The Dregs didn't just hang in the abyss; it groaned.
Every step Julian took on the swaying rope bridge sent a vibration traveling up his spine. The city was a patchwork quilt of refuse—hulls of crashed airships welded to industrial pipes, sheets of corrugated iron lashed together with copper wire, and platforms of rotting wood suspended by chains thick as a man's torso.
Below them, the darkness was endless. Above, the distant ceiling of the cavern was lost in a haze of steam and smoke.
"Keep your head down," Lyra muttered, pushing him forward. "And keep that hand covered. People here don't like bright lights. It reminds them of the surface."
Julian pulled his sleeve down, wincing as the fabric brushed against the raw, blistered skin of his wrist. The pain was a constant, throbbing bassline to the chaotic melody of the hanging city.
They stepped off the bridge onto a central platform built from the deck of a massive, rusted cargo hauler. It was crowded. Men with limbs replaced by crude, piston-driven prosthetics huddled around barrel fires. Women washed grey rags in buckets of filtered condensation. Children chased rats with sharpened screwdrivers.
The smell was overwhelming—a dense cocktail of boiling cabbage, unwashed bodies, and the sharp, coppery tang of old blood.
As Julian and Lyra passed, the conversation died. Heads turned. Eyes, hard and suspicious as flint, tracked them.
"That's the Vane boy," a whisper hissed from the shadows.
"Look at his walk. Imperial soft."
"Smell the ozone on him. He's leaking."
Julian kept his eyes on Lyra's boots. He felt like a lamb walking into a den of wolves, except the wolves were starving and armed with pneumatic rivet guns.
Lyra stopped in front of a massive structure at the far end of the platform. It was the intake turbine of a ventilation fan, large enough to swallow a house. The blades were still, rusted in place, and the central hub had been converted into a fortress.
Two guards stood at the airlock door. They wore armor made from flattened street signs and carried heavy harpoon guns connected to backpack pressure tanks.
"Lyra," the guard on the left grunted. He had a metal plate bolted over one eye socket. "You're late. And you brought a stray."
"I brought a key, Jax," Lyra said, her voice steady. "Open the door. Serafina is expecting us."
Jax looked at Julian, his single eye narrowing. He spat a stream of black tobacco juice onto the deck, inches from Julian's boot. Then he slammed his fist against a panel.
CLANG-HISSS.
The turbine door cycled open.
The interior of the "Iron Lung"—as the locals clearly called it—was surprisingly quiet. The walls were lined with sound-dampening cork and heavy tapestries looted from the Upper City. Maps of Arcadia covered every surface, pinned with glowing crystals of different colors.
In the center of the room, standing over a tactical table, was a woman.
She was tall, wearing a long coat of dark blue wool with gold buttons that had been polished to a shine. Her hair was silver, pulled back into a severe bun. But it was her neck that drew the eye.
Her throat was gone.
In its place was a complex collar of brass and glass tubes, glowing with a soft amber light. Wires ran from the collar into the skin behind her ears.
She didn't turn as they entered. She moved a chess piece on the map—a small iron soldier—pushing it into a red zone marked "Sector 7".
"General," Lyra said, bowing her head slightly. "We made it."
The woman turned. Her face was beautiful, sharp-boned and ageless, but her eyes were pools of infinite sadness. She looked at Julian.
She reached up and touched the brass collar at her throat. A low hum filled the room, vibrating in Julian's chest.
"You look like him," the voice said.
It wasn't a human voice. It was a synthesized, buzzing drone, layered with the static of a radio tuned between stations. It was the sound of a machine trying to remember how to be a person.
"My father," Julian whispered.
"Silas," Serafina's collar buzzed. She walked closer, the sound of her boots muffled by the rugs. "The man who built the cage we all live in."
"I didn't know," Julian said, the guilt rising in his throat again. "He never told me."
"Ignorance is not a shield here, Julian Vane," Serafina said. The amber light in her collar pulsed with the syllables. "Ignorance is the reason the Empire still stands. They feed on it just as they feed on the Aether."
She stopped a foot away from him. The smell of ozone coming from Julian was strong now.
"Show me," she commanded.
Julian hesitated. He looked at Lyra. She gave a small, grim nod.
Slowly, Julian unwrapped the dirty rag from his right hand.
The blue light flooded the dim room. The guards at the door took a step back, raising their harpoons. Serafina didn't flinch. She stared at the crystal hand, at the blue veins climbing up Julian's forearm, at the way the very air seemed to distort around the crystallized flesh.
"Advanced crystallization," she droned. "Stage four. And yet, you are standing. Most men go mad at stage two. Their brains scramble from the frequency."
She reached out with a gloved hand and touched Julian's crystal fingers.
Julian gasped. He expected pain, but instead, he felt... a connection. He felt the vibration of her collar. He felt the specific frequency of the brass voice box.
Bzzzt... click... whirr...
He could hear the mechanism. He could hear the flaw in her voice. A loose connection in the third valve.
"You hear it, don't you?" Serafina asked, withdrawing her hand. Her eyes narrowed. "You hear the song of the metal."
"I hear everything," Julian confessed, his voice shaking. "It's loud. It never stops."
Serafina walked back to the table. She picked up a heavy object. It was a "Resonance Lock"—a solid cube of tungsten with no keyhole, used to secure the Emperor's personal vaults. It was unbreakable by physical force. It required a precise sonic frequency to open.
She tossed it to Julian.
He caught it with his human hand, nearly dropping it. It was incredibly heavy.
"Open it," Serafina ordered.
"I... I can't," Julian stammered. "I don't have a tuning fork. I don't know the frequency."
"You don't need a fork," Serafina's mechanical voice rose in pitch, becoming harsh. "Silas didn't build you to follow the music, boy. He built you to conduct it. Open the lock, or Jax puts a harpoon through your lung."
The guard cocked his weapon. Click.
Lyra stepped forward. "General, he's tired, he's hurt—"
"Silence, Lyra!" Serafina snapped. "If he is a weapon, we need to know if he fires. If he is just a broken boy, then he is a liability." She looked at Julian. "Open. It."
Julian stared at the grey metal cube. He could feel the eyes of the room on him. He felt the cold pressure of the harpoon aimed at his back.
The machine wants to love you, the Hunter had said.
I am the Tuning Fork, his father had said.
Julian closed his eyes. He wrapped his crystal hand around the tungsten cube.
He didn't try to force it. He didn't try to smash it. He just... listened.
He heard the atoms of the metal vibrating. He heard the rigid structure of the tungsten. It was a stubborn, tight sound. A low, angry hum.
Let go, Julian thought. Relax.
He sent a pulse of Resonance into the cube. Not a command, but a suggestion. A counter-frequency to the metal's hardness.
The room began to vibrate. The maps on the walls shook. The tea in Lyra's cup rippled.
The tungsten cube didn't unlock. It changed.
Under Julian's fingers, the hardest metal on earth turned soft. It became like grey clay. His fingers sank into the solid block, reshaping it, molding it like wet dough.
The guards gasped. Lyra's jaw dropped.
Julian opened his eyes. He wasn't holding a cube anymore. He was holding a perfectly formed metal flower—a tungsten rose, delicate and grey, its petals thin as paper.
He dropped it on the tactical table. It hit the wood with a heavy thud, solidifying instantly back into unbreakable metal.
Silence. Absolute, terrified silence.
Serafina looked at the metal rose. She looked at Julian. For the first time, the sadness in her eyes was replaced by something else. Fear? Or hope?
"You didn't unlock it," she whispered, the static in her voice vanishing for a second. "You rewrote its reality."
She looked up at him, and the amber light in her collar pulsed rapidly.
"Welcome to the Resistance, Julian Vane. God help us all."