Time Remaining: 35 Days, 13 Hours. (Status: Provisional Asset. Inspection at Core Junction.) Location: Sector 9-Alpha - The Magma-Gate.
The Magma-Gate was not a building. It was a wound in the world that had been stapled shut with iron.
The Iron Horse rolled to a stop at the base of the facility, its tires hissing on the hot asphalt. The heat here was physical—a heavy, suffocating blanket that pressed against the skin. The air shimmered with heat distortion, turning the massive black fortress ahead into a wavering mirage of soot and steam.
This was the throat of the Empire. Directly beneath them, the crust of the earth had been drilled open to the mantle. A massive central pipe, fifty feet wide and reinforced with bands of Adamant-Steel, rose from the ground like the trunk of a mechanical tree. It branched off into hundreds of smaller arteries, feeding superheated steam to the turbines that powered the city.
