The slide down the exhaust chute was a blind, suffocating descent through forty feet of slick, slime-coated iron.

  Elowen hit the bottom first. He shot out of the pipe and landed in a crouch on a metal-grated floor. The impact jarred his heavy boots, but his knees didn't buckle. His newly conditioned muscles absorbed the shock flawlessly. He rolled forward instantly, bringing the Trench-Cleaver up in a comfortable, one-handed guard, scanning the dark.

  A second later, Vanya dropped out of the pipe. She landed nimbly beside him, but hissed, favoring her left arm where the mechanical hound had clamped down.

  They weren't in a dungeon anymore. They were in a factory.

  The air here was radically different from the damp, rotting stone of the prison blocks above. It was freezing cold and completely sterile, carrying the overpowering, eye-watering stench of bleach, copper, and raw ozone. Above them, heavy iron pipes hissed with rhythmic pulses of chemical steam.

  "Quiet," Elowen breathed, his voice barely a thread.

  They were crouched on an elevated maintenance catwalk, shadowed by massive ventilation ducts. Below them lay the main floor of the Processing Level.

  It was a vast, cavernous hall built of pristine white surgical tile and polished steel. It was lit not by flickering torches, but by rows of steady, humming alchemical floodlights that bathed the room in a harsh, clinical glare. Long smears of half-scrubbed blood stained the white grout of the floor.

  In the center of the hall, dozens of heavy iron medical tables were bolted to the tiles. Unconscious prisoners lay strapped to them, stripped naked and surrounded by glowing alchemical vats.

  And drifting between the tables were the Flesh-Smiths.

  Elowen felt a cold spike of pure dread hit his stomach. He had seen them from a distance over the years, but never this close. They were towering, gaunt figures, dressed in heavy, rubberized grey aprons over pristine white robes. Their faces were entirely hidden behind featureless porcelain masks—plague-doctor visages with no mouths, possessing only smooth, blank surfaces and two dark glass lenses for eyes.

  But it was their hands that turned Elowen’s blood to ice. From the elbow down, their limbs had been surgically amputated and replaced with interchangeable iron tools.

  Directly below the catwalk, a Flesh-Smith leaned over a strapped-down man. The Smith raised its right arm—a whirring, alchemically-powered bone-saw—and brought it down into the prisoner's shoulder. As the man woke up and began to scream against his leather gag, the Smith used its left arm—a cluster of long, articulate metal syringes—to inject a glowing green mutagen directly into the open wound. The prisoner's muscles instantly began to violently, unnaturally expand, tearing his own skin as the iron graft took hold.

  "Don't look at them," Elowen whispered, putting a hand on Vanya's shoulder and pulling her back from the edge of the grate. "High-level casters can feel a gaze. We are Level 3. The Smiths are Level 15 at minimum, and the Enforcers guarding the main doors will be Level 10. If we are seen down here, we don't just die. We end up on those tables."

  Vanya was trembling. Her dark eyes were wide with terror as she watched the butchery below. "Where are the kids? They wouldn't survive that."

  "They aren't here. This is for somatic grafting," Elowen said. He closed his eyes and focused on his 3 Perception, letting his heightened senses cut through the steam, the glaring lights, and the mechanical whirring. "We need to find out where they hold the un-processed stock."

  His eyes tracked past the surgical tables, locking onto a raised, glass-walled office at the far end of the hall. Through the frosted glass, Elowen could see a heavy oak desk. Resting perfectly in the center of it was a glowing runic ledger. A master manifest.

  "There," Elowen pointed. "The overseer's station. If there's a Juvenile Holding Pen, it'll be mapped in that ledger."

  Vanya looked at the expanse of brightly lit, white-tiled floor between the catwalk stairs and the office. There was no cover. The air hummed with a low-level scrying field—an invisible grid of System surveillance that blanketed the open floor.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  "We can't walk out there," Vanya whispered. "The wards will see us."

  Elowen narrowed his eyes, tracking the thick plumes of emerald vapor venting from the heavy vats. "The caustic green steam venting from the mutagens scrambles scrying-wards," Elowen explained, his veteran mind locking into a cold, tactical rhythm. "The magic in the fluid creates a static interference field. If we stay inside the vapor clouds, the System is blind."

  He looked at her. "We move while the saw is running. The noise covers our boots. Stick to the clouds. Do not breathe the green steam. We are ghosts, Vanya. Follow my exact steps."

  The bone-saw below them revved with a sickening screech.

  Elowen moved. He slipped down the metal stairs, his boots making no sound under the agonizing screams of the prisoner.

  He activated his Grave-Sight, pulsing the magic for a single second to check the area for traps.

  [Trait Activated: Grave-Sight.]

  [Mana: 8/10]

  The floor ahead was clear of explosive runes, but the air hummed with the scrying field. They darted into the suffocating heat of the first vapor cloud. They were only twenty feet from the office stairs, hidden inside a thinning pocket of steam, when the whirring bone-saw suddenly stopped.

  Silence crashed over the factory floor.

  Elowen froze mid-step. Ten feet away, a Flesh-Smith slowly turned its towering, gaunt frame. The blank porcelain mask swept toward their pocket of vapor.

  The steam was dissipating. They were about to be exposed.

  Vanya instinctively stepped backward to pull herself deeper into the shadow of a nearby alchemical vat. Her back collided with a thick copper pipe carrying superheated alchemical runoff.

  The heat was instantaneous and violent. Vanya gasped, twisting her body to throw her left arm against the blistering metal, using her indestructible obsidian scales to shield her human flesh from the burning pipe. The heat radiated through her, cooking the air around her face, but she didn't make a sound. She clamped her teeth down onto her bottom lip, biting so hard a drop of dark crimson blood rolled down her chin.

  They stood perfectly still. The Flesh-Smith’s dark glass lenses stared directly at the swirling green vapor. A long, agonizing second passed. The System ward hummed, probing the edge of the steam.

  Then, the Smith turned away. The bone-saw revved back to life with a deafening shriek.

  Vanya exhaled a shaky breath, pulling away from the pipe. Elowen didn't hesitate. He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her forward, using the renewed noise to sprint the final distance to the metal stairs.

  They crept up to the glass-walled office. The door was unlocked. Elowen pushed it open silently, stepping into the room with the Trench-Cleaver resting comfortably in his right hand.

  The figure sitting at the desk wasn't a Flesh-Smith. It was a scribe—a baseline human with a slave collar of his own, likely a trustee earning better rations by doing the administrative grunt work for the monsters. The balding man with ink-stained fingers didn't even look up from his parchment.

  "Leave the extraction report on the tray, unit seven," the scribe muttered.

  Elowen crossed the room in two long strides. Before the man could react, Elowen slammed his left hand over the scribe's mouth and drove the man's forehead brutally into the desk.

  The scribe slumped, dazed. Elowen grabbed the man's thinning hair and pulled his head back, pressing the cold, heavy edge of the Trench-Cleaver flush against his throat.

  "One sound," Elowen whispered, his voice a dead, mechanical calm, "and I open you up."

  The scribe’s eyes went wide with absolute terror. He nodded frantically against Elowen's hand, his fingers spreading in surrender.

  Vanya was already at the desk, throwing the heavy runic ledger open. Her eyes scanned the glowing text with desperate speed.

  "Where are the juveniles?" Vanya hissed at the man, stepping close.

  Elowen eased his hand off the scribe's mouth just enough to allow speech.

  "West Wing!" the scribe gasped, trembling so violently his teeth chattered. "Holding Pen 4. They—they aren't being processed for the somatic vats. The shipment is scheduled for transfer to the Soul-Forge at dawn."

  Vanya froze. She looked at Elowen.

  Elowen felt the blood drain from his face. The Soul-Forge wasn't a place for grafting muscle. It was an extraction furnace. It was where the Court threw the prisoners who were too weak to work and too small to fight. They didn't come out as monsters. They came out as raw Essence fuel to power the High Lord's spells.

  "They're going to liquidate him," Elowen said grimly.

  Vanya didn't speak. Her obsidian claws sank into the heavy oak of the desk, splintering the wood with a sharp *crack*.

  "Where is Pen 4?" Vanya demanded, grabbing the scribe's collar with her human hand.

  "Down the main corridor, take the freight lift to the lower containment tier," the scribe stammered, tears leaking from his eyes. "But you can't get in. The pens are guarded by the Wing-Warden. He's Level 15. He has the only key."

  Elowen tightened his grip on his sword. A Level 15 Warden wasn't just a guard. It was a boss-class entity. A heavily armored, magic-wielding juggernaut that would kill a Level 3 prisoner and a glitch before either of them reached the door.

  "Does the Warden have a shift change?" Elowen asked. "When does he sleep?"

  "He doesn't," the scribe wept. "He's a Construct. He's bolted to the door."

  Elowen looked at Vanya. The hope that had driven her this far was threatening to shatter. A Level 15 Construct was a wall they couldn't climb. They couldn't sneak past it, and they definitely couldn't fight it.

  "We need a distraction," Vanya said, her voice shaking.

  Elowen looked out the glass window of the office, down at the factory floor. He looked at the rows of strapped-down prisoners, the bubbling vats of volatile mutagens, and the Flesh-Smiths moving with their terrifying, arrogant precision.

  An idea formed in the cold, ruthless center of his mind. It was reckless. It was chaotic. It was exactly what he would have done in the trenches ten years ago.

  "We don't need a distraction," Elowen said, turning back to the scribe. "We need a riot."

  He looked at the trembling man.

  "What happens if the containment locks on the somatic tables all open at once?"

  The scribe turned pale. "The Master Switch... it's on the central pillar. But the prisoners are sedated. They wouldn't fight."

  "They will if we wake them up," Elowen said, glancing at the alchemical vats. "And if we spike the ventilation system with that green stimulant."

  He looked at Vanya, his eyes hard.

  "You want to save your brother?" Elowen asked. "We're going to burn this entire floor to the ground."

  He didn't wait for the scribe to panic. Elowen whipped the heavy iron pommel of the Trench-Cleaver into the side of the man's temple. The scribe went entirely limp, collapsing silently across the blood-stained ledger.

  Elowen stepped away from the desk and looked down at the pristine, clinical nightmare of the Court's engine room. For ten years, he had only survived the machine; today, he was going to break it.