The distant clang of metal and the whine of servos echoed across the fractured plaza as the sun strained to pierce the ashen veil above Nondicci. Its rays, once golden, now filtered through a sky thick with soot, casting a muted pallor over the battered skyline.
Liam stood beside Garron Kest, watching as a heavy loader hoisted the shattered remains of a statue from a crumbled mound. Dust curled into the air like smoke, lost in the haze.
"We don't have as much time as you think," Liam said quietly, eyes still fixed on the city.
Garron raised an eyebrow. "Time for what?"
"For the surface," Liam replied. "For light. For breathable air."
Garron's expression hardened. "What are you saying?"
Liam turned to face him, his voice stripped of its usual levity. "Mount Tambora has fully erupted. Not a tremor—an atmospheric collapse. The ash cloud is already spreading. Within five months, the entire continent will be covered. The sky will choke. Crops will die. Mana will destabilize in open air. Daylight may vanish for a decade."
Garron went still, his breath caught. "You're serious."
"I don't joke about extinction," Liam said flatly. "That's why I'm not rebuilding on the surface."
He raised his arm, projecting a layered schematic of interconnected tunnels and nodes across the ruined square—foundations hidden deep beneath their feet.
"I'm building underground."
Garron leaned in, studying the design. "Shelters?"
"Cities," Liam corrected. "Interlinked sectors with self-sustaining infrastructure—geothermal cores, hydroponics, mana filters, arcane shielding, ventilation scrubbers. Habitable for decades."
He pointed to critical junctions on the map. "If we start now, Phase One can be completed in three months. Room for thirty thousand, minimum. But we have to move fast."
Garron scratched his beard, mind turning. "You'll need every geomancer, mason, and channeler we've got."
"And all your salvagers too," Liam added. "We'll use wreckage, alchemically reclaim what we can't find, and reinforce everything with leyline anchoring. The city we build won't just survive—it'll endure."
Garron exhaled sharply. "You always were dramatic."
Liam met his gaze. "And you always knew when I wasn't exaggerating."
After a pause, Garron cracked his knuckles. "You've got the Guild. Full force. And if I'm building a damn city underground in five months, I'm gonna need a vat of coffee and a new spine."
Liam allowed a thin smile. "And steel knees."
Just then, a tremor rumbled beneath their feet—distant, ominous, a reminder that the mountain was still speaking.
"Let's build the world that comes after," Liam said.
Garron nodded. "Let's make sure there is one."
One month later.
The skies over Nondicci had deepened to a sickly gray-black, dense with ash. Sunlight barely made it through—just a faint disc veiled behind volcanic haze. The surface city lay hushed, as though mourning, its silence broken only by the distant groan of shifting stone and the occasional crack of a failing structure.
But below ground, there was motion.
In Sub-Grid Alpha, Liam stood on an observation platform overlooking the first of the completed sectors. Tunnels fanned out like a web, braced with etched alloy and alchemical seals. The walls shimmered faintly with residual mana, pulsing in time with the geothermal cores humming far below.
Over the past month, progress had been relentless. Garron's Builder's Guild operated in shifts, working in tandem with Liam's autonomous machines. Salvaged stone and steel were melted and reforged. Arcane systems, drawn from fractured relics and enchanted debris, were rewoven into power conduits and shielding nodes. Underground fields—cultivated under luminous arc-lights—had begun producing the first crops engineered to grow in mana-rich soil.
Five thousand people now lived below the earth. Survivors, refugees, mages, laborers, and children. Their voices echoed through the tunnels. Soft. Steady. Alive.
AISAR's voice whispered through Liam's neural link.
"Subterranean Module 2C online. Conversion nodes operating at seventy-three percent. Atmospheric particulate density aboveground up twelve percent this week. Estimated full sunlight occlusion in four months."
Liam frowned. "Faster than projected. How are the pressure seals holding?"
"Stable. Surface winds worsening. Recommend reinforcing secondary intake arrays."
He acknowledged with a thought, just as footsteps approached.
Garron, layered in ash-dusted gear, emerged from a nearby corridor, shaking dust from his gloves.
"Sector Delta's ready," he reported, a tired grin tugging at his mouth. "Dry runs complete. Not glamorous, but it'll hold."
"That's eight sectors," Liam said. "Twelve left."
Garron nodded slowly, his face lined with exhaustion but lit with something like belief. "We might actually survive this."
Liam turned toward the central dome, where a holo-map displayed the continent above. Half of it was already grayed out—clouded by volcanic fallout. The rest was fading.
"We don't get to wait for miracles," Liam said quietly. "We build them."
And in the shadowed depths of the world, beneath ash and ruin, one had already begun.