"Keep your weight on the manifold, Jhaevrek! If that pipe shifts another inch, the entire pressure lock blows!" Varkelion yelled, his knuckles whitening as he fought the vibrating primary steering column."I'm slipping! The grease—the whole floor is covered in hydraulic fluid!" Jhaevrek screamed back, his expensive boots sliding across the metal grating as the locomotive violently lurched to the left. The sheer gravitational pull of the abyssal void outside was trying to peel the engine apart, tearing at the rivets with a sound like snapping bones."Stop whining and lean into it!" Mavrik’s voice roared through the comm-link, muffled by the howling gale outside the hull. "I’m at the coupling flange now! The emergency charges are set, but the remote detonator is fried! Someone has to manually trip the thermal fuse on the exterior casing!"Varkelion’s heart hammered violently against his ribs. "Manually? Mavrik, you’ll be caught in the blast radius of the severing charges! The fifth carr

"The switch is right ahead! I can see the signal lights through the windshield!" Varkelion roared, his voice cracking as he wrenched the primary steering column to the left. The iron deck beneath his boots groaned, protesting the violent course correction. "Mavrik, report! Did the coupling clear?""The fifth carriage is gone! We’re running light, but the thermal backlash nearly took my arm off!" Mavrik's voice crackled through the comm-link, heavy with exhaustion and raspy from smoke. The sound of heavy boot steps echoed from the companionway as the engineer dragged himself back into the locomotive cabin. "The charges blew clean. The dead weight is falling into the void, Varkelion. We're finally free of it.""Free of what? A hundred thousand memories and all my pristine porcelain sets?" Jhaevrek collapsed against the control console, gasping for air, his velvet coat utterly ruined by soot and grease. He wiped a black streak across his forehead, glaring at the forward viewport. "You ca

"Walking is out of the question because there isn't any ground left to walk on once you step past the platform edge!" Varkelion roared, his knuckles white as he wrestled the heavy brass steering column with every ounce of muscle he possessed. "Look out there, you blind aristocrat! Tell me what you see past those signal lights!"Jhaevrek squinted through the grease-smeared viewport, his aristocratic composure entirely shattered by the brutal reality of their approach. "It looks like... an industrial graveyard. Towering skeletons of rusted cranes, collapsed warehouses hanging over an abyss, and a concrete platform choked with gray dust.""That’s the Terminus," Mavrik barked, slamming his palm down onto the emergency pressure release valve. A deafening hiss of high-pressure steam erupted from beneath the floorboards, filling the cramped cabin with a dense, choking white fog. "And it’s coming at us twice as fast as it should because we dropped that heavy freight car back in the tunnel! Ho

The screech of the brakes was the loudest thing in the world, a deafening, metal-on-metal agony that vibrated straight through the soles of their boots and into their marrow."More pressure! Give it everything left in the accumulator!" Varkelion screamed, his veins bulging at his temples as he yanked the master valve back with both hands."There's nothing left to give! The tanks are empty!" Mavrik roared back, his face soaked in sweat and black soot as he jammed a heavy iron crowbar straight into the manual gear assembly to stop the wheels from spinning backward. "We're riding purely on momentum now, Varkelion! Pray the friction holds!"The locomotive shuddered violently, a massive metallic groan rippling through its spine as the heavy iron frame fought against the dead stop of the Terminus platform. Outside the reinforced viewport, the rusted skeletons of ancient industrial cranes and collapsed concrete overhangs blurred into a solid wall of gray dust. Sparks cascaded in blinding, ro