The morning in the Sink did not break; it merely leaked in.
The bruised purple of the sky filtered down through the layers of suspended smog, turning the crater into a bowl of twilight. Here, three miles below the surface level of the island, the laws of the Rustlands seemed to bend. The biting cold that had stalked them through the pipe forest was gone, replaced by a humid, oily warmth that clung to the skin like a fever sweat.
Kaelen woke before the others. He sat up in his bedroll, his joints popping with the sound of dry twigs snapping.
He reached for his Ledger by reflex. He opened it to the page he had marked the night before—Day 15.
The blank column where the probability of survival usually sat stared back at him. It was a white void on the page. For a moment, his hand twitched, reaching for the charcoal stick to calculate the variables. Food reserves: 60%. Ammunition: 40%. Structural integrity of the party: Compromised but stable.
He could do the math. He could derive a number that would tell him they had a 12% chance of breaching the Engine.
But he didn't pick up the charcoal.
"A man is allowed one error," he whispered to himself, repeating the words he had spoken to Elara.
He closed the book. The thud was soft, swallowed by the dense air.
He looked around the camp. They were sheltered in the lee of a massive gear-tooth, a slab of iron the size of a house that had been sheared off the main drive ring centuries ago. Korgath was sleeping sitting up, his back against the metal, his helmet resting on his knees. Even in sleep, the Orc looked like a fortification. Vanya lay curled in a tight ball, her hands wrapped in cloth to keep the necrotic veins from touching her skin.
And Elara.
The girl was awake. She was sitting on the edge of the wagon, her legs dangling, staring out at the center of the crater. She held the obsidian dagger in her lap, turning it over and over. The black glass drank the dim light, reflecting nothing.
Kaelen stood up and walked over to her. The ground here was paved with hexagonal basalt tiles, slick with condensation.
"You didn't sleep," Kaelen stated.
"It's too loud," Elara said quietly.
Kaelen frowned. He tilted his head. The Sink was dead silent. There was no wind, no mechanical whir, not even the scuttle of vermin.
"There is no sound, Elara."
"Not with ears," she said, tapping her temple. "The machine. It's... dreaming. I can feel it humming in the floor. It's a bad dream, Kaelen. It's dreaming about being stuck."
Kaelen looked out toward the center of the Sink. The Tectonic Engine rose from the jumble of machinery like a black iron tombstone. It was a fortress of pistons and valves, easily five hundred feet tall, its summit lost in the smog.
"It's not dreaming," Kaelen said, his voice finding its usual gravelly cadence. "It's a machine. It's waiting for an input."
"Or an intrusion," she countered.
Korgath stirred. The Orc placed his helmet on his head with a practiced motion, the seals hissing as they engaged. He stood up, stretching his massive arms. The sound of his armor plates grinding together was loud enough to wake Vanya.
The Elf sat up, blinking bleary eyes. She looked pale, the grey tinge of her skin more pronounced in the morning light.
"We move," Kaelen announced, leaving no room for discussion. "Leave the wagon. The terrain ahead is too dense. We take only what we can carry. Packs. Weapons. The Resonance Core."
He patted the lead-lined pouch on his belt where the remains of the Rime-Weaver lay.
They stripped their gear down to the essentials. Kaelen took his crossbow, a coil of rope, and his tools. Korgath took his hammer and the heavy shield. Vanya took nothing but her staff, though she looked at the water barrel with longing before turning away.
They walked into the machine.
The approach to the Engine was a journey through the anatomy of a dead giant.
They climbed over ridges of rusted camshafts and navigated valleys formed by collapsed intake manifolds. The scale of the machinery was oppressive. Bolts the size of barrels lay scattered like gravel. Everything was coated in a layer of polymerized grease, a black, tar-like substance that had hardened into resin over the centuries.
It was a graveyard of motion.
"This was the heart," Korgath rumbled, his voice amplified by his helm. He ran a gloved hand along a connecting rod that was thicker than an old-growth tree. "The Dwarves speak of the Great Engines. They say the Titans built them to keep the world spinning when the Gods got tired."
"It stopped a long time ago," Vanya murmured. She was walking with her staff held out, sensing the mana currents. "The ley lines here are... calcified. The magic didn't just leave; it hardened. Like blood in a clot."
"Because of the lock," Elara said. She was walking in Korgath's shadow, stepping in his massive footprints to avoid the pools of oil.
They reached the base of the Engine an hour later.
Up close, the structure was monolithic. The walls were seamless sheets of black iron, riveted with brass studs the size of dinner plates. There were no windows. No vents. It was a sealed system, designed to withstand the pressure of the planet's crust.
And there was no door.
They stood before a sheer wall of metal, looking for a seam, a handle, anything.
"The Archivist said it was locked," Kaelen muttered. "He didn't say it was a wall."
He walked along the perimeter, his hand trailing on the cold iron. His Audit was active now, scanning for micro-fractures, for temperature differentials.
Structure: Impenetrable. Material: Void-Hardened Steel. Weakness: None detected.
"There," Vanya whispered.
She pointed to a section of the wall that looked identical to the rest.
"I can feel it," she said, her voice trembling. "It's not iron. It's... intent."
Kaelen approached the spot. He wiped away a layer of grime with his sleeve.
Underneath the dirt, the metal wasn't black. It was silver. A perfect, circular pool of mercury, suspended vertically against the iron surface. It rippled slightly, though nothing touched it. It was about eight feet in diameter.
"The Mercury Gate," Korgath grunted. "In the legends, they say the Paladins used liquid metal to seal the armories. It only opens for the righteous."
"We are in trouble then," Kaelen said dryly.
He stood before the mercury. He could see his reflection in it, but the reflection was distorted. It showed him not as he was, but as a skeleton wrapped in rags, clutching a book.
"It reads the bio-signature," Kaelen analyzed, shifting into his problem-solving mode. "It's looking for a specific genetic marker. Or a mana frequency."
He looked at Vanya. "You're a caster. Try it."
Vanya hesitated. She stepped forward, raising her hand. Her fingers were trembling. She pushed her palm toward the silver surface.
Before she could touch it, the mercury reacted. It didn't ripple; it spiked. Sharp, silver needles shot out from the surface, stopping an inch from her palm. The metal hissed, turning a dark, tarnished grey where it was closest to her.
Vanya recoiled, clutching her hand to her chest.
"It hates me," she whispered, her eyes wide. "It tasted the rot. It tasted the necrotic magic. It thinks I'm a virus."
"It is a quarantine seal," Kaelen deduced. "It detects corruption. If you touch it, Vanya, it will likely kill you to sterilize the infection."
He looked at Korgath.
"Brute force?" the Orc asked, hefting his hammer.
"Unlikely," Kaelen said. "But we have to try the variables."
Korgath nodded. He stepped back, planted his feet, and swung.
The hammer struck the mercury with enough force to shatter stone. But there was no clang. No impact.
The liquid metal simply swallowed the head of the hammer. It flowed around the iron, absorbing the kinetic energy instantly. Korgath pulled, his muscles straining, but the wall held the hammer fast.
"Let go!" Kaelen shouted. "It's digesting the iron!"
Korgath released the handle and stumbled back.
They watched as the mercury spat the hammer back out. The weapon clattered to the ground. The head was pitted and scarred, as if it had been dipped in strong acid.
"It rejects force," Kaelen noted. "And it rejects corruption."
He stepped up to the mirror himself.
He didn't use magic. He didn't use force. He used logic. He pulled out his lockpicks—fine tools of tungsten steel. He tried to find a sensor, a mechanism, a physical trigger within the fluid.
The mercury ignored him. It didn't spike, and it didn't absorb. It simply remained flat. It reflected his skeleton. It saw him as a non-entity. A tool trying to open a master.
"It requires an Oath," Vanya said softly. "Korgath is right. It's a Paladin Lock. It needs a soul that has sworn a covenant to the Light. It needs someone who believes."
Kaelen lowered his tools. He looked at the reflection of his hollow, skeletal face.
"Then it stays closed," he said flatly. "There are no Paladins left. And there is no belief here. Only math."
The silence of the Sink seemed to deepen, pressing in on them. They had walked through hell, crossed the abyss, and defeated a horror, only to be stopped by a door that demanded a virtue they had long since sold for survival.
"The Archivist," Elara spoke up.
She had been standing back, watching the mercury with intense focus.
"He said I was the thing the lock was made to keep out."
Kaelen turned to her. "He said a lot of things. Most of them were metaphors for dying."
"No," Elara said, shaking her head. She walked past Kaelen, stepping into the zone where the mercury reflected the viewer.
The mirror changed.
For Kaelen, it showed a skeleton. For Vanya, it had shown spikes.
For Elara, the mercury calmed. It became perfectly smooth, like a still lake.
And in the reflection, Elara didn't see herself. She saw... nothing.
The mirror showed the crater behind her. It showed Kaelen. It showed Korgath. But where Elara stood, there was just a hole in the reflection. A silhouette of absence.
"It doesn't see me," Elara whispered.
"Because you're a glitch," Kaelen realized, remembering his own words. "You don't fit the model. The system doesn't have a file for you."
"Is that good?" Korgath asked.
"It means it doesn't know to block her," Kaelen said, his mind racing. "Or it means it will try to purge her."
Elara reached into her pocket. She pulled out the obsidian dagger. The blade was a shard of the Void itself—pure, crystallized nothingness.
"The lock keeps the Void out," Elara said. "That's its job, right? To protect the Engine from the outside?"
"Yes," Kaelen said slowly.
"But I'm already inside," she said. "I'm holding the Void in my hand. And the lock... it can't see me."
She stepped closer. The mercury began to tremble. Not with aggression, like with Vanya, but with... confusion? The liquid rippled in chaotic patterns, trying to focus on the anomaly standing before it.
"Elara, careful," Kaelen warned, his hand drifting to his crossbow.
"It's confused," Elara murmured. "It's asking a question. 'State your function.'"
She raised the dagger.
"I have no function," she said to the door.
She pressed the tip of the obsidian blade against the center of the mercury pool.
The reaction was instantaneous and silent.
The moment the Void-glass touched the Paladin-silver, the two absolutes collided. The mercury didn't absorb the dagger. It panicked.
The silver surface violently retracted, peeling back from the point of contact like skin burning away from a flame. It wasn't opening; it was fleeing. It was trying to get away from the piece of the Void that was touching it.
A circular aperture dilated open, widening rapidly as the liquid metal retreated into the rim of the iron frame.
A hiss of escaping air blasted out—stale, pressurized air that had been trapped inside for a century. It smelled of ozone and static electricity.
"It opened," Korgath breathed, staring at the dark tunnel revealed within.
"It didn't open," Kaelen corrected, staring at Elara with a mixture of awe and fear. "She scared it open."
Elara lowered the dagger. She looked at the blade. It was unharmed.
"It's not a lock," she whispered, looking into the darkness. "It's an eyelid. And I just poked it."
Kaelen walked to her side. He looked at the girl—small, unassuming, holding a piece of the abyss that had terrified an ancient guardian mechanism.
"The Archivist was right," Kaelen said grimly. "You aren't a lockpick. You're the infection."
"Are we going in?" Elara asked, her voice small.
Kaelen looked at the open gate. The darkness inside was absolute. His Audit couldn't penetrate it.
"We have no choice," he said. "The lock will reset. It's already trying to close."
He pointed to the edges of the aperture, where the mercury was slowly creeping back out, overcoming its fear.
"Move," Kaelen ordered. "Formation. Korgath, front. Vanya, center. Elara, with me. Lights."
Korgath activated the lumen-strips on his shoulders. Beams of harsh white light cut into the gloom. He stepped through the aperture, his boots clanging on a metal grate floor.
Vanya followed, clutching her staff. She held her breath as she passed the ring of mercury, terrified it would lash out.
Elara stepped through.
Kaelen came last. He paused at the threshold, looking back at the Sink—the grey, silent crater of dead machines.
He stepped inside.
Behind him, with a wet, slurping sound, the mercury seal snapped shut. The light of the outside world was cut off instantly.
They were in the Antechamber.
The silence here was different. It wasn't the heavy, dead silence of the Sink. It was a humming silence. A vibration that was too low to hear but strong enough to feel in the teeth.
Korgath's lights revealed a corridor that stretched upward at a steep angle. The walls were lined with copper coils, glowing faintly with a dormant, amber phosphorescence.
"The air," Vanya whispered. "Taste it."
Kaelen inhaled. The air was clean. Sterilized. It tasted like a thunderstorm.
"Filtered," Kaelen noted. "The environmental systems are active. Standby mode."
"It's... beautiful," Elara said.
And it was. Compared to the rust and rot of the outside, the interior of the Engine was a marvel of preservation. The brass was polished. The floor grates were unblemished. It was a time capsule of the Golden Age.
But Kaelen felt a prickle on the back of his neck.
"Don't let the shine fool you," he warned, his voice echoing in the corridor. "A clean trap kills you just as dead as a dirty one."
He checked his Ledger.
Location: Interior, Tectonic Engine. Status: Trespassing.
"We need to find the Core Control," Kaelen said. "Up. We go up."
They began the climb. The ramp spiraled upward into the dark, winding around the central shaft of the massive piston.
As they walked, the amber lights in the walls brightened, sensing their movement. Click... click... click... relays awakened ahead of them, illuminating the path.
"It knows we are here," Korgath rumbled.
"It thinks we are maintenance," Kaelen hoped. "Or it's guiding us to the incinerator."
They walked for twenty minutes, ascending hundreds of feet. The hum grew louder.
Then, the ramp ended.
It opened onto a circular platform suspended over a vast, cylindrical shaft that dropped down into the bowels of the earth.
In the center of the platform stood a console. And standing at the console, illuminated by the amber glow of the screens, was a figure.
It was not a monster. It was not a robot.
It was a suit of armor. Paladin armor. Pure white enamel, trimmed with gold that had not tarnished. It stood seven feet tall, holding a greatsword with the tip resting on the ground.
But there was something wrong with the posture. It wasn't standing at attention. It was slumped. Leaning against the console.
And through the visor of the helm, no light shone.
"A Paladin?" Elara gasped.
"A corpse," Kaelen corrected, raising his crossbow.
"No," Vanya said, her voice filled with a sudden, sick dread. She pointed her staff at the figure. "Not a corpse. A battery."
She pointed to the floor.
Cables ran from the boots of the armor, thick copper snakes that plugged directly into the console.
"They didn't just die," Vanya whispered, tears welling in her blindfolded eyes. "When the gods died... the Engine needed power. It needed a soul to keep the pilot light burning."
The figure stirred.
The armor groaned, servos whining with the sound of tortured metal. The head lifted slowly. The visor was dark, but a voice—scratchy, looped, and skipping like a broken record—emerged from the external speakers.
" Protocol... seven... The light... must... hold..."
The greatsword lifted, scraping against the metal floor with a shriek.
" Unauthorized... entry... detected..."
Kaelen looked at the tragic, hollow thing before them. A hero turned into a fuse.
"Korgath," Kaelen said softly. "Shield."
Korgath stepped forward, slamming his shield into the deck.
"I am sorry, brother," Korgath rumbled to the hollow suit. "But your watch is ended."
The Paladin-Husk took a step forward. The cables dragged behind it.
" The... light... fails..." the suit moaned. " Do... not... let... it... go... out..."
It charged.
It was not a battle of grace. It was a collision of tragedies. The ancient, battery-drained guardian against the rusted, broken survivors.
And in the shadows of the platform, Elara watched, gripping her obsidian dagger, realizing that the Archivist was wrong.
They hadn't come to start the Engine. They had come to euthanize it.