Days bled into a dim blur, each a twin to the last. Elias carried loss like a cloak, the fallen haunting his quiet hours—faces caught in fight or fear. His hands moved numb, shaping naught but shadows of a craft long lost, while his spirit drifted, untethered. The factory’s clang crept back, gears grinding cold, yet scarred—a beast limping, not whole.

  He watched, silent, each spark a jeer, each thud a toll for those they’d buried—his father’s curse lingered in his ears, a bitter echo he couldn’t shake—rage at steel they’d both defied. Their blood scarred the field, yet the beast stirred—did their stand mean naught? Doubt gnawed, a thorn in his chest.

  “What’s it for?” he muttered, sour as bile—hands like his, relics of a faded trade, bent to iron’s hymn. Thomas broke the haze, eyes bright with a zeal Elias scarce grasped—hours bent over whispers, a path they’d vowed. “Found it,” he said, breath sharp, pulling a worn scrap from his coat—edges frayed, ink rough.

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  Elias turned, brow tight. “What?”

  “A letter—others, like us, rising against this grip. They’d join us—scar by scar.” Elias took it, fingers brushing jagged lines—words flared, souls afar, chained as they, daring to stand—a fight beyond this wreck, a chance to shift the scales.

  His father’s face flashed, eyes wide in death—had he bled for this thread? Thomas stood firm—did he see past ruin? The beast limped on—scarred, not slain—yet this scrap stirred a pulse, frail as dawn—a spark to weave, not just mourn. “Aye,” Elias said, voice thin, “it’s a start.”

  Thomas nodded, steady, the letter’s weight a gleam amidst gloom—not triumph, but a thread to hands unbowed. The clang droned, a foe they’d scarred—Elias held it, not for craft’s ghost, but for men it might rouse, a fight not lost, a fire to tend against steel’s slow rise.