The spiral staircase unraveled upward in broken pieces of sensation rather than a coherent whole.
Marble steps—dark grey, veined with lighter stone, their edges rounded and worn by decades of shoes and boots—flashed past beneath Amir's feet. The brass railing was cold where his hand slid along it, polished to a dull sheen by thousands of palms, catching and throwing back the pale glow of the Aether-lamps mounted at regular intervals along the central column. Students were pressed flat against the outer wall, bodies flattened into alcoves and door recesses, faces blurring into pale streaks of shock and confusion as two figures tore upward through the stairwell with no regard for order or decorum.
Amir's lungs were on fire.
Not pain like injury—nothing sharp or broken—but the deep, grinding burn of overworked muscle and oxygen debt. Each breath came in ragged pulls that tasted metallic and dry, like copper scraped against the back of his throat. His chest felt tight, ribs aching from the strain of the sprint, muscles along his sides locking and protesting every twist of his torso as he hauled himself upward step by step. The Tuner healing had done its job days ago. This wasn't damage. This was his body reminding him, very clearly, that it had limits.
His legs felt heavy. Not weak—heavy. Like wet sand packed into his boots, like every step required him to drag himself free of gravity by force of will alone.
But he didn't stop.
Couldn't.
He didn't know exactly why they were running yet. He hadn't seen what the Cog Master had seen through that registrar window, hadn't caught more than a flash of tension in that man's posture before he bolted. Amir was running on instinct, on trust, on the simple understanding that when the Cog Master moved like this—without explanation, without hesitation it meant something was very wrong.
Something time-sensitive.
They hit a landing. A narrow semi-circular platform wrapped around the stair's central column, floored in the same polished marble but cracked in places where years of stress had settled. A pair of tall windows rose along the outer wall, their dark wooden frames carved with geometric reliefs that echoed the university's broader architectural language—rigid lines softened by repeating patterns, authority disguised as elegance.
The Cog Master didn't slow.
his mechanical arm gripping the brass rail with inhuman strength, hauling himself upward with movements that were too fast, too fluid, powered by something beyond muscle and bone. His brown coat billowed behind him like a cape, the golden collar catching flashes of lamplight as he moved. His top hat had fallen somewhere—Amir hadn't even seen when—leaving his grey-streaked hair exposed, already disheveled from the exertion. the Cog Master didn't even pause. He rounded the corner with practiced efficiency and kept climbing, his boots hammering against the marble in a rhythm that sounded like war drums. Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.
Amir followed, his vision tunneling, the edges going grey and fuzzy from oxygen deprivation. His hand gripped the rail, pulling himself up, using it to compensate for legs that were threatening to buckle.
Students shouted. Someone stumbled. A book hit the floor and burst open, pages skidding across marble like startled birds.
They reached the third floor and this time the Cog Master stopped dead.
Not slowed. Not hesitated.
Stopped.
Amir nearly crashed into him, catching himself on the railing at the last second, chest heaving, legs shaking as he dragged in air. The Cog Master stood at the edge of the landing, shoulders squared, head slightly tilted toward one of the outer windows. His chest rose and fell with controlled breaths, but his eyes were razor-sharp, fixed on something beyond the stone and glass.
Then he turned.
For the first time since the sprint began, he looked directly at Amir.
His expression wasn't panic. Wasn't fear.
It was calculation. Cold, precise, absolute. The expression of a man who had already run the numbers and didn't like the result.
"We're not going to make it," he said.
The words landed wrong. Amir's oxygen-starved brain lagged half a second behind them. "What?"
"The residential buildings sit across the inner courtyard," the Cog Master continued, already moving, pacing two steps toward the window and back. His mechanical fingers flexed once, the soft click of internal joints just audible beneath the noise of the stairwell. "To reach the roof by conventional means we would need to exit the Central Tower, cross the plaza, enter the dormitory stairwell, and ascend four additional floors."
He glanced at the window again. The glass was clean, reinforced, framed by dark wood inset into thick stone.
"We do not have that time."
Amir swallowed. "Then what do we—"
The Cog Master didn't answer.
He reached for the Aether-lamp mounted beside the window.
University-standard issue. Brass housing, hexagonal, thick glass panels bolted into place to protect the crystal core. Designed to last decades with minimal maintenance. Designed very specifically not to be removed by students or faculty on a whim.
The Cog Master's mechanical hand closed around the housing.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the wall screamed.
Metal tore free from stone with a grinding shriek as the mounting brackets failed. Sparks spat from the severed Aether feed, bright arcs of unstable energy snapping through the air before grounding themselves against the brass shell. The light flickered wildly, then died, plunging that section of the landing into uneven shadow.
The Cog Master wrenched the lamp free and dropped it to the marble.
It hit with a heavy clang.
Before Amir could ask what the hell he was doing, the Cog Master brought his mechanical hand down and crushed the front glass panel.
Not shattered—pulverized.
The reinforced glass gave way under the focused pressure of metal fingers, cracking once before collapsing inward in a spray of fragments that skittered across the floor. At the lamp's core, cradled in copper wiring and ceramic insulation, sat the Aether crystal.
It glowed.
Small. Smooth. Faceted with precise geometry. Pale blue-white light pulsed from its center, steady and alive in a way that made Amir's skin prickle just looking at it.
Heat radiated from it in visible distortion, the air around the crystal shimmering faintly.
The Cog Master did not grab it barehanded.
He tore a strip of fabric from the inner lining of his coat—thick, layered, treated cloth meant to insulate against heat and chemical exposure. Wrapped it once, twice around his fingers, then pinched the crystal between them.
Even through the cloth, the reaction was immediate.
A hiss. A sharp, acrid smell. The fabric darkened, edges curling as the heat bit into it. The Cog Master moved fast—not reckless, not slow—precise. He didn't hold the crystal longer than necessary. Less than a second.
Just long enough.
He brought it to his mechanical arm.
A circular port beneath the elbow joint slid open with a muted click, brass segments retracting to reveal a heat-shielded cavity lined with glowing conduits. He dropped the crystal inside and sealed the port immediately.
The change was violent.
Light surged through the arm's internal channels, copper lines flaring bright as energy flooded the system. Gears spun faster, their synchronized motion rising into a high-pitched whine. Heat vents along the forearm hissed, dumping excess thermal load into the air in sharp bursts of steam.
The arm reconfigured.
Not all at once. Not cleanly.
Segments shifted, locking and unlocking in rapid sequence. The hand folded inward, fingers retracting into the forearm as armored plates slid into place. The leather skin split along pre-cut seams and peeled away, exposing bare brass and steel beneath.
Within seconds, the arm had reshaped itself into something else entirely.
A cannon.
Shorter than a naval gun, longer than any firearm Amir had ever seen. The barrel was thick, reinforced, lined internally with spiraled channels that glowed faintly with residual Aether charge. The elbow joint had become a reinforced breech, braced against the Cog Master's shoulder with additional support struts that locked into place with sharp metallic clicks.
The Cog Master stepped up to the window.
"Cover your ears," he said, already bracing himself.
Amir barely had time to obey.
The window didn't just break—it exploded.
Glass burst outward in a cascading wave, fragments spinning away into the open air of the courtyard below. Cold wind rushed in, carrying the smell of stone dust, smoke, and the distant industrial tang of Steelhaven itself.
The Cog Master angled the cannon downward—not straight down, not straight out, but somewhere in between.
He fired.
The blast was not fire.
It was force.
A thunderous concussion slammed into the courtyard below, the sound hitting Amir a split second after the shockwave punched the air from his lungs. The recoil drove the Cog Master backward a step, his boots scraping against marble as he locked himself in place. Aether energy screamed through the barrel, venting outward in a focused cone that slammed into the stone paving below.
The ground cracked.
Not obliterated—fractured.
Stone shattered outward in a rough circle, debris thrown upward as compressed air rebounded off the courtyard floor and surged back along the blast path. The fountain at the center ruptured, its basin splitting as water exploded upward in a chaotic spray.
Alarms began to scream somewhere deep in the tower.
Wards flared briefly along the stairwell walls—thin lines of light etched into stone, reacting too late to contain the damage.
The Cog Master moved immediately.
He didn't jump blindly.
He waited half a heartbeat, then stepped off the window ledge.
Gravity took him.
For a fraction of a second he dropped, coat snapping violently in the rushing air. Then the rising pressure wave caught him—not lifting him gently, not stopping the fall, but slamming into his body from below and throwing him forward in a brutal arc across the courtyard.
Not precise. Not elegant.
Calculated.
He soared past the first floor of the residential building, then the second, momentum bleeding off as gravity clawed back control. By the time he reached the roofline, the upward force was nearly spent.
But it was enough.
He slammed onto the rooftop hard, boots skidding across tar and gravel as he absorbed the impact. His mechanical arm vented steam violently, systems screaming in protest as the cannon assembly locked and began to retract, plates shifting back toward a humanoid configuration.
The girl was there.
She hadn't jumped.
She stood at the edge, frozen, swaying, eyes unfocused and distant, trapped in the moment before decision. The shock of the explosion hadn't registered. The screams hadn't registered.
Only when the Cog Master landed—hard—did she react.
She stumbled backward.
Lost balance.
The Cog Master lunged.
His arm wasn't fully reformed yet—fingers half-assembled, joints still locking into place—but he grabbed her anyway, metal closing around her waist and yanking her back from the edge just as her foot slipped.
She screamed once.
Then fainted.
Her body went slack in his grip, weight collapsing against him as consciousness fled. The Cog Master staggered, adjusted, and dragged them both away from the roof's edge, boots digging into tar until they stopped.
He stood there for a moment, breathing hard.
The arm finished reconfiguring with a final click, vents dumping heat in angry hisses as the Aether glow dimmed to a sullen pulse. Whatever he'd done, it wasn't something the arm liked.
Below, across the courtyard, Amir stood at the shattered window, hands still clamped over his ringing ears, staring in disbelief.
The university was in chaos.
Sirens wailed. Students screamed. Ward-lamps flickered. Smoke curled upward from the cratered stone.
And on the roof opposite, the Cog Master cradled an unconscious girl against his chest, coat torn, arm smoking, posture rigid with the aftermath of a calculation that had nearly gone wrong.
Amir swallowed.
I am working with an absolute madman.