The catacombs beneath Veridia were not merely a graveyard; they were a labyrinth of forgotten sins. Priscilla moved through the damp dark, the rhythmic click of her boots on stone sounding like the ticking of a countdown. Behind her, Hagar the blacksmith wiped sweat from his soot-stained brow, his hands trembling as he hauled a lead-lined crate.
"My Lady, the sanctity of this place..." Hagar whispered, his voice cracking. "The High Priests say the souls of the ancient martyrs rest here. If they find us—"
"The dead don't speak, Hagar. Only the living are dangerous," Priscilla interrupted. She stopped in a vaulted chamber where the walls were lined with the ossified remains of a thousand monks. "Place the box near the central pillar. I need a confined space to measure the atmospheric displacement."
She opened the crate. Inside lay the culmination of her modern engineering and her secret trade with the Merchant Kings: purified saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, granulated and wetted into high-density black powder. This wasn't the crude, smoky soot of this world's failed experiments. This was the perfect ratio—the chemical trigger for a new age of violence.
Priscilla knelt, her movements precise. She began packing the powder into a seamless iron cylinder she had personally bored in the Great Forge. Her mind, sharp and analytical, ran through the variables: P = \frac{nRT}{V}. She wasn't just a girl in a dungeon; she was an engineer calculating the exact pressure required to shatter stone.
"Hagar, get behind the sarcophagus of Bishop Malachi. Now."
She struck a match. The flame was a tiny, dancing spark that illuminated her face—gone was the softness of the girl who used to cry in the dark. In its place was a predatory focus. She touched the spark to the nitrate-soaked fuse.
Hiss.
She didn't run. She walked with measured steps toward cover, counting the seconds.
Boom.
The explosion was a physical fist that slammed into the air. The shockwave rippled through the catacombs, sending a rain of dust and bone fragments from the ceiling. A blinding flash of white-hot light turned the darkness into day for a fraction of a second.
Priscilla stepped out into the swirling acrid smoke before it had even cleared. She didn't cough. She didn't flinch. She walked straight to the impact site. The iron cylinder hadn't just ruptured; it had vanished, leaving a jagged crater in the ancient limestone floor.
"The expansion rate is 15% higher than the modern baseline," she muttered, her fingers tracing the scorched stone. "The sulfur from the Cinder-Back Volcanoes is purer than I anticipated."
"Lady Priscilla!" Hagar gasped, crawling out from his hiding spot. "The bells! The monks will think the world is ending!"
"Let them think it," she said, looking up as the distant tolling of the midnight bells muffled the echoes of her work. "By the time they realize the world isn't ending, I'll be the one holding the match that starts the next one."
She stood in the smoke, her silhouette framed by the glowing embers. She wasn't a noblewoman anymore. She was a catastrophe waiting for a reason to happen.