The night air in Eirnmoor tasted of ash and old rain, a bitter tang that clung to the back of Varnel Clockwain's throat as he crept through the abandoned service ducts behind the Harrington Foundry. Lamp-glasses fixed along the corridor cast tremulous halos of pale orange light, pooled in stagnant metal puddles on the floor. Pipes overhead hissed with escaping vapor—each sigh a reminder that this city's heart was powered by arcane machinery and half-forgotten rituals, as much as by coal.
At nineteen, Varnel had learned to move like a shadow among shadows. His clothes were simple—dark wool trousers and a threadbare tunic—but his gauntleted hands told another story: the long fingertips of a maker, stained with black soot one moment, glinting with fine copper wire the next. Around his neck hung a tiny brass amulet, engraved with an incomprehensible rune that pulsed when the ley currents beneath the city quivered. He no longer remembered who had given it to him; only that it had saved his life once, and ever since it had become a part of him.
He paused at a detour in the ductwork where the metal walls bowed inward, as though something on the other side pressed perpetually against them. Varnel pressed an ear to the seam and heard only the thrum of engines and the distant clang of pneumatic hammers. His breath fogged in the dim light. He gripped his satchel and slid between the panels—slipping into a larger chamber where a single lamp burned by a thick column of gilded pipe.
The lamp's meager beam revealed a ruined altar: a circular platform of braided iron bands, etched with half-erased glyphs. Above it hung a broken crystal lens, shards of opaline glass embedded in twisted metal filaments. Varnel knelt, setting his bag beside him and unbuckling its leather straps. He pulled out a slender cylinder—his own creation—a mechanism that thrummed softly, the coils within it resonating like a heartbeat.
Tonight, he would learn whether dreams could be distilled into flesh and fire.
He pressed the device into the center of the platform. Its surface flared with dull light, the rune on his amulet echoing in resonance. For a moment, the gears around him seemed to stop; the hiss of steam cut out, and the distant hammering fell silent. Even the dust motes froze in the air. Then came a tremor, low and insistent, like a voice calling from some impossible depth.
Varnel's heart slammed. He reached for the amulet and felt its warmth expand through his chest, a pulse of energy synchronizing with the device at his feet. The rune glowed bright gold, lines rippling across the metal surface of his skin. The broken lens above him shuddered, and a faint humming filled the room.
A ribbon of vapor drifted upward, carving shapes in the air—shapes that scintillated and resolved into grotesque silhouettes. Eyes, dozens of them, flickered into existence at the edge of perception. They watched him. Beneath the brass filigree of the ceiling, a whispering tide of language slithered: unspoken truths, half-remembered legends, laughter that grated against reason.
Varnel froze. A voice had spoken his name.
He had never felt divine terror before—only the hungry awe of youth discovering a broken world. His throat constricted as the glyphs on the platform pulsed again. He understood then that the device had bridged two things never meant to touch: his fragile human will, and something vast and unnameable that lay beyond sight.
The edges of the chamber rippled like oil on water. Varnel's vision blurred. He stumbled backward, banging his knee against the iron railing. The device clattered, spinning on its axis. The lens overhead caught the glow and sent ripples of refracted light dancing across the walls.
Then—all at once—the trembling ceased. The shapes dissolved, the humming died, and the glyphs faded. The lamp guttered, as if startled by the sudden void.
Varnel sank to the floor, his breathing ragged. His fingers were scorched, charred at the edges, but the amulet's rune had dimmed to a soft ember. He closed his eyes, counting heartbeats until the world felt solid again.
When he dared to look, the device lay dormant. The altar's circle was cold, and the shattered lens remained motionless. It was as if nothing had happened.
But Varnel knew better.
He gathered his satchel and crept back through the ducts, each footstep echoing in the cavernous bowels of the foundry. Above him, the city groaned under its own weight: the soot-choked highways, the endless tangle of valves and pistons, the great copper ribs that encased its aging core. Eirnmoor was alive, but sick—its systems failing, bleeding, haunted.
Only a handful of souls saw beneath the rust. Ansel was one of them—Ansel with the chipped monocle and the habit of quoting absurd riddles in the middle of the street. Ansel who believed that somewhere in Eirnmoor lay a hidden library of dreams, stacked beneath the city like a second foundation.
Varnel emerged into the alley where he and Ansel often met. The cobblestones were slick with oil runoff, reflecting the flicker of gas lanterns. No one else stirred at this hour, not even the rats that usually scuttled between refuse barrels.
He found Ansel leaning against a wrought-iron gate, face drawn in gloom. Rivulets of light danced on the monocle's cracked glass, and his clothes were speckled with ink.
"Any luck?" Ansel asked, voice low. The streetlamp threw half his face into shadow.
Varnel opened his satchel and withdrew the cylinder. Its surface was cool now, the humming gone. He placed it in Ansel's trembling hands.
"Some luck," he said, swallowing. "But it's not what we hoped. Something answered… something that lives in the space between the gears."
Ansel's breath caught. "Between the gears. You mean it reached into—"
"It reached in," Varnel confirmed. "And I almost lost myself."
They both knew what that meant. A fragment of soul surrendered to the device; a shard of something alien might have slipped inside. The amulet's rune had flickered suspiciously.
Ansel closed his eyes. "We have to be careful. The Council of Brass will not forgive trespassers in the old vats."
Varnel nodded. The Council was Eirnmoor's secret tribunal, a conclave of engineers, thaumaturges, and forgotten aristocrats. They maintained the fusion engines that kept the city alive—yet they grew ever more paranoid. Rumors said they sacrificed vaporcraft pilots and silenced anyone who spoke of the Underworks.
"I know," Varnel replied. "But this… this could save the city. If we learn to harness that… entity."
Ansel's lip curled in a half-smile. "Or it will kill us both."
They departed the alley in silence, circling back toward Varnel's tiny attic. The streets felt narrower here, as though the buildings leaned in to listen. Faint laughter echoed behind them: a child's giggle that dissolved into static, or the hiss of a valve.
Upstairs, the attic was already crowded with journals and sketches. Blueprints for coil-pistons, diagrams of thaumic conduits, pages torn from alchemical treatises. Varnel closed the door and secured the latch, then lit a single candle. Its flame trembled in the draft, casting long fingers of shadow across the cluttered desk.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other. Ansel's eyes reflected candlelight and something deeper—fear, excitement, wonder.
"It's real," Ansel whispered. "The old stories were right. They said beneath the city lay seven realms, each more impossible than the last."
Varnel's pulse quickened. He stepped to the desk and flipped back through his notes—sketches of vault doors braced with runes, scraps of overheard conversation at the Institute, mentions of "the silent registrar" and "the watcher behind the coil."
He placed a finger on a hastily drawn symbol—a circle bisected by a jagged line. "This… this was the first mark I saw, scrawled on the steam vents near the old sluice gates."
Ansel leaned in, fingertips brushing the page. "That glyph isn't mechanical. It's a seal. A fracture mark. It means the boundary has been breached."
Varnel's breath caught. "Do you think the seven realms… exist beyond the city?"
Ansel's gaze drifted to the candle flame. "If they do, then Eirnmoor sits atop the first. The Clockwork Veil, they called it. A thin membrane between here and realms we cannot imagine."
He paused, then added softly, "I've seen markings in the Foundry—signs of the next. And something was waiting there."
Silence settled again. The candle sputtered, and in its glow the shadows seemed to pool like ink. Varnel swallowed, thinking of the voices, the shapes, the leeching hunger behind that altar. Something vast had stirred.
He turned to his workbench and began unpacking tools: fine-tipped screwdrivers, copper wire insulated with foxbone resin, vials of distilled viridian fluid. His fingers moved deftly, but his mind raced with questions: What was the entity he had touched? Could it be bound within machinery, tamed like a steam automaton? Or would it tear the city's heart from its chest?
He found himself sketching a new design: an iron crown, not of triumph, but containment. A headpiece of interlocking gears, linked by lenses of smoky quartz. It would attune the wearer's mind to the entity's frequency—a bridge in reverse.
Ansel watched, brows furrowed. "You think you can speak back to it?"
Varnel pressed his lips together. "I have to. If we can learn its language, maybe we can seal the fractures before they spread."
Outside, the bell in the central spire tolled fourteen times—though the clocks still insisted it was three in the morning. A clockwork dove cooed from a rooftop perch, north of the Institute, as if mocking human precision.
Ansel rose. "I should go. They'll notice if I stay past curfew."
Varnel nodded, moving to pour two cups of broth from a flask. The liquid was thin, warmed by a pocket burner. He handed one cup to Ansel and clutched the other in his own shaking hands.
"Be safe," Varnel said. "And if… if you dream of eyes in the steam, write them down."
Ansel's eyes darkened. "If I don't wake up at all, promise me you'll finish the design."
Varnel's throat constricted. "I promise."
Ansel took his leave, slipping into the night. Varnel watched him go until the door clicked shut—until only the soft hiss of the burner and the distant industrial heartbeat remained. He set down his cup and returned to the crown design, each line drawn with deliberate care.
He did not notice the candle guttering until it was nearly spent. He did not hear the scratching behind the rafters, as though pen on paper traced his every move.
Only when the rune on his amulet flared cold did he look up. Somewhere beyond the walls, in a place without laws or governors, a door had opened—and an echo reached across the realms, slipping into his blood.
Varnel Clockwain, maker of steam and seeker of secrets, stared into the growing darkness. In that moment, he understood that the city above was only the beginning.
And that seven realms waited, patient and hungry, beneath the brass sky.
Continued...