The air inside The Under-Belly of the House of Æthelred's mechanical lungs is not oxygen, but compressed poison. Here, five hundred feet beneath the splendor of the city of Oakhaven, the acrid smell of sulfur mingles with the aroma of rusting metal and slowly burning human flesh.
Cynewulf pressed his dirty forehead against the iron wall of steam furnace number 09. The iron vibrated, an unstable mechanical heartbeat. In his hand, a curved copper shovel felt like an extension of his arm covered in scabs and second-degree burns.
"Push faster, useless Ceorl!" the shout came from Ealdorman Hrothgar, a swollen overseer wearing a pigskin gas mask. His leather whip, woven with thin copper wire, exploded in the air, tearing the remaining hemp cloth on Cynewulf's back.
Cynewulf did not scream. The nerves in his back had long since died, replaced by a thick layer of scar tissue. He continued to shovel raw Æther crystals into the mouth of the burning furnace. The crystal glowed pale blue, emitting a sizzling sound like thousands of insects being squashed upon contact with fire.
Every shovel he throws is fuel for The Iron Shroud, the giant dome above that keeps Aethelgard's skies from collapsing in the darkness of the Dreaming Wastes.
"We feed the machine so the machine can feed our fears," Cynewulf thought. His voice in his head sounded like the rubbing of sandpaper.
He glanced at the chain on his ankle. The chain is not just iron; there was a low level Screed-craft carving that glowed reddish a seal of obedience that would burn into his bone marrow if he tried to step out of the work zone. This is the brutal reality for those deemed to be "dirty blood."
Suddenly, the vibration in furnace 09 changed. The sound was no longer a rhythmic thump-thump, but a shrill screech that tormented the ears.
"Vapor pressure has crossed the stable limit!" shouted a young slave next to Cynewulf, his face drained of soot. "The valve is stuck! We're going to explode!"
Hrothgar, the overseer, actually retreated with panicked steps towards the airtight door. "Lock the door! Don't let the steam leak up to the noble floor!"
"Wait! We're still here!" shouted the young slave. However, the loud clang of the hydraulic lock closing was the answer. They were locked inside the human roasting room.
Cynewulf looked up. In the midst of the hot steam that began to burst out of the cracked pipes, he saw something impossible. Within the blue flames of the furnace, the geometry of space began to warp. The fire no longer licked upwards; it began to form absurd spiral patterns, resembling flower petals made of liquid crystal.
Then, the smell appeared. Not sulfur. Not soot.
It was the smell of burning copper and... something both sweet and rotten, like roses growing on a long-dead carcass.
Cynewulf felt something inside his brain shift. It was as if a curtain had been torn. He could see transparent lines connecting every atom in the room, a fragile "seam" of reality.
One second before the steam furnace exploded and cooked everyone there, Cynewulf stretched out his trembling hand. Not to block the explosion, but to draw one of those transparent lines.
Outside the concrete walls of Oakhaven, in a place that humans are not supposed to touch, something that has no face, whose body is made up of thousands of pulsing transparent nerves, has just felt a "call".
Cynewulf didn't realize it yet, but today, he was no longer just a soot eater. It is a small hole in the dam that holds back the apocalypse.