BOOM.
A colossal, shimmering cog of silver light exploded high above Black Iron Fortress, its fading embers drifting down like metallic snow onto the roaring crowd.
On the royal dais, King Valerius II raised his glass in a toast to the spectacle, his smirk wider than ever. Below, the parade ground shook with the synchronized, earth-shattering THUMP of a thousand iron-shod boots as the final regiment of soldiers marched.
It was the peak of the Triumph. The crowd's fervor was a physical force. The King was at his most visible. The military's display was at its most deafening.
As the ground forces finished, the Leviathans of the Republic took their turn. One by one, the colossal airships, their frames forged from dark ironwood and reinforced steel, passed overhead in a formidable display of aerial dominance. The crowd's cheers reached a crescendo—until the last airship in the formation began to trail a thin, grey smoke from its port-side propeller.
A murmur of confusion rippled through the spectators. The King's triumphant smirk twisted into a snarl of pure fury.
"All that maintenance cost!" he barked, slamming his glass down. "And yet THERE ARE STILL TECHNICAL ISSUES? I specifically ordered them to present airships in perfect condition! No damage, no smoke, not even a dent! This was to protect my public image… BUT WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?"
He gestured wildly, calling a Royal Guard to his side. "Find the General! Did he plan this incompetence to insult me?!"
As the guard rushed off, Queen Anya placed a calming hand on his arm. "Calm down, my King. It's not his fault. It's a machine. There's no guarantee—"
But Valerius wasn't listening. His eyes were locked on the smoking airship as it suddenly veered off its course. It was no longer circling; it was turning. Its bow was now pointed directly at the castle.
The crowd's confusion turned to uneasy panic. "Why is it coming this way?"
Valerius shot up from his throne. "Why is it coming toward—?"
CRACK-THUD.
The sound was two-fold. First, the crack of the sniper rifle from the clocktower at a 45-degree angle to the dais. Then, the thud of the impact.
The round was a specialized armor-piercing slug. It struck the dais's famed bulletproof glass not with a shatter, but with a concentrated, cobwebbed crack. For a split second, the glass held, a star-shaped fracture marking the point of impact. Then, with a sound like ice giving way, a small, perfect hole punched through. The air whistled.
The slug, now misshapen and glowing with friction heat, carried on. It tore through the King's ornate, gold-threaded ceremonial jacket as if it were paper. It punched into the meat of his upper chest, just beside his collarbone. The smell was immediate and nauseating—the scent of seared fabric, vaporized gold thread, and the coppery tang of superheated blood and burnt flesh.
King Valerius II was thrown backward, a choked gasp escaping his lips as he collapsed to the floor, a dark, blooming rose of crimson staining his chest.
Queen Anya stared, frozen, her mind refusing to process the image of her husband bleeding out on the polished floor.
Then came the EXPLOSION.
The smoking airship, now a missile, plowed directly into the upper spires of Black Iron. The impact was apocalyptic. The entire fortress shook violently, stone groaning and dust raining from the ceilings as if a giant had struck the mountain. The dais lurched, throwing the Queen and guards off their feet.
In the plaza, panic became a tidal wave. Screams tore through the air as the crowd became a mindless, stampeding beast. And from within this chaos, the trap was sprung.
Smoke bombs erupted—not grey, but choking, acidic yellow clouds that burned the eyes and throat. From within the smoke, rebels emerged. They weren't a rabble; they were soldiers. They fired modified rifles that chattered, cutting down Cog-Watchers who were desperately trying to form a defensive line.
But the true horror was the betrayal within the ranks. A Cog-Watcher sergeant, moments from barking an order, suddenly turned his pistol and shot the lieutenant beside him in the back of the head. An Iron Army soldier, his helmet hiding his face, drew a serrated combat knife and plunged it into the neck of the comrade he'd been marching alongside. The parade dissolved into a close-quarters nightmare of gunfire, clashing swords, and the wet, tearing sounds of knives finding their mark. It was impossible to tell friend from foe.
Deep inside Black Iron, the situation was even more horrifying. The grand halls, once a symbol of absolute power, became a slaughterhouse. Royal Guards, rushing to defend the throne room, were cut down by figures in sleek black masks who moved with silent, fluid lethality. They used not guns, but poisoned darts, garrotes, and monofilament wires that parted flesh from bone with a whisper.
A young maid, hiding behind a tapestry, was found. A black-masked figure didn't kill her. He simply placed a finger to where his lips would be, then slit her throat with a calm, surgical precision, letting her body slump silently to the marble floor, adding another splash of red to the growing tapestry of carnage.
The air in the Cog-Watcher station was thick enough to chew on, a nauseating cocktail of cheap coal smoke, stale sweat, and pure, undiluted panic. The frantic ringing of a single landline phone had shattered the station's usual bureaucratic hum, and the news it carried now had the effect of a bomb blast in a confined space.
"Confirmed! Gunfire at the Triumph! The King is down I repeat, the King is down! they have confirmed that they have seen the bulletproof glass break a young constable screamed into another phone, his face pale as parchment, his hand trembling so violently the receiver rattled against his ear.
Chaos was a living entity, feeding on the frantic energy of blue-uniformed men and women scrambling for rifles, buckling on armor, their voices overlapping in a cacophony of shouted orders and terrified questions.
"The King's life is in danger!"
"The entire royal bloodline is on that dais!"
"This is a national crisis! A catastrophe!"
At the heart of the storm stood High Commander Bryton, a man built like a brick wall, his face a granite mask of forced composure, though a tic in his jaw betrayed the seismic fear beneath.
"Move! Move! Move!" he barked, his voice a whip-crack that cut through the din. "I want every available officer, every wagon, armed and on the plaza in five minutes! Five! If your boots aren't laced, run barefoot!"
But beneath the bluster, a cold, hard truth was crystallizing in his gut. The King's Triumph was across the city. Through crowded, now panicked, streets. By the time his forces mobilized, navigated the chaos, and formed a coherent perimeter, it would be a recovery operation, not a rescue. They would be arriving to count the bodies.
His worst fear was voiced by a young lieutenant, her face ashen. "Sir... by the time we deploy... the Iron Army is mobilizing too, but they'll be just as delayed. It will be a bloodbath. We'll be too late."
Bryton's shoulders slumped for a fraction of a second, the weight of a failing nation crushing him. "Then what else would you have me do?" he roared, the question one of genuine, desperate agony.
It was then that Inspector Alan stood up. He was the same sharp-eyed man who had once directed a confused Amir Zen to the Inquisition's hidden door. Now, he was fastening a reinforced vambrace, his movements calm and deliberate amidst the frenzy.
"Sir," Alan said, his voice low but carrying. "We contact the Harmonic Inquisition."
A stunned silence fell over the immediate area. Another officer, a grizzled veteran with a scar across his brow, scoffed. "The Inquisition? Those spooks? They handle wraiths and rogue Tuners! They're not a rapid-response force! They're always buried in their own weird shit!"
Alan met the man's gaze, unwavering. "During a national crisis of this magnitude," he stated, his words precise and sharp, "the mandate of every special force changes. There is only one objective: protect the King and preserve the nation. All other missions are temporarily suspended. They have agents. They have resources we don't. They are our only chance."
High Commander Bryton stared at Alan, the logic a cold, sharp knife cutting through the fog of his panic. The Inquisition. A shadowy, barely-controlled asset. But right now, the only asset that might already be in position. He gave a single, sharp nod. "Do it."
The transition from the Cog-Watcher's panicked chaos to the heart of the Inquisition was like stepping into a soundproofed tomb.
In his spartan office, Captain Rustof took a long, slow drag from a dark cigar, the smoke curling in the amber light of a single Aether-lamp. The polished brass landline on his massive oak desk rang, a shrill, insistent sound. He exhaled a plume of smoke, sighed with the weariness of a man who knows a call at this hour is never good news, and lifted the receiver to his ear.
"Rustof," he grunted.
He listened. The casual slouch in his posture vanished. The cigar, halfway to his lips, froze. His sharp, blue eyes, usually crinkled with a paternal shrewdness, widened, then narrowed into slits of focused intensity. He shot up from his chair so fast it screeched back against the stone floor.
"We are on it," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that brooked no argument. "It will take me time to get to the plaza. But do not worry. I already have a team in the area on a secondary investigation."
He paused, listening to the frantic voice on the other end, his gaze turning inward, calculating.
"They will engage immediately. The case is officially abandoned." He slammed the receiver down, the crack of plastic on wood echoing like a gunshot in the silent room
For a moment, the only sound in his office was the faint, distant roar of the city... a roar that was subtly changing, curdling into something sharper, more frantic. The sound of screams
Those screams weren't distant to Constable Evander. They were the air he was breathing, a physical pressure against his eardrums as he stared at the gurgling final breath of Lieutenant Croft
A fine mist of the man's blood now cooling on Evander's cheek. The pistol shot still echoed in his skull, but it was the smirk on Sergeant Halbert's face—the man who had taught him how to properly clean his rifle—that truly shattered reality.
"Traitor!" The word was a raw, animalistic scream torn from Evander's throat. He lunged, not with his bayoneted rifle, but with his body, a tackle born of pure, unthinking rage. They crashed into a stack of parade barricades, wood splintering around them. Halbert, a bear of a man, grunted, trying to bring his pistol to bear. Evander seized his wrist, slamming it repeatedly against the cobblestones until the weapon clattered away. There was no finesse, no technique. It was a gutter brawl. He drove his forehead into the bridge of Halbert's nose. He felt the cartilage give way with a sickening crunch. Halbert roared, his smirk replaced by a mask of blood and pain, and bucked Evander off.
Scrambling back, Evander's hand found a fallen piece of iron rebar. As Halbert surged to his feet, drawing a long, wicked knife, Evander swung. The rebar connected with the side of Halbert's knee. The sound was a wet, nauseating crack. The Sergeant collapsed with a shriek that was cut short as Evander, without a moment's hesitation, brought the rebar down on his former mentor's temple. The fight went out of Halbert in a single, limp shudder.
Evander stood, panting, the bloody rebar trembling in his grip. The horror of what he'd just done warred with the primal satisfaction of vengeance. But the chaos gave him no time to process. A figure in a Cog-Watcher uniform stumbled towards him, his face a mask of friendly panic.
"Brother! By the gears, you're alive! We have to fall back to the—"
The man's eyes, however, were not on Evander's face, but on the vulnerable spot under his raised arm. As the man lunged, a shiv gleaming in his hand, Evander's body moved before his mind did. He dropped the rebar, caught the man's stabbing arm, and using his own momentum, spun and slammed him face-first into the dented side of an armored steam-wagon. He heard the man's nose break. He didn't stop. He wrenched the arm, forcing the shiv back and up. The man's own weapon found a home in his armpit. He slid down the wagon's side, leaving a slick red trail.
Two. He'd killed two of his own. The uniform meant nothing anymore. It was a lie. Everyone was a lie.
He scooped up a dead man's rifle, his hands slick with blood that was both familiar and alien. He moved in a low crouch, his training reasserting itself through the shock. He saw a knot of rebels trying to overturn a cannon. He fired, the shot going wide, but it made them scatter. He was a cog, a single, grinding tooth in the dying machine of order.
Then he saw them. Not rebels in stolen uniforms, but the real thing. Two Iron Army soldiers, their grey-steel armor making them look like moving statues, were systematically clearing a position held by a handful of genuine Cog-Watchers. They moved with a brutal, synchronized efficiency his own force lacked. One would draw fire with a shield while the other advanced, their Aetheric rifles humming, each shot punching a fist-sized hole through barricade and bone alike.
Evander saw one of them spot him. The soldier's glowing red eyepiece fixed on him. He raised his rifle. Evander fired first. The bullet sparked harmlessly off the soldier's pauldron. The soldier didn't even flinch. He took a step forward.
Evander worked the bolt on his rifle. Empty. He fumbled for a fresh clip, his fingers numb and clumsy. The Iron Army soldier was now twenty paces away, his rifle steady. Fifteen paces. Evander dropped the rifle, drawing his service pistol. It felt like a toy.
Ten paces. The soldier's finger tightened on the trigger.
A shadow fell over Evander. Not a cloud, but something more tangible. A man in a pristine, impossibly white longcoat landed between them, having dropped silently from a low-hanging airship mooring line. It was Pyotr. He held a smoldering cigar between his teeth.
The Iron Army soldier fired. The energy bolt, capable of vaporizing a man, flew straight for Pyotr's chest.
Pyotr didn't dodge. He flicked the ash from his cigar.
The bolt struck the grey ember. Instead of exploding, it simply… died. The light winked out. The energy dissipated with a soft sigh, as if it had simply grown old and expired in mid-air.
The Iron Army soldier stared, his tactical composure broken for the first time. He fired again. And again. Each bolt met the same fate, extinguished against the Tuner's casual, absolute power of decay.
Pyotr took a final drag from his cigar, the ember glowing a fierce, defiant orange. He looked at the soldier, his expression one of profound boredom.
"Your gear is misaligned," Pyotr said, his voice a low rumble. "It whines."
He flicked the cigar stub. It tumbled through the air, a tiny, insignificant spark. It landed on the soldier's chest plate.
Instantly, the polished grey steel bloomed with violent orange rust. The rust spread like a disease, crawling across the armor, consuming it, flaking it away to nothing. In less than three seconds, the soldier was standing in his underclothes, his eyes wide with terror behind his helmet. The rust reached his rifle, which crumbled into dust in his hands.
Pyotr didn't even watch. He turned his back on the exposed, helpless man and looked down at the stunned Evander.
"The liver," Pyotr stated, as if continuing a previous conversation. "You're still leaving it open."