The wind at the northernmost edge of the Valerius Dukedom was in blizzard. It was a place where the sky met the earth in a blur of jagged white peaks and lethal permafrost. Most humans avoided this region, calling it the "Edge of the World," but Lucius knew better.
He rode his horse through the thickening flurry, his eyes narrowed against the biting cold. In his past life, the "Machinery King" had been a legend—a man who led a tribe of nomadic warriors so skilled in synchronized combat and mechanical warfare that they were likened to a single, unstoppable engine. Lucius remembered the King's final moments on the battlefield, the smell of blood and scorched iron thick in the air.
"If we had met before the world burned, Lucius," the King had gasped, clutching a mortal wound, "my tribe would have been your shield. We wouldn't have sold our souls to a tyrant just to eat. We would have been brothers."
