"Every time we shovel 'coal' into this furnace, we are feeding the fire with the history of someone who once lived," Mavrik finally wheezed, his gaze never leaving the agonizing oscillation of the pressure gauge. "The engine doesn't consume energy, Varkelion. It consumes significance. And Jhaevrek has been the one curating the menu."Varkelion felt the cold iron of the wheel bite into his palm, a sharp, grounding pain that did nothing to quell the nausea rising in his gut. He turned his head, his eyes locking onto the man perched above them. Jhaevrek wasn't just standing on the piston; he was part of it now. His skin pulsed with the same rhythmic, violet light as the parasitic vines choking the engine exterior."A curator? No, Mavrik, that's far too pedestrian," Jhaevrek murmured, his voice sounding like a thousand distant whispers layered over one another. He stepped down, his boots landing silently on the vibrating floor plates. "I am a librarian of the inevitable. Why let a life ev

"Break the anchor, then!" Varkelion screamed, pushing himself off the scorching piston casing. The metal hissed, searing his palm, but the physical pain was a distant, secondary concern. He scrambled back to his feet, eyes fixed on the shimmering, violet-hued entity that Jhaevrek had become. "I’d rather drift into the void than keep this locomotive running on the fuel of stolen lives. If every mile we travel is a eulogy for someone whose memory you’ve harvested, then we’ve been dead since we left the station!"Jhaevrek tilted his head, a gesture that sent ripples of iridescent light across his skin. "Dead? No, Varkelion. We are the only things that are. The world outside this engine room, the tracks, the vines, the nomads in the grey corridor—they are merely footnotes. Your passengers? They are sentences, waiting to be punctuated. You think you’re a leader? You’re just a shovel-hand in a library of ghosts, and you’ve finally realized that the coal in your hands is someone’s grandmothe

"I see it, Mavrik!" Varkelion snapped, eyes never leaving the shimmering, violet distortion that was once his navigator. "If he wants an archive, I’ll give him a burial!"Varkelion didn’t reach for his sidearm. Instead, he swung the iron wrench with violent precision, not at Jhaevrek, but at the master release valve of the primary pressure chamber. The heavy iron struck with a resonant, soul-shaking clang that vibrated through the very marrow of the train."You fool!" Jhaevrek’s voice lost its ethereal, mocking cadence. For the first time, it cracked, sounding frantic and thin. "The pressure differential will tear the hull apart! You are venting the kinetic memory! You are deleting the archive!""I'm clearing the damn deck," Varkelion retorted, his muscles bulging as he threw his full body weight against the recalcitrant wheel. The valve shrieked—a high-pitched, metallic scream that mirrored the psychological agony of the train. "Mavrik! Shut down the intake! Divert the remaining heat

"I don't care about the history, Jhaevrek!" Varkelion roared, his voice barely audible over the scream of the venting boiler. He threw his weight against the valve, his knuckles white against the scorching iron. "History is for the dead. We’re still breathing, and as long as I’m in this chair, we’re going to keep it that way!"The floor shuddered violently as the pressure drop hit. Somewhere deep in the belly of the locomotive, a heavy rhythmic thumping began—the sound of the piston-rods struggling to maintain rhythm against the sudden loss of thermal load.Jhaevrek, his violet silhouette flickering like a dying strobe light, slammed a hand against the control console. His skin was translucent now, revealing the clockwork machinery beneath, shifting and churning with a frantic, inhuman complexity. "You don't understand the catastrophe you’re inviting! Without the archive, the train has no destination! The track is the memory, Varkelion! You disconnect the engine from the sequence, and

"I want us to survive!" Varkelion repeated, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, absolute finality. He reached down, grabbing Mavrik by the collar of his grease-stained tunic, hauling the engineer toward his feet. "You think I don’t know what’s in those crates? You think I haven’t heard them whispering behind the steel plating for three hundred miles? They aren’t people anymore, Mavrik. They’re fuel. They’re potential energy waiting for a spark."Mavrik sagged, his broken ribs clicking with every shallow breath. "You’re talking about the Third and Fourth carriages. The ones that have been locked since the descent. You open those hatches, and the pressure in there... it’s not just air, Varkelion. It’s madness. You’ll kill us all before we even get to the furnace.""If we stay here, we die," Varkelion countered, dragging Mavrik toward the bulkhead door. The heat in the room was intensifying, turning the very air into a caustic, searing fog. The train groaned—a deep, metallic scream th