The Foundry District was the embodiment of a mechanical hell created by human greed. Here, deep within the lowest layers of Onyxspire's vertical structure, the air was no longer a gas fit for organic lungs. The atmosphere was thick with coal dust, microscopic iron shards, and sulfur vapor that burned the eyes red. The ceiling of the district was the underside of the upper sectors, a gigantic steel plate that constantly leaked black lubricant oil, creating an endless drizzle that smelled of rust. THUD! THUD! THUD! The pounding roar of massive steam compressors echoed every three seconds, shaking the foundations of the ground and the bone marrow of everyone standing upon it. Along the narrow streets flooded with black sludge, smelting furnaces the size of five-story buildings spewed streams of molten orange steel, illuminating the hollow faces of thousands of forced laborers. They moved like zombies, their bodies skeletal and their coughing relentless. Most wore cheap st

Clive Collins's footsteps carried him out of the maze of cooling pipes in Sector 7, weaving between coal conveyors that moved endlessly like giant conveyor belts in the belly of the earth. The air outside the pipe network felt three times hotter. Ahead of him, Furnace Number 9 stood in terrifying grandeur. The structure resembled a cathedral of black iron, coated in decades of soot and encircled by high-pressure steam pipes that hissed continuously, releasing plumes of white vapor into the cavern ceiling of Onyxspire. This was a forbidden zone. Around the furnace's outer perimeter stretched rows of barbed wire carrying low-voltage electrical currents, broken up by watchtowers equipped with automatic steam-powered machine guns. Yet what drew Clive's attention wasn't the watchtowers. It was the colossal figure standing directly before the hydraulic steel gates of Sheldon Mallory's laboratory. Steam Golem Model S-4. The mechanical creature stood ne

Clive Collins' footsteps no longer made a sound. Across the marble floor, now flooded with a mixture of green preservative fluid and the fresh blood of the Harvesters, he walked toward the bulletproof glass control station where Sheldon Mallory had taken refuge. Each beat of Clive's heart felt synchronized with the steady pulse of Lycus in his left arm. The black shadow aura cloaking his body crawled across the floor, extinguishing the gas lamps one by one as he passed, leaving behind a suffocating darkness. Sheldon backed away until his spine struck the laboratory's main circuit console. The white silk glove on his hand trembled violently, causing the Lumerian sword-cane in his grip to rattle erratically against the metal panel. "Don't come any closer! Y-you have no idea who you're dealing with, Collins!" Sheldon shouted. His voice rose an entire octave, stripped of every trace of the aristocratic authority he had always flaunted. "I'm a Mallory! M

The silver-white light pouring through the gaps in the cargo elevator shaft ceiling was nothing like the yellow glow of gas lamps in The Foundry or the dim neon haze of The Gutter. This was the light of Lumeria. A constant radiance emitted by alchemical crystal lamps powered by high-pressure purified steam from the core districts. The illumination was so bright, so sterile, that it made Clive Collins's remaining human eye ache after weeks spent adapting to the eternal darkness of the lower world. Klang... Klang... Klang... The massive chains hauling the cargo elevator platform began to slow, accompanied by the hiss of enormous hydraulic systems. The platform, as large as a launch field, finally came to a gentle stop, locking into position at the foundation structure of Lumeria's Lower Logistics District, a sector known as The Silver Hangar. Everything felt different here. The plaza floor was no longer made of muddy earth or rusted iron, but of galva

The maintenance corridor of the Main Alchemist Sector felt narrow, suffocating, and filled with the constant roar of high-pressure steam turbines hidden behind ivory steel walls. Clive Collins crawled through the ventilation network, his body shrouded in the condensed black mist of Shadow Meld, absorbing every beam of light that attempted to penetrate the iron grates beneath him. Each time the memories of Lucas's soldier surfaced in his mind, the obsidian claws of Lycus on his left arm tightened, gouging deep scars into the metal walls of the ductwork. The name Clara echoed endlessly through the labyrinth of his consciousness, acting as pure fuel that burned away whatever humanity remained in his chest. They had thrown his sister into The Gutter's waste disposal sector as though the little girl were nothing more than discarded experimental scrap. [WREN: Clive, we are directly above the Core Surgical Chamber of the Central Laboratory. Sensor Detection: Two high-leve