tight. Too caged.
The question settles deep. Presses behind her eyes. No answer forms—only the shape of absence where reason should be.
Two more emerge. Cindy and Genevieve.
They glide across the ruined floor, untouched by debris, skirts unruffled. Maids. Serene. Terrifying in their elegance. Tools slide out from their wrists—brooms, mops, perfectly formed and instantly functional. They begin to clean. Without pause. Without hesitation. The movements are flawless. Every sweep of ash, every smear wiped clean—it’s too precise. Too practiced.
Selene watches as chaos is erased with clockwork grace. As if none of it happened. As if the ruin never reached this place.
To her left, Garik mutters something under his breath. His arms are crossed, knuckles pale. His jaw works, tension ticking just beneath the skin. He doesn’t look at her.
“Not exactly what I pictured for war machines,” he says. The disbelief cuts through the grit in his throat. He wipes at his brow, leaving a long streak through the soot.
He sounds irritated. But there’s hesitation beneath it. Unease he hasn’t yet named.
Selene doesn’t respond. Her focus stays locked on the porcelain constructs.
Inside, her thoughts fracture and reform—half-spells, broken theories, mismatched runes and tangled threads of arcane memory. Nothing fits. Nothing holds. And still, she knows them.
She shouldn’t. But she does.
She presses her fingers into her palm, grounding herself in the ache. Cool skin. Real pain. Something constant to hold against the wrongness that now bleeds into the world like ink spilled on old parchment. The machines clean. And Selene watches, eyes sharp and mind racing—searching the familiar in the unfamiliar. Waiting for the moment memory aligns with meaning. Still unsure if that moment should come.
A metallic clink snaps through the smoke—clean, cold, precise. Selene’s ears twitch. Subtle, instinctive. A warning. Her spine stiffens, breath thinning as she pivots with care. Every motion measured.
Out of the haze, it lurches forward.
The Automaton is a spider—old-fashioned, obsolete by most standards. Its brass limbs groan with each uneven step, joints clicking in disharmony. Age clings to it like oil. The metal gleams dully, dulled to a coppery patina like a coin passed through too many hands. Not discarded. Just… forgotten.
A hiss.
Without preamble, a hidden valve bursts open, and a column of water erupts from the machine’s side. It slams into the Fell-Hounds. A direct hit.
Selene flinches. Not from the force, but from the suddenness of it—the way heat vanishes beneath steam. The hounds reel back, their coats soaked, tails sagging low. Fire gutters from their bodies like a candle snuffed mid-prayer. The blaze dies. The light dies. Something essential unravels in their silence.
She doesn’t speak.
Neither does Lyra—not at first. Only a breath. Sharp, clipped. “What in the—?”
The question dies, unfinished.
Selene stares. Unblinking. Muscles tight beneath her skin, coiled for motion. The Spider-Bot does not explain itself.
It shifts instead.
Its limbs fold in, mechanical joints hissing softly. Metal groans against itself, reshaping as plates peel back. Selene watches, uneasy. The transformation is disturbingly elegant—almost organic. From its frame, nozzles unfurl like blooming iron lilies.
Then: ignition.
A thin burst of flame—clean, deliberate—rolls across the air. It grazes the Fell-Hounds with surgical precision. Not an attack. A restoration.
The fire takes.
Their tails catch first, flames sparking back to life like stubborn coals under wind. The hounds shake violently, water flinging in wide arcs, fire clinging tighter with every motion. Their bodies blaze again, tails swaying—not in anger, but relief. As if reborn.
Selene exhales, a slow thread of breath through her teeth. But her pulse thuds too fast. Too loud.
Garik shifts beside her. She catches it—a drop in his shoulders, a soft collapse inward. Defeat, drawn in subtle lines across his face. "Right… definitely not what I meant by ‘efficient,’” he mutters. His voice is worn thin. Hands drag across his brow like he’s trying to rub sense into his skull.
Then it comes.
A chime—high, crystalline, merciless—rings out through the silence.
Selene’s ears flick. The sound sharpens something inside her. Her gaze snaps to Bob.
The butler automaton stands motionless, but his pocket watch vibrates with light. Pale blue—no, silver. Wrong, somehow. The glow warps across the stone, stretching their shadows into long, crawling limbs.
Above them, the turret groans awake.
Gears grind like bone against stone. Selene’s breath stalls.
The turret shudders—its structure cracked, riddled with old wounds—but still it rises. Iron fused with something older, something not quite mechanical. Magic clings to it in runes burned half-dead.
She watches it claw its way upright. The whole mechanism trembles, forced to move despite itself.
The thought slips in. Sharp. Unavoidable.
Her mind grips it, but it writhes. Refuses explanation. Still, she watches. Steady. Silent. Eyes wide with measured dread.