The descent through Disposal Pipe Number 12 cut through Lumeria's air like a knife plunging toward the heart of the earth. The vertical wind howled violently, shredding the remnants of Clive Collins's work cloak until they whipped wildly through the absolute darkness of the waste channel. Around him, the colossal metal walls of the pipe that carried alchemical refuse from the upper districts flashed past like blurred lightning. The cold lingering from the Solvent-7 he had just absorbed still froze his left arm, keeping his human consciousness from collapsing beneath the pressure of Lycus's predatory instincts. But the fury burning inside his chest after witnessing Doctor Vane's memories acted like a furnace feeding his adrenaline. Clara was still alive when they threw her away. The sentence kept spinning through Clive's mind like a broken record. A twelve percent survival rate in the deepest zone of The Gutter was a miserable number for a sickly little girl.

The interior of The Rust Citadel resembled the guts of a dying mechanical beast. The cylindrical walls of the distillation tower were cluttered with piles of discarded circuitry, shattered pressure indicator panels, and iron bars dividing the cargo compartments. At the center of the tower, a massive vertical shaft yawned open, revealing a rusted hydraulic lift platform powered by a low-pressure steam system. The relentless clack-clunk-clack of enormous brass gears echoed through the tower walls, creating a grinding resonance that tortured the ears of anyone who entered. Clive Collins strode across a narrow iron catwalk that circled the tower's interior wall. Gray smoke from the liquid coal furnaces far below drifted upward, coating his leather boots with a thin layer of soot. His glowing red left eye cut through the haze, locking onto the primary control room situated at the top of the tower, a glass observation deck reinforced with steel mesh designed to withstand

The dense gray fog of Sector 5 gradually faded, replaced by an icy chill that pierced straight through the bone as Clive Collins, Vesper, and Clara, cradled in his arms, cautiously crossed into the boundaries of Sector 6. If the previous sectors had been filled with the roar of steam engines and the noise of mechanical industry, Sector 6 was the antithesis of life in Onyxspire itself. This place was known as The Iron Graveyard. Here, the undercity was no longer supported by sturdy foundation pillars, but by the collapsed remains of ancient distillation towers stacked atop one another, forming a labyrinth of gigantic metal carcasses frozen in eternal silence. There were no yellow gas lamps, no illegal neon glow. The only source of light came from pale green bioluminescent alchemical moss thriving between rusted pipes carrying cold condensation water. The air carried the sharp taste of iron mixed with the scent of frozen methane gas. Clive stepped carefully across an old iro

Sector 6 was a place where time itself seemed frozen alongside thousands of tons of dead scrap. As Clive Collins, Vesper, and Clara traveled farther north, the suffocating maze of ancient drainage tunnels gave way to a vast, desolate valley. A strange phenomenon occurred here. Alchemical steam leaking from the upper districts cooled to extreme temperatures before it could reach the ground, crystallizing in midair and falling as grayish-white flakes that the residents of the underworld called iron snow. Each flake carried traces of lightweight metallic residue. When they touched wool cloaks or bare skin, they did not melt. Instead, they clung to the surface and produced a faint rustling sound like sandpaper scraping against metal. Clive walked at the front of the group. His leather boots left deep black footprints in the ten-centimeter-thick blanket of iron snow. The burn wound on his right shoulder, inflicted by the Iron Golem's steam cannon at Tank Number 4, s

The darkness inside The Siphon's drainage shaft was not merely the absence of light. It was a physical entity, dense, heavy, and reeking of old rust that choked the lungs. This vertical conduit, eight meters in diameter, stretched straight upward through the tectonic concrete plates of Onyxspire, resembling the iron throat of an ancient monster that had slept for half a century. Along the walls of the shaft, angled at nearly seventy degrees, a thin layer of ice from Sector 6 condensation mixed with petrified alchemical lubricant deposits, creating a slick and deadly surface. Clive Collins served as the eyes of their small group. His glowing red left eye shone steadily within the eternal darkness, slicing through the dense methane fog hanging motionless inside the shaft. Every movement he made was a manifestation of precise Second Fusion calculations. KRAK... KRAK... KRAK. The obsidian claws extending from Lycus's left arm protruded five centimeters outward, dri