I opened my eyes — and immediately squeezed them shut again. Every movement of my eyelids sent a sledgehammer crashing into the back of my skull.

  [System Status: 14%. Critical depletion.]

  [Tissue Integrity: 38%. Foreign object detected in right scapula.]

  [Pain threshold exceeded. “The Will to Live” mode sustaining consciousness.]

  I exhaled, and a cloud of steam left my mouth. The cave was freezing. I tried to move my right arm.

  Or rather — what was left of it.

  A dry, sharp sound echoed.

  Khh–ch.

  Like someone winding an old grandfather clock.

  My shoulder exploded with pain so intense that my vision blurred, everything washing over in the emerald tint of my working eye.

  “Don’t move,” Zeno rumbled.

  He was sitting near the entrance, his massive steel frame blocking most of the light. In the gloom he looked like a heap of scrap metal — if not for the faint glow of that single green ocular lens.

  “I installed the pins. The bone accepted the steel, but your nerves are protesting. That’s normal. Biological matter always resists order.”

  I forced myself upright. My left hand trembled against the cold stone floor. I looked to the right.

  God. It was hideous.

  No skin. No elegance.

  Strapped to my shoulder with crude leather harnesses was a structure of blackened iron. Three thick copper cables ran from the “shoulder” across my back to my left forearm. Where a hand should have been — three serrated steel clamps. More construction claw than fingers.

  “That’s not…” I swallowed, tasting rust. “That’s not an arm, Zeno. It’s a torture device.”

  “It’s a lever,” he replied flatly. His helmet tilted slightly. “You’re an engineer, Iron. Forget aesthetics. Your left scapula is now the drive system. Pull your shoulder back — cable tension transfers force to the claw. Contract your back muscles — the fingers close. Pure distribution of force.”

  I tried it.

  I jerked my left shoulder back. The cables bit into my skin, and the steel claw snapped shut with a metallic CLACK.

  The force was monstrous. To close that “hand,” I had to engage my entire body.

  But it closed.

  And when the steel fingers met, I understood something very clearly:

  If a human throat ended up in that grip, it would turn to pulp.

  “Heavy…” I rasped. “Too much friction in the joints.”

  “No lubrication,” Zeno said, rising. The cave felt smaller immediately. “We used sea-beast fat Efrem gathered. Temporary solution. Your new limb’s efficiency is roughly thirty percent. The rest is lost overcoming material resistance — and your pain.”

  Efrem sat in the corner clutching a ladle of water. He looked at me with such pity I wanted to punch him. Or howl.

  “Lad… how are you?” he asked quietly. “You were delirious for two days. Kept whispering numbers. Heat and… chaos.”

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  “I’m fine, Efrem.” I took the ladle with my left hand. The water was ice-cold. “We need to move. Are the Seekers close?”

  “Close,” Zeno answered for him. “Forty minutes to the base. I can feel their mana. It… radiates. A disgusting waste of energy.”

  I froze, focusing on my own perception. Thanks to The Will to Live, I could feel it too — not like a mage.

  To them, it was holy power. Divine wrath.

  To me, it was environmental disturbance.

  Someone down there was actively altering the entropy of the air. Pumping energy into space, creating excess mana pressure.

  Like inflating a massive invisible bubble that was about to burst into fire.

  “They’re casting a thermal spell. ‘Cleansing Flame,’” I muttered. “Temperature’s rising at the entrance. Idiots. They’re wasting energy heating the entire volume instead of focusing the impulse.”

  “They have faith, Iron,” Zeno said with faint irony. “They don’t need calculations when they have the Magistrate’s orders.”

  “Faith doesn’t override thermodynamics.”

  I forced myself to stand.

  The steel arm weighed nearly seven kilos. My center of gravity shifted violently. I had to widen my stance to stay upright.

  “Efrem, bury the fire. Zeno — take position in the shadows by the entrance. If they think magic is just pretty sparks, I’ll show them what overpressure really means.”

  With my emerald eye, I scanned the cave.

  Narrow throat. Wider chamber inside.

  Perfect nozzle geometry.

  If I could superheat the air deep inside and release it through that bottleneck—

  Shouts echoed from below.

  “Come out, heretics! In the name of Valerius and the Light!”

  The voice was magically amplified. It vibrated through the air, dislodging small stones from the ceiling.

  I saw them. Three in gray-and-gold robes. Mid-circle mages. An Inquisitor in heavy armor stood before them, raising his hand. Above his palm formed a sphere of blinding white fire.

  To anyone else, it would look like divine miracle.

  To me, it was unstable plasma with poor containment.

  “Zeno,” I whispered. “See that stalactite above them? There’s a crack. If you hit it with a sonic pulse — or just throw a stone at the right acceleration—”

  “Understood.”

  I pushed The Will to Live to maximum.

  [Overdrive mode engaged. Resource monitoring: 10%.]

  The world sharpened painfully.

  I saw the Inquisitor inhale.

  I saw instability ripple through the fireball — density loss, efficiency dropping by the second as heat dissipated uselessly.

  “Now!”

  The fireball launched into the cave.

  Any mage would have raised a shield.

  But I wasn’t a mage.

  I was an engineer.

  I grabbed a heavy copper plate — a remnant of Kyle’s hull — and angled it at forty-five degrees to the incoming flame.

  “Vector reflection!”

  The fire struck the plate.

  Instead of detonating, it followed aerodynamic law, sliding upward toward the cave ceiling — where methane and dry bat guano gases had accumulated.

  BOOOOOOM.

  Volumetric detonation.

  Their fire became my fuel.

  The air expanded instantly. Pressure spiked so hard my ears rang and blood burst from my nose.

  But I stood behind a rock outcropping.

  The blast wave funneled through the cave throat.

  The Seekers took the full force.

  It wasn’t magic.

  It was backdraft physics.

  A column of fire shot out ten meters, wiping the mages off the trail. The Inquisitor survived thanks to his armor — but he was thrown like a rag doll toward the cliff.

  I stepped out of the smoke, my new steel arm clanking.

  [Warning: Thermal lung damage. Integrity: 8%.]

  “Painful…” I breathed, staring at the writhing figures below. “But efficient. One hundred percent efficiency.”

  One mage tried to rise, face burned, eyes filled with terror. He raised a trembling hand to cast “Ice Spear.”

  “Demon… black magic…”

  I walked up to him. My steel claw opened with grinding tension.

  “That’s not black magic, idiot,” I said. “It’s thermal gas expansion. You failed to account for volume.”

  I thrust my shoulder forward.

  The claw snapped shut around his wrist.

  Crunch.

  The bone broke instantly.

  I didn’t listen to his scream.

  Zeno stepped forward like divine retribution embodied in steel. He crushed the Inquisitor’s chest beneath his foot.

  “Valerius’ energy…” the man coughed blood. “It will punish you—”

  “Energy does not punish,” Zeno replied calmly. “It changes state. Your kinetic energy will now approach zero.”

  Crunch.

  Silence.

  I leaned against the rock. The skill flickered.

  5%.

  I was on the verge of collapse.

  “Did… we win?” Efrem coughed, staring at the corpses. “Lad… you’re scarier than they are.”

  I looked at the claw.

  It didn’t shake.

  It didn’t feel pain.

  It was reliable.

  “No, Efrem. I just stopped hoping for miracles. Miracles are unstable. A lever always works.”

  Zeno offered his shoulder.

  “We must go higher into the mountains. That explosion was visible for miles. Valerius will understand. We’re not refugees. We’re a systemic error.”

  “Let him try,” I muttered, leaning on the golem. “Now I have a fulcrum.”

  We began the climb.

  Every step drove the steel pins deeper into my being. Agonizing.

  But every metallic ring of the claw against stone reminded me:

  I wasn’t broken.

  I was upgraded.

  The sun rose over the mountains, painting the ocean blood-red.

  Somewhere beyond the horizon lay Dornheim.

  If we survived long enough to reach it.

  [Status: 4%. Entering hibernation in 10… 9… 8…]

  The world went dark as Zeno’s cold steel arms caught me.