Eliza sat alone in her father's chair in the room with the wall of screens.
On the screens, different views from inside the city.
The city continued to move and adjust, preparing.
"Daddy said that he would be back in a few days. And I'm all alone. Brothers are gone. Sisters are gone. I guess it's time to wake up Mommy!" She squealed.
A cord slithered down from the ceiling, as if it had a mind of its own, and connected itself to the back of Eliza's head.
The moment the two connected, Eliza's eyes went dark, then blue lights lit up in a gradient-pixilated pattern.
Then a intercom will blast—
"Lily City Activating"
Eliza sat alone in her father's chair.
The room was cold, dimly lit—lined wall-to-wall with black screens, each flickering with views from inside the city.
Hallways.
Pipelines.
Mechanical lungs breathing steam into narrow corridors.
The city moved on its own, adjusting quietly. No warning. No countdown. Just preparation.
Eliza leaned back, her legs dangling, too small to reach the floor.
She pouted.
"Brothers are gone. Sisters are gone…"
Her tone shifted—bright, excited.
"Now Mommy has to leave." she whispered, her static filled voice shaking.
A sound hissed from above.
Then—slither.
A black cable descended from the ceiling, moving as if it had a will of its own. It curled behind her head with slow, surgical precision.
Then—
Click.
The cord snapped into the back of her neck.
Her body went still.
Her eyes dimmed.
Darkness swallowed her pupils—then, suddenly, they lit up again. Blue, pixelated in gradient waves like a corrupted loading screen.
All at once, the intercom crackled to life, distorted and full of static.
"LILY CITY ENGAGED."
A low hum rippled through the walls.
Lights across the city began to dim.
Steam hissed upward from thousands of vents. The grinding of gears—ever-present—grew louder, deeper.
Heavier.
The streets vibrated as panels shifted, bolts turned, doors sealed, walls closed.
The city began to breathe.
And then—
The tremble.
A deep quake shook the ground.
Buildings creaked. Bridges groaned. Towering structures began to move—sliding, collapsing, fusing.
One by one, the pieces of the city collided—grinding into one another with thunderous force.
Merging.
Becoming something else.
Something singular.
Then—
Silence.
For a single breath, the grinding ceased.
The metal groans. The shifting streets. The collapsing structures.
All of it… stopped.
Dust hung in the air like ash in a frozen storm.
And then—
The ground trembled again.
But not from collapse.
From ascent.
The buildings—fused together in impossible geometry—lifted off the ground. Slowly. Purposefully. As if guided by something divine.
From the city's core, a head began to rise.
A face—cold, elegant, and inhuman—formed from high-rises, towers, and fused walkways. Her features were sculpted from skyscrapers. Her crown made from broken spires and clockwork.
Arms followed next.
Massive, mechanical limbs—woven from bridges, highways, rail lines—pushed against the ground, lifting the titaness upward.
Until she stood.
Towering.
Her head broke through the clouds.
The sky bent around her. The earth trembled in reverence.
Beneath the cloud line, the air fractured with pressure—microbursts erupting like silent explosions.
Steam hissed from her joints, her frame, her ribs—forming an ethereal gown that shimmered with heat and ghostlight.
The sound of gears grinding shifted—no longer chaotic. No longer machinery.
It beat like a heart.
Her eyes lit next—deep yellow. Each iris a dozen glowing windows stacked across skyscraper cheeks.
Then her crown.
Atop her head, the tallest spire shone—the clock tower.
And now—finally—its hands began to move.
A soft voice echoed through the wind, woven from wires and lullabies.
"Oh, Eliza…"
"I'm sorry you feel so alone."
"Mommy will take it from here."
From the underground facility, Doran and Leyla emerged—back into the chamber of pods, where the floor still smoldered and the ceiling had been torn open by fire and steel.
Above them, the world had changed.
Doran's gaze snapped skyward.
A shadow fell across the cratered breach.
And then he saw her.
A woman—no, a titan—rising from the city itself. Her form made of fused towers, walkways, metal skin stitched from skyscrapers. Eyes like burning windows. Hair of antennae and shimmering panels. Crowned by the clock tower.
And she was moving.
"What the hell is even that?!" Doran shouted, half in rage, half in disbelief.
Leyla paled.
Her voice came out a whisper, barely audible.
"That's… his wife."
Doran stared, stunned. "I thought he built the others like he did the kids…"
Leyla's legs wobbled beneath her.
"He said… her death caused him more pain than anything. Said she would never be forgotten. That all would remember her."
The ground shuddered beneath them. Up above, the woman's massive face shifted—her serene expression bending into something… almost human.
A flicker of sorrow.
Then recognition.
A voice echoed down, soft yet booming—calm like a lullaby, massive like a god.
"Ahh, I see. An outsider is on the planet, you say? You've been a good girl, Eliza. Time to rest now."
Doran winced. "Goddamn, she's loud even when she isn't trying to be."
The woman—Lily—Gar's wife, now reborn as a city, moved.
She took one step forward.
Just one.
The planet trembled.
Stone burst from the ground like geysers. Cracks raced through the facility's ceiling, concrete splintering under the seismic force.
Leyla stumbled and grabbed a nearby pillar.
"We better get out—before the ceiling collapses. Or worse… the pods open."
"No argument here." Doran grabbed her wrist.
"I promise I won't drop you."
With a whoosh, flame wings spread wide behind him. He launched skyward—Leyla screaming as she clung to him for dear life.
"DAMN IT!" she shrieked. "If you let go, I'll kill you myself!"
Doran smirked.
"Doubting me already?"
Above them, Lily's arms stretched toward the heavens—joints venting steam like volcanic breath. Each movement groaned with impossible weight. Buildings clung to her like scales, shifting with her gait. Walkways bent. Streets folded inward. Antennae flickered like nerves.
"Any idea where we could get a ship off this rock?" Doran asked, eyes scanning the titaness.
"What do you mean? What happened to yours?"
"Gar took it." Doran ducked under a steam arc. "Warped off before I could cross the ship's barrier."
Leyla's eyes shot open. "Wait—he took your ship?!"
"Fixed it up, too. Jerk even waxed the hull."
"I was gonna say we head to the hangars, but…" She looked up. "I'm pretty sure they're part of her now."
Doran's gaze swept across Lily's body. Where would he hide the hangar?
He banked left, adjusting his angle—and then spotted them.
Docking doors, near the back of her neck. Hidden in the moving armor plates.
"I've got an idea." Doran's tone sharpened. "If we get inside that hangar, can you prep the ship while I look for the Flipad?"
Leyla's hands tightened around his jacket.
"You're not leaving me alone inside that giant robot woman!"
"Thanks. I knew you'd understand." Doran angled upward toward Lily's spine. "Just tell me one thing—he's heavy, and I'm not dragging all of him. What should I be looking for?"
"A yellow circuit board. They should all be green—except one. Bring me that one." She hesitated. "But… we don't have a body. It's still back where we came from."
"Yellow circuit board. Got it."
His wings flared brighter. He curved midair, heading for the shifting mechanical vertebrae where the hangar doors had begun to fold open.
Steam burst past them. Lily's next step cracked the crust of the world—streets rearranging, debris folding inward like ribs shielding a beating heart.
"I'll buy you ten minutes," Doran said, eyeing the shoulder platform.
"That's not comforting!"
He dropped suddenly—diving toward a reinforced dock behind one of her massive shoulder towers. With a single spin, he hurled Leyla toward it.
WHUMP.
She hit the deck hard, rolling twice before springing up.
"You could've just set me down, you asshole!"
Doran was already banking away, flame curling behind him like a banner.
Leyla stumbled forward, one hand gripping the hangar's inner railing.
Steam hissed beneath her boots.
The entire structure—her structure—moved with every step Lily took, the floor tilting and groaning like the inside of a mechanical beast.
She nearly fell.
"He didn't think this through at all!" she groaned, catching herself against the bulkhead. "Damn it, Doran…"
Far below, Doran cut through the ash-choked air, flame wings slicing the smoke into ribbons as he dove back toward the ruined facility.
"I swear," he muttered, ducking beneath a falling slab of concrete, "if her big-ass footsteps caved this place in—"
The city trembled again.
He spotted the hole he had punched into the ceiling—now cracked wider, bleeding dust and steam. More rubble fell around him as he descended fast, twisting midair.
WHAM.
He landed hard.
His knees buckled into a crouch, the fractured floor groaning under the impact.
The pod chamber was barely recognizable—pipes hung like mechanical intestines, some still dripping oil and flame. Sparks flickered across shattered conduits. The heat was suffocating.
He didn't slow.
Doran sprinted through the wreckage—vaulting beams, ducking under sparking metal, eyes narrowed toward the scorched remnants of the surgery room.
SLASH!
He cut the door down, flames bursting outward in a sudden explosion.
BOOM!
The blast forced him back, one arm shielding his face as fire licked across his armor.
He stepped through the smoldering frame, eyes darting.
There.
Still strapped to the table—Kellon's robotic body.
Barely intact.
Doran rushed forward, grabbing at the restraints.
The instant his fingers touched the frame—
"Gods damn it!"
He yanked his hands back, shaking the heat off.
"You're just as hot as Ray was." He cursed, flexing his fingers. "I don't have time to baby this—screw it!"
Without another word, he tore the straps loose, wrapped his arms under the shoulders, and dragged the robot out of the room, through the shattered doorway—and then upward, through the crumbling ceiling and into the night sky.
The heat didn't matter.
The weight didn't matter.
But what came next?
That mattered.
THWAM!
Lily's foot connected with Doran mid-ascent—an iron-clad collision of momentum and mass.
"GRAHH—!"
He spiraled backward, launched like a comet across the skyline. The robot slipped from his grasp, tumbling into open air.
Lily didn't hesitate.
She moved.
Her enormous form lunged forward with terrifying grace.
One knee rose mid-flight—
CRACK!
The impact sent Doran flying higher, air forced from his lungs as the sky seemed to collapse around him.
Then she struck again.
Her hands clamped together like a hammer. She raised them overhead as she leapt, shadow engulfing him.
And then—
WHAM!
She brought them down.
Doran's body slammed into the earth like a meteorite, the shockwave cracking the ground in every direction.
Dust swallowed the crater.
For a moment—
Silence.
Then—
Crack.
A tremble.
FWOOOOOM—!
A pillar of fire erupted from the center, shattering the dust into light.
Doran rose—bleeding from his brow, one wing sputtering behind him like a flame caught in wind.
He coughed, clutching his ribs, staggering upright.
"Okay…" he wheezed.
A grin split his bloodied face.
"That hurt."
Above the wreckage, Lily hovered.
Her limbs moved with a terrifying grace—an orchestra of hydraulics and steel, each part locking into position with mechanical elegance. Every gesture reverberated like a hymn of industry.
The crown of towers atop her head shimmered in the twin moons' glow. The tallest spire—the clock tower—shone brightest.
And then— gt
GONG—!
The bell rang again, heavy and thunderous, echoing across the night sky like a war drum.
Doran clenched his teeth, blood running from his temple down his cheek.
Around him, fire surged—brief and blinding—before drawing inward.
The flames coiled tightly around his limbs, forming gauntlets and greaves of heat-forged armor.
He rolled his neck once. Spit blood to the side.
Then looked up.
"You're supposed to be Gar Allasupa's wife, right?" he growled. "Then do me the pleasure of dancing with me!"
From the sky, Lily's voice answered—resonant, calm.
Too calm.
"Let us."
It didn't speak. It soothed. Like a lullaby meant to wrap around the bones before snapping them.
Doran launched upward—BOOM!
He rocketed like a reverse comet, flame wings trailing arcs of molten gold behind him.
His target wasn't her vitals. Not yet.
He needed to learn her.
Read her rhythm. Catch her in transition.
She was too big to kill, too graceful to guess.
He streaked toward her chest, eyes locked—watching the way her plates shifted, how her limbs adjusted mid-motion.
Her hand swung out.
A blur of steel and venting pressure.
FWOOM—
Doran twisted beneath it, her fingers missing him by inches. The heat still scalded his back, licking across his spine like a forge's breath.
He dove beneath her shoulder. Twisted. Climbed.
Searching.
"If I make her move too much," he thought grimly, "Leyla might get thrown."
Then Lily twisted her torso.
Click. CHUNK.
Her arm detached—at the elbow.
The severed segment flew through the sky like a guided wrecking ball.
WHAM!
Doran was struck hard.
His body whipped through the air, tossed like debris into the upper atmosphere.
He broke through the clouds.
"Gahh—!"
Steam peeled from his limbs as his wings fought to stabilize, flame sputtering from the impact. The cold updraft tore at his wounds.
Below him, the titan's gears churned louder, the thunder of her ascent chasing him through the sky.
Blood trickled into his eye.
He gritted his teeth.
"I'll get out of your hair soon," he hissed. "I just need something back that's mine!"
He dove.
Like a spear.
Her arm sliced toward him again—clean, surgical.
But this time, he slipped just outside the arc—twisting, rolling, folding flame around himself until the air itself cracked from pressure.
BOOM!
He slammed into her lower back—a thunderclap of heat and impact. The metal buckled, steaming plates trembling from the force.
A ring of pressure burst outward—a halo of white and gold.
Doran ricocheted off the plating, then soared up her spine, boots dragging glowing red lines into her steel skin.
His eyes darted across her shifting frame—frantic, focused.
Where are you, Ray?
Did you fall off?
How far are we from the tower now?
How much has the city moved?
The longer he looked, the harder it got to breathe.
He couldn't find him.
Couldn't see the flash of yellow plating, or the glint of metal shaped like a friend.
"I won't let you down, buddy…" Doran murmured.
Doran passed the open hangar where he had dropped Leyla. He didn't slow.
He kept climbing—higher, past moving gears and fractured plating, flames trailing behind him like the streak of a comet ascending.
The air thinned.
The metal grew more twisted. Angled. Architectural madness.
And then—he neared the crown.
A city woven into a tiara of towers.
That's when her voice came again.
"I feel your flames moving around…" Lily's voice echoed through steel and sky.
It wasn't just heard—it was felt.
Her awareness vibrated through the metal beneath him, resonating like a tuning fork down into his bones. Her senses were everywhere—sight, sound, heat—threaded through every wire, every girder, every breath of her reconstructed body.
Doran gritted his teeth.
"Dam bitch has eyes everywhere it seems," he muttered.
He slowed, scanning the crown's jagged ridges. Moonlight glinted off something bent and broken nearby. Beneath the flickering light of a crooked streetlamp—
Impact damage.
The warped rooftop bore the crushed imprint of something heavy.
"This is where we fought…" Doran whispered. "So Ray's body has to be close… or it fell earlier."
He angled downward—gliding toward the dented structure nestled in the crown's center.
Then—
HISSSSSHHHH!!!
A pipe beneath him erupted—steam blasting into his face, searing and blinding.
His vision blurred.
And in that moment of weakness—
CRRRRK—BOOM!!!
Two buildings slammed toward him from either side, crashing together with earth-shattering force.
A collapsing sky.
A trap made from towers.
But Doran didn't flinch.
"Ember: Release."
A whisper.
Then—BOOM!!!
A sphere of embers burst outward from his sword in every direction.
SHHRRAAAAAAANG!!!
Flames tore through the buildings like a wildfire through dry paper.
Steel melted.
Stone shattered.
A shockwave rippled across the top of Lily's head, snapping antennae, toppling scaffolding, and tearing banners clean off their poles.
In the smoking air, Doran hovered—chest heaving.
Eyes burning like a furnace.
His sword still flared with molten heat, glowing like a brand in the dark.
Bits of smoldering debris rained around him.
"Almost had me," he said, voice hoarse but defiant. "Gotta be quicker than that."
No response.
Just another building—launched upward from Lily's side like a steel fist.
"You've gotta be kidding—"
Doran peeled away, flame wings snapping wide as he climbed higher.
The building followed.
It didn't fall.
It chased him.
"How the hell is it still following?!" he shouted, dodging left. "You're a stubborn woman… says a lot about Gar! HaHaHa!"
He curved back—swooping low over Lily's plating, luring the building toward her chest.
Then at the last second—
Pull up.
The building slammed into her shoulder with a deafening crack—
—and still kept coming.
It twisted mid-air.
Twisted.
Bent like a serpent of scaffolding and scaffolding, the metal groaning, reshaping into a coiling shape impossible for something that size.
"You're kidding me…"
Doran rolled sharply.
Too sharp.
SCRAAANG!
A pipe scraped across his shoulder—sparks flying, blood misting into the cold air.
"Tch—!" He hissed through his teeth, but didn't stop.
He pulled upward again, climbing away from the crown—trying to reset his altitude.
That's when he saw it.
Beneath him.
Near the edge of the warped rooftop—where the crown met a twisted structure of what might've once been an observatory tower.
A flicker.
Not light from a window.
Not a lamp.
Not flame.
A crushed, metallic shape—head dented, plating half-buried.
A metal skull.
Bashed in.
Unmoving.
"There."
Doran's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Ray."
Doran banked sharply.
Flame wings flared wide as he dove—bleeding, burning, but focused. The pain in his shoulder screamed. Blood traced the line of his arm in glistening red.
Behind him, the twisted building still chased, its metal contorting like a predator refusing to fall.
But he didn't care.
Not now.
He landed hard, knees bending against the shifting metal of Lily's crown.
Without hesitation, he drew his sword—flames bursting from the blade's edges as he slashed backward.
SHHRRRAAANG!!!
The pursuing structure collided with the edge of his arc—and melted.
Steel warped. Concrete hissed. The building slumped sideways in a molten heap, groaning like a dying beast.
Doran stood amid the wreckage, panting—smoke rising from his shoulders, his sword glowing white-hot from the strike.
His boots crunched over broken glass and splintered steel as he stepped forward—past a half-broken archway, the remains of what might have once been a rooftop balcony.
His breath caught in his chest.
There—beneath a collapsed beam and a pile of city debris—
Ray.
Crushed.
Twisted.
One arm gone.
One leg missing.
His head barely visible, dented, exposed—like the forgotten end of a long story.
Doran's heart tightened.
He stepped closer.
"You're not done yet…" he whispered, kneeling. "You haven't told me your story yet."
Just as he reached for Ray's skull—
WHUMP—!
The ground beneath him shifted.
A platform launched upward, slamming into his gut and shooting out from Lily's crown, catapulting him away.
"Guh—!"
He crashed into the side of a nearby tower—glass shattering, metal folding beneath his weight. He crumpled near the edge, coughing blood into his hand.
Below him, Lily's crown began to shift.
Open and close.
Open and close.
Breathing.
Like armor that knew he was there.
"Should've known it wouldn't be that easy…" he muttered, voice ragged.
Steam hissed around him. A siren-like groan howled from deep inside the city's spine. Beneath him, the entire crown began to rotate—grinding, shifting, ready to bury Ray again.
Doran wiped blood from his lip.
"I need to be faster. She knows where I am… but she can't react as fast as I can."
He stood.
And jumped.
Wings tucked. Body arched. Flame trailed behind him like a comet diving to earth.
A streak of fire across a god's temple.
His eyes locked on Ray—one shot.
"There—!"
He extended a hand, swooping down low.
CLACK—!
He grabbed the skull, the dented head popping free of the crushed frame with a sickening twist of metal and wiring.
"Let's hope this has what I need…" he muttered.
Doran shot upward—just as Lily turned.
Her massive arm swept through the sky with a left cross, turbines whining.
WHOOOSH—!
Doran twisted—barely slipping past her knuckles, spinning around her forearm like a dancer dodging a falling star.
His grip on Ray's head tightened.
"Now to find your new body…" he said, glancing down at the dented skull in his hands.
Below, Lily chased.
Elsewhere
Leyla clung to a steel support beam inside the ship's crew quarters, knuckles white.
The world around her trembled.
"Damn it, Doran!" she cried out, voice cracking. "Where the hell are you?!"
CRASH!!!
A steel beam smashed into the hangar floor beside the ship—so close it shook the frame, the impact screaming through her bones.
"I am not dying here," she growled, breath ragged. "And I will not die waiting on him."
The ground pitched again. She dropped to her knees, crawling toward the door as the city-woman above shifted and moved, her every step turning gravity into chaos.
"Ten minutes," Leyla muttered. "It feels like it's been an hour…"
She reached the door and gritted her teeth, pushing it open with her shoulder.
The ship's deck creaked beneath her palms.
Another quake.
BANG.
The entire bay lurched.
Leyla slammed into the doorframe, her shoulder grazing an exposed bolt. She hissed in pain, then dragged herself up, gripping the railing with one hand as she climbed the stairs to the helm.
She slumped into the pilot's chair, strapping herself in with shaky fingers.
"I'm sorry, Doran…" she whispered. "I'm not like you. I can't survive a building falling on me."
Her hand slammed a switch on the console.
WHUMMMM—
The engines purred awake, a low hum building in her chest and beneath her feet. The ship's sails lit up—green light glowing, breathing like lungs taking in their first air.
Another button—
A translucent barrier formed around the ship, buzzing faintly with protective energy.
Leyla's hand hovered above the second launch switch.
Her eyes flicked to the hangar doors.
"Come on, Doran…" she whispered. "Come on…"
The ship's engines roared louder, shaking the deck. Dust and sparks fell from above.
"Damn it, Doran," she whispered. "I can't wait anymore—"
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
Lily was moving again.
The hangar pitched to the left, sending Leyla lurching forward in her seat.
Panels exploded. Sparks rained. The doors at the far end shuddered, their locks whining under pressure.
"Shit… shit, shit—!"
She slammed the button.
FWOOSH!!!
The ship launched—rocketing out of the hangar in a burst of emerald light, trailing fire and plasma behind it.
It cut through the smoke like a comet escaping a dying star.
Behind them, Lily's massive head turned, slow and deliberate.
But her gaze found them.
Her voice rang out—calm. Final.
"I never permitted you to leave."
From her lower back, the plating peeled open—reconfiguring into a massive cannon.
A violent hum. Purple and red energy coiled within it, light crackling across the barrel.
BOOM—!!!
A beam of pure force screamed toward the ship.
But just before it hit—
THUD—!!
Doran landed.
He dropped both Kellon's robotic body and Ray's skull onto the deck—and swung his sword.
"DORAN!!" Leyla screamed.
The beam collided with his blade.
CLAAAAAAANG!!!
A shockwave detonated on impact—rings of molten light rippling out from the strike.
Leyla threw her arms over her eyes.
The ship shook violently, groaning under the force.
Doran stood firm—knees bent, arms trembling, teeth clenched as fire and steel met raw energy.
The blade cracked.
Flames sputtered.
Then flared.
White-hot.
Doran roared—and shoved back.
The beam split—deflected upward into the sky.
Lightning carved across the clouds as the redirected blast ripped into the atmosphere, shattering the night.
Doran dropped to one knee.
Steam rose from his shoulders.
His chest heaved.
But he was alive.
"Told you I'd be back," he muttered, half-smirking. "Now get us out of here."
Leyla didn't hesitate.
Tears welled in her eyes as she hit the final sequence.
The ship warped—
—and vanished into the stars.