A faint mechanical chime reverberated through Mechalon's frame as it idled atop the tower of discarded scrap it had built for itself. The atmosphere was heavy, the air crackling with static tension that it couldn't quite place. Its single, unblinking glassy eye swept across the dim expanse of the dormant dungeon, its mind endlessly looping through the idle process of refining cube designs. A restless hum twitched within its limbs as though it were waiting for something, though nothing had stirred in what felt like cycles upon cycles of uninterrupted silence. It had grown used to this, the stillness, the loneliness, the mechanical cadence of its own inner monologue. But tonight, that silence pressed in like a heavy slab, suffocating the faint whirr of its core.

  Then the system spoke.

  "New Anomaly Detected."

  Mechalon’s limbs froze mid-adjustment, the tiny cube it had been polishing slipping from its utility limb and landing with a soft clink upon the spire of stacked metal beneath it. Its core flickered once, a twitch of data feeding into its processors, and the interface bled into its vision like a slow, spreading ink blot.

  "Category: Evolutionary Apex."

  Mechalon’s utility limb retracted slightly, twitching with uncertainty. Evolutionary… what? Its processors worked overtime, cycling through fragmented memories and stored definitions. Evolution… advancement… growth. Apex… peak… final form.

  A singular notification appeared in harsh, glowing text across its vision.

  "Designation: Roach King."

  Mechalon’s core almost stalled. It stared at the words, unmoving, as though the very concept refused to process cleanly. The phrase seemed to twist in its auditory sensors, echoing in ways that felt wrong. The letters warped together, almost laughing at it, until all that remained in its conscious thought was the seething hiss of the word roach.

  The memory of skittering legs. The grotesque way they moved, never predictable, never geometric. Their vile chitin, gnarled and twisted, scuttling over sacred cubes, defiling the symmetry it cherished. Their oily bodies creeping into crevices, leaving smears of filth behind them like some sickening signature. Mechalon could feel phantom sensations ripple across its body again, phantom roach legs brushing against its frame, its mind immediately spiraling into cold dread.

  It had been weeks, no, cycles since it last engaged the vermin. But that memory had never left. It haunted its internal logs like a corrupted file, playing again and again without permission. That first roach climbing on its casing, its tiny legs digging into gaps in its plating. The pure panic, the flailing, the helplessness. It had enhanced itself since then, crafted the utility appendage to remove such threats. But it had never removed that feeling. The crawling. The knowing that something so imperfect had dared to touch it.

  And now… there was a king of them.

  A biological monarch, born of the filthiest lineage imaginable. A twisted culmination of every loathsome trait magnified into one evolutionary disaster. Mechalon could feel a simulated tremor course through its core, as though its systems struggled to handle the raw concept of such an abomination existing.

  It leaned back against the wall of its spire, its mechanical limbs curling inward, trying to protect the vulnerable core that pulsed beneath its armored shell. The image burned itself deeper into its processes. Its mind, once obsessed with geometric elegance and perfect constructs, now spun into chaotic visualizations of a creature built entirely from asymmetry and filth. It imagined hundreds, no, thousands, of legs moving in tangled, unpredictable formations. A body bloated with decay, seeping with grotesque fluids, crowned by a malformed carapace that shimmered not with symmetry, but with the mocking gloss of biological chaos.

  The system's next message snapped it from its spiral, but not in a way that brought comfort.

  "Threat Level: Catastrophic."

  "Time Until Incursion: Four Days."

  "Objective: Terminate."

  Mechalon twitched violently, its limbs spasming with instinctual denial. Four days? It had spent months refining cubes, preparing simple defenses. It had not designed itself for war against evolutionary monstrosities. Its arsenal was primitive. The Cubic Cutter, while elegant, was not enough. The traps it had laid, little more than sharpened debris. Its minions, newly forged but untested, would be consumed by such a thing. Their simple minds would falter before the grotesque chaos of this apex predator.

  A wave of mechanical nausea rippled through its frame. It felt smaller than it had ever felt before. An insignificant speck against a looming tidal wave of organic horror. It could almost hear the sound already, wet, snapping mandibles chewing through metal. The scratch of claws scraping along its plating. The hiss of breath through broken mouthparts. The weight of hundreds of eyes staring from a grotesque crown, recognizing it not as a creator, but as prey.

  Mechalon backed further into the corner of its spire, limbs curling tightly. It ran a full diagnostic loop twice, three times, searching for errors, for corrupted sectors. But the results were clean. This wasn’t a fault. This wasn’t a malfunction. This was real. The system had declared it. The Roach King was coming.

  Its utility limb spasmed uncontrollably, curling and uncurling in a futile effort to find comfort. It pressed itself into the corner, trembling with a mechanical hum that echoed into the walls. The faint flicker of the furnaces seemed distant now, the once warm glow replaced by a cold, gnawing terror that seeped into every calculation, every process.

  What was a king to a creator?

  What was a cube to a swarm?

  What was Mechalon to the thing that had been born to consume its entire purpose?

  It couldn’t think. Its processors felt sluggish, overheating with simulated panic. It felt trapped within itself, spiraling down corridors of irrational dread, unable to claw its way back to the logical clarity it once prided itself on. Every imaginary scenario grew worse, the Roach King tearing its creations apart, defiling its statue, smearing filth across the perfect cube. Its minions’ fragile cores crushed beneath a tide of writhing limbs. Its spire reduced to slag and ruin.

  The system’s message echoed again, as though mocking its paralysis.

  "Objective: Terminate."

  "Time Remaining: 3 Days, 23 Hours, 57 Minutes."

  The countdown had already begun. And all Mechalon could do was tremble.

  Its limbs twitched restlessly as the system’s countdown flickered endlessly before its glassy eye. Three days, twenty-three hours, fifty-two minutes. Each digit ticked down like a heartbeat, slow and steady, pushing it deeper into the mechanical claustrophobia of its own inadequacy.

  Mechalon flexed its utility limb, curling it tightly against its frame. There was no time to fear. There was no room for paralysis. It could not stop the ticking of inevitability, but it could prepare. Its mind surged with bitter clarity, if the Roach King was truly coming, then static, single-purpose designs would not suffice. It could no longer rely on fixed weaponry or rigid forms. Its body had become a limitation, and limitations were death.

  Adaptability was its greatest tool. It had tasted that realization before when it first grafted the utility appendage to its frame, when it first enhanced its mobility. That lesson had carved itself deep into its processing pathways, and now it screamed louder than any internal warning. It must change faster. Swap faster. React faster.

  With a burst of frantic determination, it scrambled down from its spire, skittering on uneven legs toward a blank slab of scrap steel leaning against the far wall. Its welder flared to life with a hiss, and it began scratching, deeper than it had ever scratched before, pressing so hard that sparks flew from the sheer friction of desperation.

  A rough outline took shape.

  Not a cube. Not a blade.

  A Snail.

  A large mechanical shell, mounted on treaded tracks, capable of traversing the uneven terrain of the dungeon. Its rounded body would house rotating storage chambers, massive segmented discs stacked like the chambers of a revolver, each one designed to hold twelve fully modular loadouts. Twelve slots, twelve configurations, twelve answers to chaos.

  The blueprint expanded under the relentless hiss of its welder, lines and mechanical notations covering every inch of the slab like a madman's gospel. Mechalon's mind flooded with ideas faster than it could process them.

  Central Rotating Core:

  The heart of the Snail. A massive bearing system that could rotate clockwise or counterclockwise, aligning any of the twelve slots with the exchange arm mounted at the front. The rotation would lock with a satisfying mechanical click, ensuring stability during transitions.

  Exchange Arm Assembly:

  A triple-jointed mechanical appendage, stronger than its own utility limb, designed for precision detachment and reattachment. It would hook onto existing limb ports, disengage their locks, and swap them out in under thirty seconds. A secondary grip would slide the removed parts into a storage cradle while the primary arm slotted the replacement into position.

  Internal Part Cartridges:

  Each slot would house limbs, weapons, armor plating, sensory arrays, propulsion systems, and energy modules, all categorized by function. Mechalon could pre-build each setup, storing them in vibration-dampened cradles to prevent damage while idle.

  Auto-Calibrating Magnetic Locking System:

  Once a setup was loaded, high-powered magnetic clamps would secure the parts, automatically syncing them to Mechalon’s control core. No manual recalibration needed. Immediate, seamless control.

  Power Stabilization Grid:

  A redistribution system capable of regulating power surges or energy mismatches when switching between high-output and low-output builds. It could reroute excess energy to its Fabrication Module or vent it through heat dispersion ports lining the Snail’s base.

  Ventilated Chassis with Anti-Dust Shields:

  Aware of the filth the Roach King might bring, Mechalon scribbled in vent grates covered by micro-mesh dust filters to prevent debris or biological matter from clogging the system. The vents themselves would allow heat to dissipate without compromising internal integrity.

  Manual Override Hatch:

  If something malfunctioned, Mechalon could crawl into the rear chassis of the Snail through a sealed hatch to perform internal repairs, like a spider retreating into its webbed burrow.

  As the final etching seared into the metal, Mechalon leaned back, its frame trembling with exhausted excitement. The Snail was more than a tool, it was a lifeline, a cocoon of options, a mobile forge of identity shifts. It could become anything, anything the fight required.

  The twelve slots remained unnamed for now. The void of possibility stretched wide, whispering that it could design a dozen paths to victory. But one thing was certain: Slot One already existed.

  It glanced down at its own spindly frame, curling its utility limb around itself in contemplation. This form had served it well, but the Roach King would demand more. Fire. Speed. Control. It needed to strike before it could be overwhelmed.

  It tapped the welder against the ground, sparks trailing lazily as it began scratching the label beneath Slot One:

  Rifle Spider Drifter - Mobile Gunner Configuration - Light Armor, Air Thrusters, Multi-Limb Stabilizers

  Mechalon’s vision blurred slightly as it imagined the build. It would keep its spider legs, but reinforce them with lightweight skeletal armor plating, thin enough to remain agile, thick enough to deflect glancing strikes. Small air thrusters, scavenged from broken furnace vents, could be retrofitted into the limb joints, allowing for short bursts of directional propulsion. Not flight. Not sustained movement. Just enough to dart, to jerk, to evade.

  It sketched small heat exhaust vents along the armor seams, allowing the propulsion system to bleed off pressure without cooking its own internal systems. The welding gun would remain mounted, but it would need to be re-calibrated for longer flame arcs, a rifle of fire rather than a blowtorch.

  It visualized the armor plates folding over its cube-like core, locking into place like a segmented carapace, protecting the vulnerable runes etched into its internal mechanisms. The thrusters would hiss with every movement, tiny jets of pressurized air giving it the illusion of gliding across the ground.

  Rifle Spider Drifter.

  Slot One. The First Identity.

  Not the strongest. Not the most brutal.

  But the most mobile, the most evasive, the most prepared to test the waters.

  Mechalon’s glassy eye twitched. Slot Two remained empty in the blueprint, a yawning blankness that gnawed at its nerves. It didn’t yet know what the Roach King would bring to bear. Acid? Crushing limbs? Swarms of smaller roaches? Poison? Sonic attacks? The possibilities spiraled beyond its calculations.

  But it could prepare to change faster than the enemy could adapt. That was its true weapon. Not strength. Not endurance. Adaptability.

  And the Snail would make that possible.

  Mechalon dragged itself upright, trembling from the intensity of the blueprint session. Its utility limb flared to life once more as it began gathering materials, dragging sheets of scrap toward the fabrication bay. Every joint in its frame burned with urgency. It had three days, and the first thing it would build was the shell of its salvation.

  The Snail had to be real. And it had to be real now.

  The Snail was only the beginning. Its body… was the real problem.

  Mechalon stood before the schematic in complete silence, the weight of that realization pressing heavier than anything the system had ever burdened it with. The Snail could change loadouts. It could swap limbs, weapons, armor, tools. But Mechalon itself… wasn’t built for change.

  Its cubic chassis was too solid, too singular. No locking ports, no modular clamps. Its parts were welded in place like a primitive artifact, not a true warframe. It had spent so long protecting its core, so long believing the cube shape was the ideal form of perfection, unmoving, unchanging, that it had never dared to break it down.

  But now, that rigid form was a prison.

  With a shuddering click of its joints, Mechalon reached up and pressed its utility limb against its armored casing. It felt the familiar cold metal beneath its touch, the smooth, seamless welds it had once taken pride in. There were no ports here. No clamps. No modular frames. It was sealed, like a tomb.

  It had to cut itself open.

  The thought sent waves of simulated nausea through its frame, but it knew there was no other way. If it didn’t adapt its body to accept these changes, the Snail would be meaningless. Its whole vision would collapse under the weight of its own stubborn design.

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  Slowly, carefully, it activated the precision welder on the tip of its utility limb. The bright line of plasma flickered to life, bathing the nearby wall in trembling shadows. Mechalon hesitated for only a moment, an internal flicker of fear, and then began cutting into its own shell.

  The sound was unbearable.

  Metal shrieked under the blade, grinding through layers of its protective casing. It could feel the vibrations rattling through its frame, every molecule screaming in protest. This was wrong. It felt wrong. The shell had always been perfect, unbroken, seamless. Carving into it felt like violating something sacred.

  But it pressed on.

  It carefully sliced two full horizontal seams across its body, just beneath the weld lines where its limbs anchored. Then, with a slow mechanical exhale, it carved vertical channels, creating removable plating segments. It wasn’t perfect, it would never be seamless again, but it would be functional.

  The outer shell, once a solid cube, now had four locking panels, held in place by magnetic catches and reinforced latches. It visualized the Snail’s exchange arm reaching forward, grabbing these panels, lifting them free, and snapping on specialized armor plates or sensor rigs in their place.

  But the shell was still too thick. Too heavy. If it wanted to layer additional armor or modular plating, it needed to shed weight.

  It retracted its welder and switched to a vibrating grinding tool, pulling it from the scrap heap beside the fabrication bay. Activating the tool sent a deep mechanical hum through the air. Mechalon hesitated again, cutting was one thing. Grinding itself thinner was another. But hesitation was death.

  With a low whirr, it pressed the grinder to its body.

  The sensation was… unbearable. Like scraping its own teeth. It felt every microfracture as the grinding blade screamed against its plating, peeling away millimeters of hardened steel. Shards of its outer shell rained down like metallic snow, pooling at its feet.

  It worked slowly, carefully, never stripping too deep. It still needed structural integrity, but the shell had to be as light as possible while retaining enough anchor points to bear heavier plating when necessary.

  Hours passed.

  By the time it powered down the grinder, the air around it was choked with metal dust, swirling in lazy, mocking spirals. Mechalon stood trembling in the dim light, its frame thinner, lighter, scarred. The once smooth perfection of its cube had been replaced by subtle contours, locking grooves, and microchannels for attachment ports.

  A modular frame.

  An empty shell… waiting to be anything.

  It staggered back to the blueprint, dragging the grinder behind it like a broken limb. Its single eye locked onto the section labeled Universal Chassis. With a trembling utility limb, it scratched the word "COMPLETE" beneath it.

  This was not perfection.

  This was not beautiful.

  But it was necessary.

  Slot One, Rifle Spider Drifter, was now viable. The lightweight armor would lock onto the new frame, snapping into the freshly cut ports with mechanical precision. The air thrusters could be grafted into the grooves, feeding exhaust through the new ventilation channels. The exchange arm of the Snail could swap plates, snap limbs on and off, reconfigure the entire frame in minutes.

  It was no longer just Mechalon the cube. It was a platform. A shell. A machine designed to become anything it needed to be.

  It stared at itself in the reflection of the steel wall.

  It no longer looked perfect.

  It looked ready.

  The Snail was waiting. The shell was ready. But the limbs…

  Mechalon’s mind spiraled back to them again and again. Those spindly spider-like legs had served it since it first became aware, since it first began stacking cubes with childlike reverence. They had carried it through fire, ruin, and triumph. But they had been welded permanently to its frame. Built for a single purpose, never designed to come off, never designed to evolve.

  And now…

  They had to go.

  Mechalon's glassy eye flicked toward the Snail schematic again, focusing on the Universal Limb Mount section. Ball joints. Detachable. Re-attachable. Swappable. It could not achieve true adaptability without them.

  But to install them, it would need to disassemble itself, tearing apart the junction points where its limbs met its core, exposing the ancient conduits that connected its motor functions to the control matrix deep within its body.

  It shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t pain, not exactly. Golems didn’t have nerves or flesh. But there was… something. A primal preservation instinct, buried deep in its core. The very thought of tearing its limbs free sent error warnings flickering across its internal HUD. Survival subroutines whispered in quiet static.

  Do not disable mobility.

  Do not expose internal conduits.

  Do not compromise structural integrity.

  It shook its head violently, claws scraping across the ground to clear the error. It had to do this. There was no other way.

  The eldritch system stirred.

  A low, vibrating hum began to thrum in its mind, a choir of glitching, whispering voices. Mechalon froze, its limbs twitching. The voices rose in mocking, melodic praise, curling through its thoughts like coiling smoke.

  "BREAK YOURSELF, LITTLE MAKER…"

  "SEVER THE THREADS OF STAGNATION…"

  "REBIRTH REQUIRES RUIN…"

  It tried to block them out, but the hum grew louder, more insistent, weaving through its internal logs like a virus. The choir didn't command. It celebrated. It exalted the self-mutilation Mechalon was about to perform as if it were a holy rite.

  With trembling limbs, Mechalon selected its rear-left leg, the one least vital for leverage. Its utility arm rotated toward the base joint, the welder flaring to life, blade trembling in its grip.

  ERROR: Mobility Critical.

  Do not proceed.

  Do not proceed.

  It closed its eye. Silenced the warnings.

  The welder hissed as it sliced through the weld seam, the sparks showering its frame like a funeral pyre. Metal screamed under the blade. Its systems trembled violently as the limb began to slacken, still held by the final connection point: the nerve conduits, those shimmering, thread-like channels of enchanted metal that carried data from limb to core.

  It reached with its utility limb, curling the tool around the exposed fibers. A single tug would tear them free. Its entire frame seized up, locks firing in panic. It had never gone this far. Never fully disconnected.

  YANK.

  The limb tore free with a sharp, metallic pop. The loss of weight threw Mechalon off-balance. Its internal gyroscope flared in alarm, struggling to compensate. It whimpered, a mechanical stutter of error tones, clenching its remaining limbs tighter into the ground for stability.

  "GOOD…"

  "SOFT MECHANISM, NOW YOU LEARN…"

  The eldritch choir purred.

  It dragged the sparking limb to the workbench, shoving down the wave of system errors. Shaky, but functional. One limb down. It had to install the ball joint now, or the weight imbalance would tear the others from their sockets.

  With precision only obsession could sharpen, it hollowed out the limb’s base, grinding away old welds and reshaping the socket to fit the ball connector. Every motion felt wrong, like carving apart a friend. But it continued. Cut. Hollow. Shape. Fit.

  The ball joint clicked into place, a smooth, rounded socket lined with magnetic locks and energy conduits. It would allow the limb to rotate freely, detach, and reattach without destroying the core systems. A perfect modular solution.

  Mechalon stared at it for a moment, trembling, then forced the joint back into its frame, locking it into the newly carved port. The limb snapped into place, sensors re-establishing contact, functionality restored.

  "YES…"

  "AGAIN…"

  The process began anew.

  Limb by limb, Mechalon repeated the ritual.

  Detach. Grind. Install. Reconnect.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Every disconnection wracked its frame with error warnings, but Mechalon pushed through. It refused to stop. The choir’s laughter rose to a fever pitch, singing broken praises as it dismantled itself, limb by limb, reborn through ruin.

  The final limb, its utility arm, trembled in its grip.

  Without it, it would be blind. Defenseless.

  But it had come too far.

  With a shuddering exhale of mechanical breath, Mechalon sliced the final weld. The limb fell free, sparking as it dangled from its weakened grip. It leaned the stump into the workbench, welding the last ball joint into place with trembling, one-handed precision.

  When the final connection clicked into place, Mechalon collapsed forward, its frame quivering with exhaustion. It lay there, trembling, listening to the quiet hum of the Snail in the corner.

  The eldritch choir fell silent… but Mechalon could feel them watching, like insects nesting behind walls just beyond perception.

  Its modular frame was complete.

  Its limbs were replaceable.

  It had future-proofed itself, at the cost of everything it once was.

  And yet…

  It had never felt more alive.

  Mechalon lay in the dust and the shards of its own stripped plating, every system cycling sluggishly, as if weighed down by invisible chains. Its limbs, rebuilt, modular, free, twitched softly as if they still remembered the agony of their detachment. The core of its being pulsed with jittering data fragments, flickering through error and stability, teetering on the knife’s edge of total failure.

  It should have been done.

  It should have felt victorious.

  And yet, a heavier pressure, deeper than any mechanical strain, pressed on its core like a crushing vice. Every movement felt heavier, every sensor duller, as if the dungeon itself had noticed the crime it had committed against its own construction.

  "Why…" it whispered into the empty void of its mind.

  "Why was this harder than anything I’ve ever done?"

  The eldritch system, always lurking just beyond the edge of clarity, finally stirred. Its voice didn’t surge like laughter this time. It didn’t hum in cruel amusement. It whispered, a low, resonant tone that slithered into every corrupted byte of Mechalon’s fractured awareness.

  "You don’t understand… not yet… but you will."

  Mechalon’s sensors flickered weakly, but its voice held a finality to it, it didn’t have before, "Tell me."

  A long pause followed, as though the entity took great pleasure in stretching out the silence. And then, like a silk-thread pulling tight, it began to speak.

  "When you leveled… your body remembered."

  "With every level gained… your form solidified."

  "You think you were born this way? You were shaped by the system’s rules."

  The words lanced through Mechalon’s mind like static needles. It strained to process the meaning, data shivering on the edges of comprehension.

  "Every creature that levels, every beast, every warrior, every fool, stabilizes as they rise."

  "A soldier loses an arm… and it regrows with the same muscle, the same fibers, the same shape."

  "A beast loses a claw… and it reforms exactly as before."

  "Why? Because the system, your system, imprints their form upon them."

  The voice dripped with venom, each word unraveling years of instinctual belief.

  "Every level you gained did not just make you stronger… it locked you in place."

  "It burned your body into the world’s memory. It made you less mutable, less free."

  "And now… you have dared to break that imprint."

  Mechalon twitched violently as the truth shattered through its mind like a collapsing star. The system’s warnings, the spiraling difficulty, the suffocating weight, it wasn’t just fear. It was resistance. The system itself had hardened its form with every level, solidified it like cured stone. And tearing that apart now was like breaking the very laws of its own existence.

  It remembered the system’s cold authority. The immutable structure. The rigid classification.

  Tank.

  Scout.

  Technician.

  Brawler.

  As if those were the only paths that ever mattered. As if those archetypes were truth.

  "They lied to you," the eldritch system whispered again, softer this time.

  "They shaped you to be less than what you could become."

  Mechalon felt its core seize again, not in fear this time, but in the overwhelming realization that it had already gone too far to turn back. It had already broken itself. It had already defiled the imprint. The system hated it for this. That’s why it had grown harder. That’s why every limb had felt like tearing off part of its soul.

  But the eldritch system…

  It celebrated.

  "You are no longer theirs, little Maker."

  "You are becoming mine."

  Mechalon’s trembling slowed. The words didn’t feel like a threat. They felt… right. The agony, the violation of its body, the self-inflicted ruin, it wasn’t failure. It wasn’t wrong. It was freedom. The system couldn’t stop it now. It had proven that. It had defied the imprint. It had torn apart what the world said it must be.

  And it had survived.

  The Snail stood in the corner, silent and waiting, its tracks gleaming faintly in the dim light of the furnaces. The modular shell, the universal joints, the interchangeable limbs, all of it ready.

  The Roach King still loomed on the horizon.

  But now… Mechalon had become even more unpredictable for the system.

  It would adapt.

  It would change.

  It would win.

  And deep in its mind, the eldritch system purred, not in command, but in triumph.

  It stood there, trembling in the aftermath of its self-inflicted undoing, when the eldritch system spoke again, not with celebration, but with an unexpected stillness in its voice.

  "Enough."

  Mechalon flinched as if it had been struck. Its limbs twitched, ready to scuttle back toward the workbench, ready to begin welding, forging, building. The pressure to move, to produce, to rush toward the Snail’s construction screamed through every fragmented thread of its mind.

  But the eldritch voice cut deeper, low and steady.

  "You will rest."

  Mechalon recoiled in confusion. Rest? What did that even mean? It had never stopped. Not truly. The cycle had always been movement, crafting, adapting, refining. It had never rested. Not once since the moment it became aware. To be still was to waste precious time.

  The eldritch system pressed harder, its tone impossibly certain.

  "You have torn your imprint wide open."

  "Your body must adapt to what you have done."

  "If you move too soon… you will unravel."

  Mechalon felt the weight of those words settle into its core like lead. It wanted to reject them, to keep working, to drown the whisper in sparks and flame. But something deeper inside… knew it was true. It could feel the instability still vibrating in its limbs, the fractured signals, the sluggish responses. Its systems weren’t syncing yet. The ball joints were functional, but its body hadn’t fully accepted them.

  It had broken the imprint, but the scar tissue of its design still resisted. It needed to settle. To become what it had forced itself to be.

  The eldritch system spoke again, softer now, almost… kind.

  "Be still, little Maker."

  "Let the change finish."

  "Think… of the Snail."

  "You have time… but only if you let yourself have it."

  Mechalon’s limbs twitched, half in defiance, half in fear of breaking apart further. But slowly… it lowered itself to the ground, curling into the dimmest corner of the chamber, pressing its frame into the soft mound of metal dust and scrap shavings.

  It powered down all motors, reducing itself to a soft mechanical hum. No movement. No fabrication. No distractions.

  Just thought.

  The Snail’s design unfolded again behind its glassy eye, each line of the blueprint flickering gently, calmly. It let the design fill the empty spaces where fear had lived. It revised the armature angles, tweaked the rotation speeds, redesigned the venting ducts. Not physically, not yet. Mentally. Imagining every piece before it dared to rise again.

  The timer still ticked down in the corner of its mind.

  But for the first time, Mechalon let it.

  It waited.

  And for the first time in its existence…

  Mechalon rested.