The mill was dying.

  I could hear it in every creak of the desiccated beams, in the strained groan of the main shaft that Zeno braced with his steel shoulder, turning himself into a living support strut. The building that had once fed the entire valley was becoming either our mass grave—or, if physics did not betray us, the most expensive pressure cooker in the history of this world.

  “Iron… more. Bring more,” I leaned against the riveted grain tank, feeling heat beginning to seep through my jacket.

  Ephrem stumbled through the doorway, dragging an armful of broken planks mixed with rags. His face was gray, eyes sunken, hands shaking so badly that splinters scattered across the floor. He hadn’t slept in two days. He hauled, sawed, hammered—and boiled under my cold instructions.

  “Boy… that’s the last of the annex,” he rasped, dropping the load. “Nothing left to burn. Unless we start tearing down the mill itself.”

  “Then tear it down,” I didn’t even open my eyes. “If we don’t raise the pressure to ten atmospheres, these walls are finished anyway. The Order’s mages will burn them in seconds.”

  My right arm had become dead weight. The joint had clogged with flour and dirt back in the forest, and now the claw hung half-curled like a grotesque steel hook. Every turn made seven kilograms of iron slam against my ribs, knocking the breath out of me.

  I didn’t care. Different numbers floated before my eyes.

  Water temperature: 92°C. 95. 98.

  We had turned the mill into a closed system.

  I forced Ephrem to wrap the main tank in copper tubing—ripped from Zeno’s innards and from the cooling system of my equipment crate. Every gap we sealed with resin mixed with horsehair and tar. Zeno became the regulator. His jammed knee no longer allowed him to walk, so I chained him to the mill’s frame. Now his reactor ran beyond safe parameters, heating the water through our improvised heat exchanger while Ephrem below fed the furnace like a man stoking hell itself.

  “Iron,” Zeno’s voice vibrated, shaking dust from the ceiling. “Seal on the left flange will not hold. Critical gasket degradation. Probability of vessel rupture at current pressure growth: thirty-four percent.”

  “Hold it, Zeno,” I spat. My saliva tasted bitter, metallic. “Clamp the pipes with your hands if they start leaking. We need an impulse. One strong release.”

  “My manipulators are losing precision due to thermal expansion. I am experiencing… discomfort.”

  “That’s called physics. Get used to it.”

  Hans appeared in the doorway. The village elder looked as if he’d seen a ghost. His gaze moved from Ephrem shoving the remains of someone’s table into the fire, to me—filthy, half-crippled, wrapped in copper coils—and then to Zeno, humming like an enraged hive.

  “They’re on the slope,” Hans said quietly. “I saw the light. A lot of light. The mages are chanting. The air is ringing so hard it makes your teeth ache.”

  “Leave, Hans,” I straightened, bracing against the tank. The steel burned my palm. “Take the people to the caves beyond the creek. If this blows, there’ll be nothing left but a crater.”

  “Ephrem, come with us,” Hans looked at the old man. “You can see it—he’s lost his mind. Turned your home into… this.”

  Ephrem slowly straightened and wiped the sweat from his face. He looked at me for a long time. There was no faith in my “genius” in his eyes. Only mortal exhaustion—and something like fatherly pity that made me want to howl.

  “Go, Hans,” he said quietly.

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  Hans spat, crossed himself, and disappeared into the dark.

  I checked the pressure gauge—assembled from a bent tube and the mercury thermometer from Kyle’s medical kit. The needle trembled at the red mark.

  “Ephrem,” I stepped closer. “When I shout—drop and cover yourself with the trough. The oak one. Understand?”

  “Understood, boy,” the old man gave a faint smile. “Tell me… did you pray even once these past days?”

  “Prayer doesn’t create overpressure. It doesn’t expand gas.”

  I stepped onto the balcony. The wind struck my face, smelling of ozone.

  Below, the forest glowed blue and gold.

  The phalanx of the Hounds of Light. Two Inquisitors in heavy armor at the front.

  They didn’t hurry. They knew we were trapped. They began forming the Circle of Purification. Threads of energy stretched between them; a dome started tightening over the mill—it would simply burn all the oxygen inside.

  “Naive bastards,” I whispered. “You don’t understand latent heat of vaporization.”

  I went back inside. The air trembled. The temperature had climbed past fifty degrees; breathing hurt.

  “Zeno, status!”

  “Pressure: twelve atmospheres. Vessel integrity: twelve percent. Iron, water feed from the channel has ceased. Coil is dry. Forty seconds until pipe melting begins.”

  “We wait,” I grabbed the main lever.

  It had once been the brake lever of the mill wheel. I turned it into a release valve. My left palm slipped with sweat. The prosthetic hung useless, and with a snarl I pressed it against the lever, using my whole body as counterweight.

  “Ephrem! Down!”

  Outside, the chant rose. The mages sang. Static lifted the hair on my neck. The dome compressed, heating the wooden walls.

  “Now…” I looked at Zeno.

  The green lens of his eye met mine. For a moment, there was nothing mechanical in it.

  “Working with you has been… logical… Iron.”

  “Pressure!”

  “Fifteen atmospheres. Critic—”

  I yanked the lever down.

  For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.

  Then the world ended.

  The mill convulsed as if the earth had split open. The main valve, aimed toward the path, burst wide.

  Superheated steam—compressed beyond sanity—erupted outward.

  It wasn’t fire.

  It was an invisible wall of death.

  Steam nearing three hundred degrees, under monstrous pressure, shot forward, expanding instantly into a dense white cloud at nearly the speed of sound.

  Through a crack in the wall I saw what happened to the first ranks of mages.

  Their Sacred Shields were built to withstand magic—directed fire, spears of ice, mental strikes. Not physical mass. Not water turned to gas.

  The steam passed through the barriers. Wrapped around their bodies. Slipped under armor, into seams and visors. The front line didn’t even have time to scream. Skin sloughed off in strips. The air became boiling water. Those behind them went blind instantly—their corneas cooked.

  The dome shattered. Concentration broke under unbearable pain.

  “More!” I screamed, unable to hear myself. “Zeno, everything!”

  Zeno arched, steel fingers clamping pipes, directing the flow. At that moment, one of the internal copper flanges ruptured.

  A jet of boiling water struck my right shoulder—where the prosthetic fused into flesh.

  I howled as I was thrown into the wall. The pain was so absolute that the “Will to Live” system briefly shut down sensory input.

  [Critical tissue damage. Third-degree thermal burn.]

  [Loss of consciousness in 5… 4…]

  The mill began to collapse. Beams sagged under heat and moisture. Steam filled everything, turning the world into a white furnace.

  Somewhere in that fog, men screamed. Not proud warriors of the Order. Just pieces of meat crawling away from invisible death.

  Then—silence. Sharp. Ringing.

  I lay among the wreckage, unable to feel my right side. My left arm twisted unnaturally. My lungs burned—I had inhaled boiling steam.

  “Ephrem…” I rasped.

  The old man crawled out from beneath a chest, covered in gray dust and wet soot. He crawled to me, staring at the shoulder where flesh blistered around iron fused to bone.

  “Boy… you’re alive…” he wept soundlessly. “What have we done… there were people…”

  I turned my head.

  Zeno stood by the shaft. The lens dark. His hands still gripping torn pipes.

  He looked like a monument to himself.

  “Zeno?..”

  Silence. The reactor was quiet.

  Through the breach in the wall, I saw the path. Bodies in gray cloaks. Those who survived were fleeing, abandoning weapons and wounded alike. To them, it was the wrath of a demon breathing boiling mist.

  “We won…” I whispered.

  “No, boy,” Ephrem slid a rolled coat beneath my head. “We just survived. And the mill is gone. There will be no bread.”

  I looked at the ruins. Broken gears. The frozen wheel. Zeno—part of the wreckage now.

  [Status: 3%. Entering emergency recovery mode.]

  “At least… now they’ll think… before they come…”

  I closed my eyes.

  The last thing I remember was the smell of burning wood and Ephrem’s quiet prayer for the souls of those I had just boiled alive.

  One final number flickered in my mind.

  System efficiency: 42%.

  Not bad for a field assembly.

  Not bad at all.

  When Hans and the villagers returned, they found two broken men and one iron monster among the ruins of their past.

  And in their eyes there was no longer fear of the Order.

  Only fear of what a man becomes when he chooses the laws of nature over the laws of God.