The descent to the Machine-Heart was unlike anything they had seen.
The tunnels grew narrower, lined with pulsing runes that whispered when
passed. The air tasted metallic, as if filled with dust and memory. They
followed the resonance — faint, rhythmic, alive — until the path opened into a
vast chamber that dwarfed everything before it.
It was like stepping into the chest of a god.
Massive rib-like arches stretched into darkness, and at the center hung the
Machine-Heart — a sphere of light and metal suspended by chains of energy.
It turned slowly, each rotation sending ripples of sound through the air. It was
beautiful, and terrifying.
Gizmo could hardly breathe.
"This… this is it," he whispered. "The heart of the forge."
Kaelira stepped beside him. "Thalos built this?"
He shook his head. "No. He found it."
They approached cautiously. The Orb pulsed violently, as if torn between
reverence and pain. Every vibration of the Machine-Heart resonated through it,
through Gizmo's bones, through the ground itself. The hum was almost
language.
Tibbin peered around uneasily. "Anyone else notice the statues?"
Dozens of figures lined the walls — humanoid, but wrong. Faces smoothed
away, eyes carved shut, hands clasped in prayer or despair. Kaelira brushed
one with her fingers. The stone was warm.
"They're not statues," she murmured. "They're… husks."
The Machine-Heart pulsed again. One of the husks turned its head slightly,
stone grinding against stone.
"Ah, that's horrifying," Tibbin said, stepping back.
Gizmo's gaze locked onto a sigil at the base of the Heart — the same spiral
within the eye. The one from the mountain. From the forge. From the
beginning.
He stepped forward despite Kaelira's warning hand.
"Don't," she said.
"I have to."
The Orb rose from his wrist and drifted toward the Heart. Light connected
them — a line of memory rejoining itself. Runes flared across the chamber
walls. The husks stirred, whispers flooding the air like wind through hollow
bones.
And then, from the Machine-Heart itself, something answered.
A shape began to coalesce within the light — humanoid, radiant, half-formed.
A voice echoed, layered and distant, as though coming through centuries of
static.
"Gizmo…"
He froze. "That's not possible."
Kaelira drew her sword, defensive. "What is that?"
The figure extended a hand. Its eyes were made of blue flame. "Echo," it said.
The word trembled with both sorrow and affection. "I am Echo."
The Orb flared so bright it forced them to shield their eyes. The voice grew clearer — resonant, ancient, familiar.
"You built me. You left me here."
Gizmo's heart hammered. "That's not true."
"All makers leave their echoes."
The chamber began to tremble. Runes screamed as the Heart's energy surged
out of control. Tibbin fired a bolt into the shadows, but the sound was
swallowed whole. Kaelira grabbed Gizmo's arm. "We have to go!"
He hesitated, staring into the light — into himself. The figure inside the Heart
looked like him, or rather, like what he could become if he forgot what it
meant to be alive.
He turned away.
They ran as the chamber collapsed, the Orb flickering violently. The last thing
Gizmo heard before the Heart's explosion drowned the world was Echo's
fading whisper:
"You remember because you were meant to."
They barely made it out alive. The tunnels behind them sealed in fire and
rubble. They collapsed on the plains under the gray morning sky, coughing and
shaking. The Orb floated weakly, its glow dim.
Kaelira pressed a hand to her forehead. "What… was that thing?"
Gizmo stared at the horizon. "Not a thing. A reflection."
Tibbin wheezed. "Well, I hated it."
"Get used to it," Gizmo said quietly. "We're going back."
(End of Chapter Nine)