Elias hated the quiet. Sh*t
He cursed for the first time in awhile.
It wasn't real quiet — not down here. There was always something humming. Pipes breathing, metal creaking, the soft hiss of dying air filters. The forge-world never shut the hell up.
But it wasn't noise that made you feel alive. It was noise that made you realize how close death was — .
Their boots hit the grated floor in near silence. A few hundred meters below Sector Three, the tunnels narrowed to old emergency maintenance shafts — tight, rust-choked things with barely enough room for two side-by-side.
The lumen-crawlers Kairon had sent ahead scuttled like silver crabs along the ceiling, casting erratic light down twisted walls.
Elias moved first. Selene behind him. Six others close. Quiet soldiers. Good ones. Scared, but not the panicked kind. The kind who followed orders even when the walls started bleeding.
Above them, Volst came through on vox.
"Charges placed. Upper vent shafts one through four. Demo team pulling back to fallback stairwell."
Elias clicked his comm twice. Didn't bother replying with words. Volst knew what he meant. It became almost natural to follow, when did this began... Honestly I don't know, probably when his eyes glowing, or when he saved my life..??? Volst though to herslef.
They kept moving.
The air was getting hotter. Not forge-hot. Wrong-hot. Like breathing inside a dying furnace. Sweat stung his eyes. One of the lumen drones sparked out and dropped with a metallic clink near his feet.
Behind him, a scout muttered, "That's a good omen."
Elias didn't stop. "If it lands upright, it means the Emperor still thinks you're an idiot."
The scout shut up.
They passed through what had once been a maintenance relay — a big, half-collapsed chamber choked with twisted rails and melted bulkheads. At some point, someone had turned it into a shrine.
Human bones — dozens of them — stacked like offerings around a rusted servitor frame, its eyes still faintly glowing. Old blood painted the walls in a thousand handprints.
Selene stopped just inside the archway, blades drawn but low.
"Smells like oil and piss," she said.
Elias crouched near the center, examining the bones. "This wasn't a fight. They came here to die. I feel it"
Selene's voice dropped. "You think the Rustborn did this?"
"Who knows, but I know this is worship. The way dogs worship bigger dogs."
He stood, rubbing at the back of his neck. It was slick with sweat and tension.
"You hear that?" he asked suddenly.
Selene paused. "No."
"Exactly. I fucking hate that."
They kept descending. The shaft narrowed to a vent tunnel barely wide enough to crawl through.
By the time they emerged into another corridor, the heat was worse. Everything stank of copper, smoke, and some kind of synthetic rot. The lights here didn't flicker. They pulsed — like something was breathing through the power grid.
One of the scouts ahead turned back.
"There's movement up ahead.."
"Rustborn?"
He shook his head. "No — I mean, yeah, but not like patrols. Just... standing. Like they're waiting."
Selene stepped up beside Elias. "We're close to the outer core. That heat pressure — it's not just..... Something's alive in there."
Elias clenched his jaw.
Kairon's voice came over vox again — crackling, urgent.
"Primary hymn is ready. The machine-spirits are... resisting. One minute to signal. The Rustborn chorus will collapse. Then you'll have nine minutes."
"Nine minutes," Elias muttered. "Fu*k me."
"Later," Selene said dryly.
He smirked. Just for a second. Then it was gone.
They moved fast now — last corridor, last chance to breathe. Just ahead, the tunnel ended at a blast-sealed door. It looked like it had been burned half-open from the inside.
Through the crack, Elias could see a flicker of orange light and shadows moving.
Not marching. Just shifting.
Like a congregation waiting for the sermon.
The scouts moved into position — two flanking left, two right. Elias stepped forward, Selene just behind.
She didn't say anything. Neither did he.
Finally, he exhaled and whispered, almost too quiet to hear:
"This is the part where everything goes sideways."
The vox hissed again.
"Signal out. Disruption live. You have nine minutes before the machine-spirits retaliate."
And then something deep beneath them screamed.
It wasn't sound, exactly. It was like metal grinding against belief. The walls shuddered, and all the lumen-crawlers went dark at once.
"Showtime," Elias said.
He turned to his team, half-crouched at the breach.
"Once we're in, we go loud. Hit fast, burn through the choir pit, straight to the core. We don't get nine minutes — we get whatever's left after they start screaming."
A scout raised his hand. "What if we miss the core?"
Elias didn't even blink. "Then we die, and they use our bones to build a bigger altar. So let's not miss."
He paused, looked at Selene.
"Ready?"
She tilted her head. "You?"
He chuckled —
"Not even a little."
And then he stepped through.