The horizon was aflame.
I ran, the weight of the machine's call heavy against my spine, each step an echo of the pulse surging through the ground. The shadows at my heels weren't chasing me with the urgency of a predator—they were patient, inevitable. Every stumble, every ragged breath was another thread they pulled tighter around me.
The slag fields gave way to a landscape cracked and scorched, the remnants of old structures jutting from the earth like broken ribs. Above, the sky had deepened into a bruised crimson, and oily smoke curled from vents in the ground, thickening the air until each inhale felt like swallowing knives.
I couldn't stop.
The voice inside me—hers, mine, both—whispered and hummed, a chorus of memories and warnings. "This was the first site they sundered. The fracture runs deep here. You'll feel it soon enough."
I reached a rise, a jagged outcrop that overlooked a basin below. What I saw twisted my gut into knots. A crater yawned open, its edges ringed with jagged metal spires, half-melted and studded with faintly pulsing lights. At the centre, a second machine—taller, narrower than the first—hummed with a sound like bones grinding beneath a glacier.
Surrounding it were figures—not like the stitched-faced ones from before, but others. Armoured in patchwork plates and torn banners, their faces hidden behind grim masks, they moved with purpose, unloading crates, dragging cables, driving stakes into the ground. At their centre stood a woman, her armour blackened and scarred, her helmet crowned with twisted metal horns.
She turned, and though I was too far to see her eyes, I felt them lock onto me.
A pulse shot through the air, sharper than the ones before. My knees buckled, and I felt the fracture in me widen, a sudden tearing sensation that made me bite back a scream. The voice hissed, "That's her. The second key. She's already begun the unbinding."
I tried to retreat, but a hand gripped my shoulder. I spun, nearly falling, and found myself face to face with a boy—no older than fifteen, thin and hollow-eyed, his skin smudged with ash and his clothes patched with makeshift armour. He pressed a finger to his lips.
"Quiet," he mouthed. His voice was barely a whisper, rough like gravel. "They'll hear you."
Before I could ask who 'they' were, the ground shuddered again. From the basin, the machine emitted a keening whine that split the air, a cry of something ancient and broken. The masked soldiers stiffened, turning their weapons toward the sound.
The boy tugged at my arm. "Come on! Before it's too late."
We ducked behind a slab of slagged concrete, skirting the edge of the rise. He led me through a narrow crevice that descended into a half-buried tunnel. The walls were slick with condensation, the air thick with the scent of rust and old oil. Faint lights flickered along the ceiling—improvised, strung from twisted wire.
We moved in silence for what felt like hours, the hum of the machine growing fainter but never disappearing. At last, we emerged into a chamber lit by a single, weak lantern. A handful of figures were huddled there—men and women, some armed with scavenged rifles, others with makeshift spears. Their faces were hollow, etched with exhaustion and fear.
The boy stepped forward, his voice low. "I found one. Another fracture."
The figures turned toward me, their eyes shadowed, their expressions unreadable. One of them—a woman with a ragged scarf covering the lower half of her face—approached. "You're from the surface?" she asked, her voice hoarse.
I nodded, though I didn't fully understand what she meant.
She exchanged a glance with the others. "Then you've seen it. The machines. The soldiers. The ones who walk like men but aren't. You've heard the hum. Felt the pull."
"Yes," I whispered. "I've seen them. I've felt it. What is it? What do they want?"
The woman hesitated, then pulled down her scarf, revealing a long, jagged scar that split her mouth. "They're unbinding the seal. The Hollow March—it's the war that broke the world. The stars didn't just die. They were stolen, ripped out of the sky, locked in machines. Now they're trying to finish what they started. To tear open the fracture completely."
I swallowed hard. "The woman at the machine—the one with the horns. Who is she?"
A silence fell over the room. Finally, the boy spoke, his voice brittle. "She was one of us. Before the machines took her. Now she's something else. They call her the Vesper. The Herald of the Second Fracture."
I felt a chill crawl down my spine.
The woman with the scarf looked at me with hollow eyes. "If you've been touched by the fracture, if you've survived its pull—then you're marked. You can't run from it. But maybe… maybe you can stop it from finishing what it started."
The boy pulled a battered map from his jacket, spreading it across the floor. It was rough, hand-drawn, marked with hastily sketched symbols and jagged lines. He pointed to a spot near the edge. "There's another machine. Bigger than the others. They call it the Heart. If we can reach it, maybe we can stop them. Maybe we can seal it before it opens completely."
I stared at the map, at the tangle of lines and symbols, at the uncertain path ahead. My hands trembled. The fracture inside me pulsed, insistent.
"I don't know if I can," I said.
"You don't have a choice," the boy murmured. "None of us do."
The chamber shuddered again, and faintly, above us, the second machine wailed like a mourning beast. The fracture in my bones ached, and the voice inside me whispered:
The Hollow March has already begun.