The vault was colder than the forge-halls above.
Kairon preferred it that way. The walls sweated with condensation, the air stale with rust and wax smoke. His mechadendrites hovered in restless arcs as though the metal itself might betray them. A dozen candles burned low, their light flickering across broken machine-altars stripped of their purpose.
Five figures knelt in that uneven glow. Each one marked by loss. Each one desperate.
Selene stood before them, her breath faintly misting in the air. She didn't summon her gift; she didn't need to. Her voice carried conviction enough to light fire in their hollow eyes.
The first was a boy named Reth, no older than seventeen.
His hands were blistered and raw, fingers cracked from hauling slag in the furnaces since childhood. His father had been caught in a gear collapse last year, crushed into paste. His mother hadn't survived the work-tithes that followed. Reth came alone, wearing boots too big for him, eyes sharp but trembling.
"I'm already dead," he said quietly, when asked why he came. "Just not buried yet."
Beside him knelt Orlan, once a junior priest of the Forge.
Half his skull was raw flesh where his augmetic eye had been torn out. He'd spoken against a superior — demanded to know why the Omnissiah allowed the Rustbound plague to eat their manufactoria. For that crime, they had ripped his augmetic free and left him bleeding in the slag pits.
He still whispered litanies under his breath, but they were twisted now, words bent more to anger than praise.
The third was Mira, gaunt and hollow-eyed, clutching a child to her chest.
Her husband had been drafted into the defense militia three months ago. Rustbound had torn him apart on the line. No compensation had come, no priest to bless his passing. Just silence. Now she worked the smelters twelve hours a day while her son starved in the shadows.
When Selene asked why she came, she didn't speak at first. She only pressed her child closer and wept, as if that were the only answer left.
The fourth, an old data-scrivener named Hovanis, coughed blood between every other sentence.
He had copied ledgers faithfully for decades, watching machine-gods rise and fall in the archives. When Rustbound code infected his cogitators, they declared his service corrupted and cast him out. He wanted nothing but to die in service to something that mattered.
Selene looked at each of them in turn, her gaze steady, her voice sharp as iron.
"You have all been abandoned," she said. "By priests. By soldiers. By lords who fatten themselves while you bleed. You kneel here because somewhere inside, you know this truth: the forge has forgotten you."
She lifted her hands,
"But he remembers."
They looked up at her — some with suspicion, some with hunger.
Selene's voice lowered, intimate now, like a secret pressed into their ears.
"We call him the Flame. He is not the false light of the Omnissiah, nor the blind radiance of Terra. He is fire that remembers the lost. Fire that answers. Fire that does not consume its faithful but forges them into something stronger."
She moved between them, touching each forehead lightly with her cold palm. Her power soothed their tired souls.
"You will not speak this outside these walls. Not to neighbors, not to children too young to keep silence. Faith spreads in whispers. We are the fire under ash. And when the day comes, no storm will quench us."
One by one, they bowed their heads. Some in reverence, others in desperation. Reth's lips trembled. Mira pressed her child tighter. Orlan whispered a broken litany, one the Forge had tried to take from him.
Later, Elias read the report in a separate vault.
The cracked dataslate scrolled with Kairon's code:
> Recruitment: +5
> Profiles:
- Reth, forge-slave (youth, strong hands, untrained but fervent)
- Orlan, ex-priest (knowledgeable, bitter, dangerous)
- Mira, widow (devoted, cautious, will follow Selene without question)
- Hovanis, old scrivener (dying, memory holds secrets of archives)
- Dependent: Mira's son (resource burden but symbolically potent)
> Faith Units gained: +7
> Forge-cell Alpha secured (weapons scavenging begun)
The System pulsed faintly in Elias's vision:
> Faith Reservoir: 39 Units
> Suggestion: Empowerment Candidate Pool expanding
> Warning: Multiple Blessings will increase exposure risk
Elias exhaled, setting the dataslate aside.
Not worshippers. Not zealots. Soldiers.
They think they found hope. What they don't know is that they're becoming my weapons. Every prayer they whisper in secret adds weight to the fire. Every oath becomes coin to spend. But I won't waste it on faith alone. I'll forge them into something that can strike.
He looked at the cracked screen again, his reflection split across it: eyes burning orange, face grim.
"We grow in the dark," he whispered. "Until no one can stop it."
The ash in the air seemed to listen.
[END OF PART 1: Silent Growth]