"Vines?" Jhaevrek chuckled, turning a page of his ledger with a thumb that looked more like polished slate than flesh. The sound was thin and brittle, like dry parchment catching fire. "You call them vines, Varkelion. You see an obstacle. You see a cage. You see a problem to be solved with heat and metal. How terribly, exhaustingly linear."Varkelion took a precarious step forward, the catwalk vibrating beneath him as the train strained against the encroaching crystalline growth. The metallic groan echoed in his chest, deep and mournful. "I see a train that needs to move, and a man—you—who seems to have an unnatural fondness for watching things decay. Move, or I’ll move you."Jhaevrek didn't flinch. He merely tilted his head, his spectacles catching a stray beam of light from the train’s flickering exterior floodlamps. "I’m not holding you here, Conductor. I’m simply documenting the stillness. Do you know how many souls are currently trapped in the harmonics of this engine? Six hundre

"You’re a harvest master, Varkelion. You’re simply too dense to read the fine print on your own ticket."Varkelion lunged. The catwalk shuddered under his weight as he reached for Jhaevrek’s collar, but the man moved with an impossible, liquid grace, side-stepping into the howling abyss of the Dead Zone. He didn't fall. He hung there, suspended by nothing but a sudden, violent shift in the gravitational harmonics of the crystalline vines."Data?" Varkelion roared, his voice barely audible over the screech of protesting iron. "They are flesh and blood, Jhaevrek! They have names! They have families in the berths!"Jhaevrek dangled horizontally against the void, his coat whipping like a tattered flag. He laughed—a hollow, tinkling sound. "Families? You mean the shadows that huddle in the shanties while you burn their memories to keep the furnace hot? You think the coal is doing the heavy lifting? Look at your pressure gauges, Conductor. Watch the needles dance whenever someone in Carriag

"Liar!" Varkelion roared, his voice cracking against the cacophony of the grinding train. He gripped his revolver, the cold steel biting into his palm, but his hand shook with a violent, involuntary tremor. The violet vine lashed out again, a whip of calcified sorrow that carved a trench through the heavy-duty steel of the catwalk.Jhaevrek remained suspended, his form blurring in the shimmering distortion of the Dead Zone. He didn't look like a man anymore; he looked like a fracture in reality, a tear in the fabric of the train’s internal logic. "Believe what you must, Conductor," he called back, his tone maddeningly calm. "But if you are burning coal, why does the furnace smell like ozone and burnt hair? Why does the ash look like charcoal-etched ink forming letters that dissolve the moment you try to read them?"Varkelion staggered back, the metallic screech of the engine vibrating through his very marrow. He had spent years—an eternity of miles—convinced that the soot on his face

"Open the damn hatch, Mavrik!" Varkelion’s voice was a jagged blade of desperation, cutting through the rhythmic, soul-sickening thrum of the engine. He didn't wait for a reply. He lunged past the shivering engineer, his fingers clawing at the brass locking mechanism of the fuel bunker. "We aren't burning lives! We are burning the past of this world, not our own!""Stop, you idiot!" Mavrik lunged forward, catching Varkelion by the harness, his massive frame pinning the conductor against the vibrating bulkhead. "The pressure! Look at the glass! The red needle is dancing on the edge of a kinetic collapse. If you cycle the bunker now, you’ll kill every soul on this train, yourself included!"Jhaevrek stood atop the primary piston housing, his silhouette haloed by the rhythmic, violet pulses of the crystalline vines that had encased the engine room. He laughed, a sound like glass grinding against teeth. "He’s right, Varkelion. You reach for the truth, and the train shudders in protest. Wh

"Step away from the gear, Varkelion," Jhaevrek whispered. The sound didn't come from his throat; it resonated from the very floor plates beneath them, a harmonic vibration that rattled Varkelion’s teeth. "Do you truly wish to see what happens when the archive is purged? You’ve spent years wondering why the locomotive groans at night. Now, you’ll learn that the groans aren’t iron—they’re the screams of every childhood, every first kiss, and every death this train has ever ‘fueled’ to keep moving."Varkelion’s hand trembled on the cold brass wheel. His knuckles were raw, split open by the friction of the iron, blood staining the rusted spokes. He looked at Mavrik, whose face was a grey, sweating map of despair. "Is he lying, Mavrik? Is this the cost of our movement?"Mavrik didn’t look at him. His one eye remained fixed on the pressure gauge, the needle twitching violently against the red pin of critical failure. "It isn't a lie. It's a taxonomy of existence. Every time we shovel 'coal'