The guards led them deeper into the mechanical labyrinth, their steps echoing against the iron bones of the City of Crawling Steel. Every walkway vibrated faintly beneath their feet, as if the whole place breathed — or dreamt — in a feverish mechanical slumber.
People crowded the streets: merchants wrapped in patched coats the colour of rust; children with soot-streaked cheeks weaving between the legs of strangers; elderly women smoking long pipes carved from bone, their eyes sharp and untrusting. Everyone stared. Not a glance of passing curiosity — but the prolonged, dissecting gaze of a population that had seen strangers arrive before and assumed the worst.
Clotheslines crisscrossed overhead like a web, but instead of woven shirts or drying linens, banners hung from them. Some painted, some stitched, others scorched around the edges — symbols of factions, old wars, forgotten families. Colours bled into one another under the sun: crimson sigils over pale blue cloth, black emblems of beasts stitched onto faded gold, talismans and charms dangling beside them like offerings to something unseen.
Incense curled through the air, thick and sweet. Soren lifted his head, following the scent. It drifted from a crooked shack wedged between metal beams, the doorway framed by strings of cracked beads. Through the grimy window, he glimpsed a small white-and-grey cat curled atop a cushion. Its fur rippled as it breathed; its tail flicked lazily. Just as Soren stepped past, the cat cracked open one eye — a single, sharp green iris cutting through the dust and the smog. It stared directly at him, unblinking, as though assessing something in him no human eye could read.
Vivienne walked just behind the guards, her boots clattering in sharp rhythm against the cobblestone path. Every step echoed with a kind of restless energy she couldn't entirely mask. Her purple hair shifted with the wind, black strands of ribbon woven through it, small silver charms threaded along the braid falling against her shoulders. The layered dress she wore — black, violet, trimmed in torn lace — brushed against her ankles with every stride. Tiny crescent-moon tattoos curled along her left collarbone, disappearing beneath the fabric.
Her fingers slipped into her pocket. The cold metal of her knife pressed against her palm — a quiet, dangerous comfort. She had it. She could use it. She could do something.
But she wasn't stupid. Not surrounded by four masked enforcers with rifles slung across their backs and blades at their hips. Not with the jaguar-masked man somewhere above — watching, waiting, coiled like a spring that never stopped tightening.
Still… she couldn't help the reflex. Her eyes flicked upward.
A banner-clothesline hung just ahead, sagging under the weight of a dozen signs and flags. If she cut it — just one clean slice — the banners would collapse onto a vendor's stand. A spice merchant. And spices meant powder. Clouds of it. Enough to blind the guards for a moment. Enough to scatter vision and scent alike. Maybe enough for them to disappear into the crush of bodies.
Her heart beat faster.Maybe. Maybe.
She turned her head slightly. Soren walked two paces behind her, gaze fixed on the ground, his expression unreadable — too calm for the situation, too distant.
"Hey," she mouthed.
He didn't react.
She tried again. A sharper expression, a clearer movement of the lips. Nothing.
With a quiet, irritated huff, Vivienne angled her foot and kicked the toe of his boot. Hard.
This time he looked up. Red eyes flicked to hers, steady, watchful.
Vivienne tilted her chin forward, lowering her lashes, letting him see the blade-shaped outline pressing against the fabric of her pocket. She waited for his understanding to click — for his signal, or at least his attention. Her mouth opened, ready to whisper the beginnings of a plan.
But when she lifted her eyes to his face again… he was already smiling.
Just barely. A faint, knowing curl of the lips. A smile that didn't reach his eyes. A smile with weight behind it.
He shook his head once — slow, controlled, unmistakable.Then he mouthed a single word.
Don't.
She rolled her eyes and let out a quiet, annoyed breath. The motion flicked a strand of violet hair across her cheek, and she brushed it aside with a huff just as she opened her mouth to try one more whisper.
Before a sound could leave her lips, the man with the jaguar mask stopped walking.
All four guards behind her halted instantly, boots hitting metal with the mechanical precision of trained predators. Vivienne froze mid-step and followed the masked man's gaze upward.
A massive wooden door loomed before them.
It rose nearly two stories tall, built from layered slabs of deep brown timber, each panel carved with swirling desert motifs—dunes, scorpions, jagged mountains, a sun with too many rays. Iron bands crossed the surface, oxidized into reddish-brown streaks that dripped like old wounds. The handles were a pair of intertwined serpents sculpted from black steel, their fanged maws open in silent greeting. Above the door hung a lantern whose cracked glass cast a warped, amber glow on everything below it. The man with the jaguar mask extended his hand to grasp the handle. His dark skin stung with heat as the handle had been baking in the sun for hours.
He pushed the door with the back of his hand—unhurried, almost absentminded—and the ancient hinges responded with a long, metallic groan, a sound that unfurled down the corridor like a warning exhaled by something vast and old. The noise lingered, shivering through the stone, until even the guards shifted uneasily behind the trio.
And then the room revealed itself.
Crossing the threshold felt like stepping across a veil. The clamor of the moving city—its gears, its crowds, its distant hammers—fell away with uncanny completeness, replaced by a hush so absolute it pressed gently against the ears. The air cooled noticeably, carrying a scent that was equal parts aged parchment, oiled metal, and a faint sweetness of incense that seemed to drift from unseen corners. It was a still, contemplative smell, like the breath of a forgotten archive.
The chamber was vast and circular, its architecture descending in broad, deliberate tiers, as though the room itself had been carved downward into the heart of the city. Shelves were built directly into the curving walls—great wooden arcs that resembled the ribcage of some enormous, slumbering creature. Each shelf was crowded past the point of reason: rolled maps, stacked journals, delicate mechanical parts, and strange artifacts whose purpose only their masked owner could possibly discern.
Light entered through slit-like windows cut high into the walls, where thin curtains of solar cloth filtered the harsh desert sun into muted amber beams. Dust motes drifted lazily through the light, swirling whenever the masked man passed by them, giving the impression that he carried a subtle wind in his movements. Beneath those golden shafts, shadows pooled around tables and cabinets, granting the entire chamber a layered, sepulchral beauty.
Maps dominated everything. Some hung from the rafters in immense rolls of parchment, charting entire continents with fine, obsessive detail—mountain ridges inked like scars, riverbeds painted in deep cobalt strokes, desert expanses shaded with a patient, meticulous hand. Smaller maps, scrawled hastily, were pinned to wooden boards with rusted daggers or bone needles. Marcus's eyes lingered on one that depicted a spiraling dune formation he had only heard of in myths; another showed the skeleton of a creature so large it dwarfed the scale grid printed beside it.
Books lay open on tables constructed from mismatched wood and reinforced metal plates. Their pages were held in place by jars filled with sand or small stones carved with symbols. Some were written in languages none of the trio recognized. Others were annotated repeatedly with cramped handwriting, circled diagrams, and ink blots suggesting moments of frantic thought.
But the room's curiosities were what truly stole one's breath.
An entire length of wall was dedicated to animal skulls—sun-bleached trophies arranged along a thick wooden beam. They varied wildly: the delicate skull of a desert crawler no larger than a hand; the wide, predatory jaws of a dune hound; and, most striking of all, a massive triple-horned beast whose forehead bore the etched symbol of a long-dead tribe. The horns twisted like petrified lightning.
Spyglasses, too, gathered on a central table: brass tubes polished to a soft glow, thin bone models carved with swirling patterns, and one enormous instrument mounted on a pivoting metal armature, pointed at one of the slit windows as if waiting patiently for its master's return.
A cracked hourglass rested on a pedestal of blackened iron, its fractured frame cradling a column of shimmering sand. The grains glowed faintly, catching the light in hues that shifted between gold, violet, and a deep indigo. A preserved scorpion, nearly the size of Soren's palm, hung suspended in a metal frame beside it, its carapace a glossy, unnatural black.
In the far corner stood the most imposing artifact of all: a three-foot obsidian tusk set into a delicate lattice of gold wires. The tusk absorbed light rather than reflected it, swallowing any glow that touched its smooth surface. Its edges were too perfect, too sharp, as though carved by something that did not believe in human tools.
Beneath all of this, the floor was carpeted with layered rugs—woven tapestries of crimson, midnight blue, and desert gold, each patterned with geometric spirals and stylized beasts. Their textures overlapped in deliberate disarray, softening the room's otherwise formidable presence. Even the sound of footsteps was muted by their thickness.
Soren's gaze drifted to a balcony-like ledge built into the second tier, accessible only by a narrow iron staircase. From there hung ropes, pulleys, and weights, as if the masked man used them to hoist equipment too unwieldy for ordinary handling. Vivienne, sharp-eyed as ever, noticed a row of half-finished blueprints on a nearby drafting table—sketches of mechanisms and structures far beyond the engineering of any settlement she knew.
The entire room emanated a strange duality: a scholar's sanctuary fused with a hunter's den, equal parts intellect and danger, order and madness. It felt like stepping into the mind of the masked man himself—a place where knowledge was collected, dissected, guarded, and weaponized.
And yet, despite its intimidating grandeur, the air held a quiet intimacy, as though the room welcomed those who entered, provided they respected the secrets it kept.
"Please, do take a seat," the man with the jaguar mask said, gesturing with an indolent sweep of his hand.
Even through the lacquered expression of the feline mask—its carved fangs, its dark, polished contours—Marcus could feel the grin beneath it. Not a friendly grin. Not a welcoming one. A grin born of private amusement, the kind possessed by someone who had already solved a puzzle that others had yet to realize they were trapped inside