The forge didn't look like one, at least no like a forge that could forge.
It looked like desperation, cobbled up to make ends meet.
Heat poured from slag pits, the air thick with soot and the smell of metal turned too hot for too long. Sparks rained from half-dead forges where engineers and scavengers hammered at dented armor plates. Each clang was a heartbeat.
Kairon's mechadendrites fluttered above him as he guided Elias through the smoke. The Magos looked less priestly here — more human, his face lined by exhaustion. "We've reactivated eight forges," he said. "A dozen more need purging. The rust-eaters tried to take them, but we scrubbed their code."
He hesitated, voice lowering. "Flame… we've made something. It's small. Imperfect. But it lives."
Elias walked past a cluster of workers at a smelter.
A woman was welding plating to a gunship's hull, sparks crawling over her face shield. She didn't stop working when she noticed him. Just said, without looking, "Didn't think the flame would come down here."
Her voice rasped, rough from smoke. Her name, Selene had told him, was Mira. The same Mira who had brought her boy to the vault weeks ago.
The child sat a few meters away, small hands cleaning shell casings with a rag. His lips moved silently — counting, maybe, or whispering to himself.
Elias stopped beside them. "You kept him here?"
Mira lifted her mask. Her eyes were rimmed red. "Where else? The surface? The priests would take him. The streets would eat him. Here he's safe." She looked at the boy, not at Elias. "And he works. He earns his air. Don't you, Tor?"
The boy nodded once, serious. "I don't sleep much, sir."
Elias studied him. The boy didn't flinch. There was no fear there, just exhaustion old as stone.
Kairon's vox cracked behind him. "Many here are like her," he said softly. "They found a purpose where the Imperium gave them none."
Ahead, a man slammed a hammer against a steel plate, sparks bursting like orange insects. His arms were augmetic from elbow to wrist, mismatched parts scavenged from servitors.
When he saw Elias, he stopped mid-swing. "Heard you turned the Rustbound to ash," he said. His tone wasn't reverent — it was testing.
"That true?"
Elias met his gaze. "You were there?"
The man nodded. "Too far to see it. Close enough to feel the heat." He flexed his metal fingers, the joints whining. "Name's Veyra. Used to weld hulls for the Navy. They shut the yards, said our work was 'inefficient.' Efficient's a nice word for starving to death."
He gestured at the shuttle husk behind him, smoke rising from its open hull. "We can make these fly again. Maybe not pretty. But they'll carry guns."
A short distance away, Selene was training a group of recruits — makeshift drills with scavenged rifles and blades. Her voice carried low and sharp. "Discipline before devotion. Faith without order burns itself out."
Elias watched as a man stumbled mid-drill, catching his breath.
Selene's tone softened. "Again. Slowly."
The man nodded, jaw tight. His uniform was an old militia's, faded insignia scraped off. A scar split his lip, and a chain of prayer beads clung to his wrist out of habit.
Selene looked over to Elias. "Kaelen," she called. "He fought at the Rustfront."
Kaelen straightened, wiping sweat from his brow. "I fought," he said, his voice raw, "until they left us there."
He looked at Elias then, eyes hollow. "The command pulled out. We were still holding the line. Forty of us. Rustbound came in waves. When the ammo ran out, I used my knife."
He smiled faintly, a dead man's smile. "Guess I never stopped fighting."
Elias said nothing. But in that silence, something in the air shifted — not faith, not awe, just recognition.
He turned slowly, taking it all in — the noise, the heat, the smell of oil and blood, the faces marked by hunger and purpose.
Not zealots. Survivors.
Each of them had crawled through the same fire he had, only they hadn't come out the other side. Until now.
He raised his voice, low but carrying across the chamber.
"No sermons. No banners. Not yet." His eyes glowed faintly, the forge fire catching in them. "You build. You train. You make the world remember us when it's too late to stop us."
He paused, gaze sweeping across them.
"This isn't faith anymore. This is what comes after faith. We are the forge."
Selene stopped her drill, her recruits standing at attention. Kairon lowered his head, mechadendrites stilling in reverence.
Even Mira stopped welding. Veyra's hammer rested. Kaelen's scarred hands clenched on his blade.
It wasn't worship. It was acknowledgment.
The System flickered in Elias's mind, faint and clinical against the weight of the moment.
> Faith Units: +14
> Forge-Cell Alpha: Operational
Elias exhaled. The air was thick with ash and heat, but he could feel it — the forge breathing, alive, growing. So, was the risk of being purged, not by the chaos, not by the xenos, but by the same race they belonged.
We're past belief now, he thought.
[END OF PART 4: The Hidden Forge ]