Days melded grey in the factory’s wake, its hum a chain renewed. Elias returned, hands moving rote amidst steel’s clang—the protest’s echo dim, a spark snuffed swift by iron’s tread. He shunned the others, their faces a mirror to his stand—frail, fleeting, now dust.

  The machines churned, blind to their pause—a beast unbroken, its growl a jeer he’d not outrun. Each piece he shaped bore no mark of care, only haste—a theft of hands once true. His father’s curse lingered, a low pulse in his skull—not scorn now, but a weight of loss he’d borne beside him.

  He felt the lad’s bloodied curse too—raw, sharp—a sting from that day’s fray, a cry no steel could mute. Was this their price—to toil in hush, souls ground to ash? Elias’s chest tightened, dread a stone within—not for craft’s fade, but for men he’d stood with, now bent.

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  The lathe spun, relentless—a thief of breath, of will. His hands shook, scarred by steel they’d fought, now bound. Thomas passed, grim and silent—a tether from the gates, a bond unbowed yet frayed. Could he face him, this shell he’d become—a man who’d struck and stilled?

  The hum pressed, a foe he’d not felled—an iron shroud over hope. Elias saw his father’s eyes, fierce in death—a fire he’d shared, now dim. The lad’s hammer lay cold somewhere—its fall a mark he’d not erase. Silence cost more than blood—it stole their fight, their worth.

  Shift’s end dragged him out, legs leaden, spirit cracked. The chisel weighed his pocket, its edge a vow—not of craft’s old flame, but of hands it might yet rouse. Thomas’s shadow loomed, a spark Elias clung to—men bound by scars, not words, a stand crushed but not killed.

  Night cloaked the yard, mute and heavy. Elias stood, the hum a chain he’d not yet snapped—for the lad, for Thomas, a fight lingered still, frail as breath against steel.