It started with that smell.
Not your regular woods dampness or some nearby creek – but something fucking foul. Like copper and rot left baking in the sun for days. Elias was just hunting for dinner – scorpions for the boys back home, meaty ones he got lucky today. Said he'd bring something before dark.
The stench got worse as he pushed through the brush. His boots sank into mud that felt wrong – too warm, too soft. Then he saw it.
Not an animal, nor machine. Not really. More like something wearing meat. A twitching heap of butchered flesh. At first, he thought maybe a bear had torn open a boar and left it. But then the pile moved – sat up – and Elias felt his heart slam against his ribs like it wanted out.
It was a man. Or what was left of one. Sitting calmly inside the hollowed-out corpse of another person. Legs crossed, back straight, stringy bits of tendon and gut smeared down his arms like he'd been finger-painting. He was eating something – chewing on a purplish rope of tissue that had to be someone's throat.
Elias couldn't scream. His voice just died. He stumbled back – *crack*. His boot snapped a stick loud as a gunshot.
The thing turned.
Its head moved wrong – tilted mechanical-like, first one way, then the other. Studying him. Those weren't eyes in its face – they were black holes, wet and shiny, going nowhere. Its smile stretched too wide, carved deep in bloodless skin like someone who'd only heard about smiling had tried to make one.
Then it stood up. Not smooth. Not natural. All jerky, bones grinding, shoulders twitching like each joint had to remember its job. Like it was test-driving the body.
Elias's hands shook as he grabbed his musket, somehow got it loaded, and fired.
The shot hit dead center in its chest. The thing jolted back but didn't drop. Then – fuck – the flesh just... fixed itself. Bones popped back in place. Even the blood slithered back inside like time was running backward.
It looked down at the healed wound. Then back at Elias. That smile never changed.
Elias ran like hell.
He crashed through the rusted metal towers into the clearing where his cabin stood. Slammed the door. Locked it. Ran to the living room—
And stopped dead.
There, at the dinner table, sat... himself.
Same coat. Same beard. Same work-roughened hands. His wife was smiling, pouring soup. His boys were laughing.
Elias froze. Then—
"I'm Elias," he croaked, desperate to make his family see that the thing wearing his face was a monster.
The copy did him better than he did himself. "He's a doppelganger," it said calmly. "Kids, go upstairs. I'll handle him till the Alchemist gets here."
The real Elias lunged. The creature caught him easy, slammed him against the wall. Eyes wide and hungry, it whispered:
"I watched you, stole your memories, wore you like a coat. Now you'll rot where I found you."
The last thing Elias saw was his life being eaten away. The soup on the table steamed from a pot made of bone. And next to a wooden spoon lay a sliced tongue, curled like a ribbon of forgotten memories.
---
Ironhollow – Jagged District, Eastern Wall
The storm above Ironhollow never stopped bleeding.
Lightning ripped open the sky like veins, thunder rolled like distant bombs. War drums pounded through the alleys, followed by that sick sound of metal tearing into flesh.
Jonathan stumbled out from what used to be a watchtower, now just smoke and rubble. His coat stuck to his back, soaked with blood that wasn't his. Around him, the bodies of the Metallica Inquisitors lay broken open, their fancy armor twisted, ribs peeled back like orange segments.
His mind was coming apart. Time felt thick and slow, like honey dripping. He reached out—and reality twitched.
The noble had sent her. Thing called Thassia. Barefoot. Skin like paper. Thin as wire. Something about her tore at the world, like watching fabric rip in slow motion. Never blinked. Eyes like red glass, filled with ink that moved on its own.
"Should've just said yes," she hissed.
Jonathan managed a bloody grin, lips split from the last hit. "They wanted in my head. Into my archives."
"They needed your power. Now they'll just take what's left of you."
He stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. "Come and fucking try."
Thassia... flickered. Like a TV with a bad signal. Blurred and jumped, movements skipping frames. Her blade appeared first, cutting through nothing—or where he'd been a second before.
Jonathan snapped his fingers.
And time went backward.
Just for a heartbeat.
Her blade pulled back mid-swing. She stumbled off-balance. He was already behind her.
"Welcome to hell," he whispered right in her ear.
He drove her face into the cobblestones, skull cracking into a crater of what he called memory-ash. She made this noise—not pain, just surprise—like she couldn't believe what was happening to her.
Golden-blue dust leaked from his fingertips. Threads of light like veins pulled from some giant cosmic heart. Time wasn't just passing—it was something he could grab and twist.
But Thassia was bred for this shit. She reached into her own chest and pulled out a shard of mirror. It showed her as a kid. Then as a corpse. Then as Jonathan. Then as something that hurt to look at.
She stabbed the mirror forward—
Jonathan split apart. His reflection in the glass peeled into dozens. Old man. Baby. Skeleton. Beast. Dead thing.
For a second, his mind just broke.
Then he screamed.
The sky froze solid.
Lightning stuck mid-flash. Raindrops hung in the air like glass beads. Blood stopped dripping. In that frozen moment, Jonathan reached inside himself and pulled out what made him real.
One move. One second. All he needed.
He appeared behind her, hand buried in her spine.
Words bubbled from her mouth. "You... don't... get it. The nobles serve something older."
He twisted hard.
She crumbled to ash.
---
Ironhollow – Beneath the Gears -- The Machine-God Catacombs
The room throbbed with heat and rust.
Pipes moaned like they were alive. Meat hung from cables. Gears turned with nothing driving them. In the middle, hanging from chains made of golden bone, it was taking shape.
The angel.
No arms or legs. No real shape. A flat thing—one-dimensional—like someone had drawn a line across reality with a knife. You couldn't see it right. Looking at it sliced your thoughts open.
Heretics were crying as they fed it. Chanting words from dead languages. Shooting glowing crystals into the engines.
It had eyes. Not in any normal pattern—just eyes. Everywhere. Some stuck in chunks of meat. Others blinking from metal sockets. Wings jutted out, broken and machine-like, gears chewing on tendons like they were hungry too.
The head cultist bowed so low his forehead touched the bloody floor.
"O God... free us. Break our chains of perspective. Let us live in the knife-edge of now."
The angel twitched.
A single note hit the air—no voice, just pure sound. Like teeth scraping glass. One cultist's head just popped like a balloon. Another started coughing up eyeballs.
It was waking up.
---
Ironhollow – Ruined Bridge, West Sector
Jonathan stood alone.
Behind him, the war burned everything. Ahead, he felt something new trembling under the stone.
The heretics were winning.
He felt it like a scream buried under time. A ripple bending every shadow around him.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a steel cylinder wrapped in writhing, glowing filaments. The last Cognivault bomb.
Not really a weapon. A time-trap. Set it off, and it would freeze a moment forever—locking anything inside a perfect loop.
He'd never used it. Not even when the Inquisitors turned on him.
But now...
He limped toward the source. Down into the sewers. Through the pipes. Past walls that seemed to breathe and bleed oil.
Down. Down. Where gears bled and angels wore skin like clothes.
Jonathan walked into the chamber.
The cultists turned.
The angel saw him.
Every eye—hundreds of them—locked onto him. Wings unfolded with a sound like metal refusing to bend. The air cracked. His teeth hurt. His spine felt like it was being unzipped.
And still, he walked.
"You shouldn't exist," he told it.
It answered with a frequency that stopped every clock in Ironhollow.
He lunged, smashed the Cognivault against the floor—
Time collapsed in on itself.
The angel lunged. But the movement looped.
Again. Again. Again.
Trapped. For now.
Jonathan fell to his knees.
Blood leaked from his nose. His vision blurred. His memories stuttered. But he was still breathing.
Outside, the nobles would gather. Send more creatures. The war wasn't over.
But for tonight, the city could breathe.
And deep below, the angel slept inside its cage of frozen time.
A line. A shape. A hunger.
Waiting.