The garage was quiet the next morning.

  Too quiet.

  Even the cursed mop bucket hadn’t screamed yet, which usually meant one of two things: it had wandered into another dimension again… or something worse was coming.

  I sat in my usual spot near the back workbench, drawer hinges twitching, core humming faintly like a kettle about to boil. After the sabotage attempt from Wrenchspire, everything felt sharper. Tense. I was sure the rest of the crew felt it too.

  Grenda had gone silent. Sparks was unusually still—still being relative, since she was technically levitating a glowing hammer over a barrel of live rune batteries, but not talking was progress.

  Bleatford hadn’t come in yet.

  That was the first sign.

  The second was the storm cloud on the horizon. Not metaphorically—an actual, swirling, sickly green thundercloud hovering directly over the garage roof like a mana-charged death pi?ata.

  “Did anyone order… that?” Sparks asked, pointing upward.

  Grenda squinted. “Not unless Bleatford started selling weather again.”

  The storm crackled. A bolt of energy struck the weathervane. It began spinning like mad, then exploded into a puff of dandelions and sparks.

  Sparks clapped. “Oooh, aesthetic.”

  “That’s a suppression ward,” Grenda muttered. “Old-school. Nobody uses those unless they’re trying to block—”

  The lights flickered.

  My rune pulsed. Hard.

  Something—someone—was trying to smother my magic.

  They weren’t targeting the garage.

  They were targeting me.

  I felt it like a pressure in my core—heavy, suffocating, like a lead blanket shoved inside my drawers. My glowing gear—the one wedged between a bottle cap and a long-forgotten spark plug—began to heat.

  I rattled.

  Sparks noticed first.

  “Boxy? Are you… glowing harder than usual?”

  My top drawer popped open on its own.

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  Grenda stepped back. “That’s new.”

  “I think he’s reacting to the storm,” Sparks said. “Or the other way around.”

  The lights cut out.

  A deep, low hum echoed from the center of the garage.

  Then a voice.

  “RELINQUISH THE CORE.”

  Sparks spun in place. “Okay that’s new, that’s dramatic, and that’s not our usual Tuesday chaos!”

  A figure appeared at the threshold of the shop—backlit by the storm, cloaked in shadows, voice like rolling thunder soaked in smugness.

  Tall. Robed. Horns? Maybe. Hard to tell. What I could tell was that they were radiating arcane suppression like it was cheap cologne.

  Grenda grabbed the crowbar. “You’re not with Wrenchspire.”

  “No,” the figure said. “They were sloppy. I am not.”

  Sparks whispered, “Is this a Dark Wizard thing? Should I get the backup goat?”

  “You don’t even have a backup goat,” Grenda hissed.

  “Not yet,” Sparks replied. “But I’ve been making a list.”

  I focused on the intruder.

  They weren’t here for the shop. Not for Sparks. Not even for Grenda.

  They had come for me.

  “The artifact has awakened,” the figure said. “I will have it. Or you will burn.”

  Grenda stepped in front of me, crowbar raised. “That’s gonna be a no.”

  “I said burn,” the figure repeated, raising their hand.

  Flames erupted across the shop—green and gold, licking at shelves, curling around enchanted engines and rune cabinets. But none of it touched Grenda. Or Sparks.

  Because I moved first.

  My drawers flew open.

  Tools levitated.

  Energy poured from the core embedded in me like a rising tide, slamming outward in a shockwave of heat and defiance. The storm above cracked wide like a broken mirror.

  The suppression field shattered.

  The flames fizzled.

  The figure stumbled backward, cloak smoldering at the edges.

  I was done hiding.

  I launched a screwdriver like a javelin. It went right through his hood and embedded in a post behind him.

  He vanished in a blink, a hiss, and the scent of burned ozone.

  Gone.

  The storm disappeared a moment later, like someone flipping off a very dramatic light switch.

  The silence afterward felt like a scream.

  Sparks ran to my side. “Boxy? Are you okay? You’re—you’re steaming.”

  I was.

  Literally.

  Smoke coiled from my hinges. My lid clattered slightly from the overdraw. My bottom drawer refused to close. I had overextended. The core had responded, but at a cost.

  “I think he just saved our lives again,” Grenda muttered.

  Sparks crouched beside me. “Boxy… what are you?”

  She reached into the open drawer.

  I couldn’t stop her.

  She pulled out the ancient gear—the source of the rune inside me—and turned it over in her hands.

  Carved on the underside, hidden beneath grime and grease, was a symbol.

  Not a rune.

  A crest.

  Grenda’s eyes widened.

  “That’s… that’s the mark of the Prime Forge.”

  Sparks blinked. “I thought that was a myth. They made sentient constructs during the Final Convergence War. Ones with real thought. Real souls.”

  Grenda looked at me, suddenly quiet.

  “You’re not a reincarnated spirit in a box,” she whispered. “You’re a prototype. A weapon. One they lost.”

  I buzzed weakly.

  They didn’t step away.

  They didn’t panic.

  Sparks smiled. “Well, no wonder you’re so dramatic.”

  Grenda smirked. “Guess we’re gonna need stronger shelves.”

  Later that night, Sparks made me a tiny padded cubby lined with dragonhide scraps and enchanted felt. She said it was “for comfort and future explosions.”

  Bleatford finally returned around midnight.

  “I assume something tried to kill us again?” he said, not looking up from his abacus.

  “Yup,” Grenda said. “Boxy exploded back.”

  “Hm. Accepted.”

  And life, somehow, went on.

  But something had changed.

  Now they knew I was more than a toolbox.

  Now I knew.

  And somewhere, in some forgotten corner of the realm, someone else did too.

  Because as the shop settled into uneasy silence, a figure far away opened a dusty ledger, found the symbol of the Prime Forge…

  …and smiled.