The Crusher limped down the main avenue of the Quarry.

  Steam vented violently from the bypassed cooling manifold, shrouding the red chassis in a white fog. A rhythmic hiss marked time with the machine’s lurching gait.

  Inside the open cockpit, Ezy wiped sweat from her brow with a grease-stained sleeve. The temperature gauge was pinned against the red stop.

  Zeen walked ahead of the machine. He kicked a slab of masonry aside, clearing a path through the debris. The street was a dense thicket of stone limbs and torsos.

  Hundreds of stone Goat Kin stood frozen, locked in their final moment of obedience. They clogged the ruined city like a logjam.

  Zeen shouldered past a paralyzed Golem. Its stone hands grasped at empty air, clutching a pike that had long since disappeared. The Red Metal armor lay scattered on the cobbles—crimson shells discarded by a retreating tide.

  "Tight squeeze," Zeen grunted.

  Ezy feathered the throttle. The Crusher groaned, shouldering past two statues. Metal shrieked against stone.

  Heat radiated from the floorboards, soaking into the leather soles of Ezy’s boots. The vibration of the over-torqued engine traveled up her spine, a constant, bone-jarring reminder of the bypassed safety protocols.

  Her eye locked on the pressure gauge. The needle vibrated deep in the red zone, threatening to bury itself against the stop pin. She tapped the glass face with a skeletal knuckle. The needle held its dangerous position.

  She refused to cut the throttle. If the engine died, the pistons would expand and seize within the block. The machine would become a statue, just like the Golems clogging the street.

  The silence of a dead engine terrified her more than the risk of explosion. Silence meant the rescue ended. Silence meant Trenn and Mara remained buried.

  "Zeen," Ezy called, her voice strained. "The manifold is vibrating. We need to clear this block."

  Zeen stepped over a severed stone head lying in the gutter. He waved her forward.

  "There’s another path. Left turn," Zeen commanded, his voice fighting the hiss of escaping steam.

  Ezy hauled the control stick. The Crusher’s hydraulic knee joint squealed, a high-pitched protest as she swung the heavy chassis around a pile of shattered timber.

  They were entering the industrial plaza. Near the entrance to the Assembly.

  The Great Lift dominated the square. Or it had.

  The iron lattice tower lay twisted across the cobbles, a mangled skeleton of girders wrenched from its foundation. The massive pulley wheels sat embedded in the roof of a nearby warehouse.

  Ezy stomped the brake pedal. The machine settled with a heavy, metallic groan.

  She leaned over the reinforced rim of the cockpit. Dust still rose from the wreckage, hanging in the stagnant air.

  "The shaft!" she shouted.

  Zeen climbed a mound of displaced slate to gain a vantage point. He stood on the lip of the pit.

  The underground entrance was a choked throat of rubble.

  Huge slabs of granite, sheared by the mountain’s upheaval, blocked the descent entirely. The Red God’s awakening had shifted the tectonic plates of the city, crushing the tunnels like paper straws.

  "The service stairs?" Ezy demanded, her hand hovering over the throttle.

  Zeen kicked a loose brick into the depression. It clattered once against a boulder and stopped.

  "Gone," Zeen said, his voice flat. "The foundation shifted. The whole sector slid. It is sealed tight."

  She tried to move again, but the Crusher refused to budge.

  “I guess that’s as far as we go,” Ezy sighed. “Let’s start salvaging Red Metal from all those broken pieces of armor.”

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  “Wait,” Zeen said, pointing through the dust.

  A brigade of Rabbitlings moved stone from a collapsed corridor nearby. Velo stood at the head of the line, his pinstriped vest hanging in tatters. He spotted the Crusher and jogged over, wiping soot from his snout.

  "We need a forge," Zeen shouted from the ground. "We need a route to the Assembly."

  Velo shook his head. He gestured to the cracked pavement. "The lower lattice failed. The elevators are crushed. The stairs are rubble. No one goes down today."

  "Then we dig," Ezy stated. Her prosthetic hand gripped the control lever until the leather creaked.

  "You will dig until you starve," Velo retorted. He grabbed a canteen from a passing worker and rinsed his mouth. "The mountain settled. The tunnels are pinched shut."

  He paused, the canteen halfway to his lips. His long ears swiveled toward the city gates, tracking the lingering heat distortion in the air.

  "There is... one way," Velo said, his nose twitching as he processed the calculation. "But it is not a road. It is a wound."

  He pointed a grimy paw toward the devastation. "The Red God. It tore a trench through the earth and the mountain when it surfaced. We call it the God’s Wake."

  Zeen looked at the jagged horizon, understanding dawning on his face. "A direct drop," he realized. "Leading straight into the Assembly. We can rappel down the scar."

  Velo studied the shuddering machine. Steam hissed from a ruptured seal.

  "You need heat to fix that," he noted. "We have Red Metal. An ounce produces a proper flame."

  Zeen’s eyes lit up. "We can retrofit the intake. Use the metal to weld the patch."

  “Fine,” Ezy sighed. “A step back, two steps forward. Now enough talking, let’s get to work.”

  Blue sparks showered from Ezy’s improvised torch. A curved section of Red Metal breastplate fused over the ruptured manifold, the crimson alloy bonding with the cast iron.

  “Upgrade!” Ezy exclaimed. “No more redzone!”

  Zeen held the patch with tongs, squinting against the staccato glare of the arc.

  Ezy flipped her welding mask up. The smell of ozone and hot metal clung to her clothes.

  “Punch it!”

  Zeen, from the cockpit, ignited the Crusher’s systems. The dashboard came to life. The needle had dropped from the red zone and settled firmly in the green. The machine’s rattle smoothed into a deep, powerful thrum.

  A teal shadow drifted over the debris field.

  Almitad hovered above a crushed tenement building ten yards away. Her empty sockets fixed on a pile of shattered limestone. A translucent Goat Kin stood knee-deep in the rubble, tugging uselessly at a heavy lintel that pinned his own physical corpse.

  "It won't move," the spirit whispered, the sound a dry rustle of leaves.

  Velo stepped out of the shadow of the Crusher. The Rabbitling pulled off his soot-stained goggles. His long ears flattened against his skull in silent reverence. He placed a grimy paw over his heart and bowed his head.

  “We can’t replace the broken tank treads, but the machine walks again!”

  Almitad descended. Her skeletal feet brushed the dust.

  "Leave it," she commanded. Her voice resonated, bypassing ears to vibrate in the bone.

  She raised a hand. Black-green light spilled from her ribcage, illuminating the spectral scene. She traced a complex sigil in the air—a rune of severance.

  The ghost halted his struggle. He looked at his hands, then at the Shepherd. The tension drained from his ethereal frame. He nodded once. The spirit dissolved into motes of white light, drifting upward to vanish against the grey sky.

  Almitad lowered her hand.

  Inside the patchwork cage of her chest, the undead Mana Bloom shuddered. A single, black-veined petal detached from the flower. It drifted slowly through the gaps in her ribs, turning to grey ash before it struck the ground.

  One petal remained.

  "Almitad!” Zeen exclaimed, running to the Shepherd of Loss. “You survived—I mean… you’re here!”

  Almitad turned slowly. Her teal robes rippled in the stagnant air. She floated toward the machine but stopped just outside the reach of the machine's heat.

  “We’re moving to the trench,” said Ezy, atop the walking Crusher. “We’re going to find Mara and Trenn.”

  "I cannot," answered Almitad.

  Zeen lowered his tongs. "We need your magic. If the tunnel is blocked—"

  "The city is haunted," Almitad interrupted. She swept a skeletal arm across the ruined skyline. "Hundreds died in the quake. Their spirits are confused. Terrified. If I leave, their trauma will fester. They will become Wraiths."

  She turned her empty sockets to Zeen.

  "The One-Eye is destroyed. The amulet is shattered. The Dam is avenged. Our war is over."

  Zeen felt the hum of his friend's spirit—peaceful, satisfied. The burning need was gone, replaced by a dull ache.

  "Yeah," he whispered, touching the broken shard in his pocket. "We got him."

  "My oath is fulfilled," Almitad said. She pointed a bony finger at the single, wilting petal in her chest. "My Mana Bloom runs low. I have enough light to cleanse this city, or to walk into the dark with you. I choose the city."

  Ezy gripped the side of the Crusher. "But Trenn is down there."

  "Then save him," Almitad said. "My light ends here. Once I am done guiding the souls of the dead, I will follow them past the World Between Worlds."

  She turned her back on them. She drifted toward a collapsed bakery where a faint, spectral sobbing echoed from the ruins.

  Zeen watched her go. The silence she left behind was heavier than the roar of the machine. He looked at the dark trench ahead, then tapped the roof of the cockpit twice.

  "Drive," he said.

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