Elias sat in the dim chamber, night’s hush a cloak about him. His mind roiled like a storm, conjuring the morrow’s clash—long mused in restless hours, now a weight too vast for this stillness. Beyond the window, the factory stood stark, a black sentinel against the sky, its gaze a mirror to his years of toil.

  Tomorrow, the machines would still. The workers would rise, that grim tower their foe unbound. His hands shook at the thought—not of craft, but of blood, crimson stains he’d never wash clean. He rose, drawn to the window’s cold bite, stars aloof above. Could they prevail? A world unshackled seemed a wisp too frail to hold.

  The factory’s hum pulsed in his ears, a dirge for all it had left—his shop, his pride, the men now poised to fall. Elias pressed a palm to the glass, its chill seeping deep, and felt Thomas’s words echo: “Together, we’re strong.” Yet strength might not suffice—how many would lie broken ere dawn?

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  He turned, the room’s shadows thick with faces—the lad who’d swung a hammer beside him, his father who’d cursed the steel. They trusted him, their eyes alight with a hope he scarce bore. The chisel in his pocket pressed against his thigh, its edge a silent oath—not to carve wood, but to rend iron, to free them all or die in the breach.

  A floorboard creaked, and Elias tensed, half-expecting Thomas’s grim form. None came—only the night, heavy with what loomed. His chest tightened, breath sharp; the storm was no mere foe, but a tide to drown or bear them up. He’d lead them into it—not for craft’s ghost, but for the living, the men whose hands he’d clasped, whose fates he bore.

  Blood or liberty, the morrow held no middle path. Elias stood, resolve a blade in his breast, and faced the dark. They’d change the world, or fall beneath its weight—he’d not flinch, whatever the cost.