Daylight underground was never truly bright—only marginally clearer than night.
In the Ironroot workshop, light was born from metal petals blooming along the walls—organic furnaces that pulsed slowly, exhaling hot breath scented with old oil and burnt steel. The heat clung stubbornly to the skin, teaching the lungs to breathe shorter, thriftier breaths.
From the stone ceiling, dark veins trailed downward like roots of lost trees; yet when light touched them, they shone not with sap—but with iron. The people here called them iron roots: things that seemed to grow out of the rock, hardening with age, somehow remembering sound.
Rae stood at the workshop's threshold, listening before looking. The rhythm—meant to be whole—was fractured: the spin of a shaft, the sigh of air, the scrape of a belt—all arriving broken, like the limp gait of a wounded man.
At the room's center lay a creature neither alive nor dead: a modified mining machine, tilted slightly to one side. Its skeletal frame might once have been familiar to anyone from the surface, but everything else was… different. Pipes curled like arteries; vents stretched like gills; its lubrication tubes pulsed faintly, feeding thick, soot-colored fluid. Along the length of its arm ran rows of rune-carvings—simple lines that, when followed with patient eyes, formed a pattern that never truly ended.
The machine was jammed. Not merely stopped—it felt like a living thing holding its breath, choked somewhere no hand could reach.
"Hear that?" Brug stood beside Rae, arms folded, eyes narrowed against the furnace-glare. His voice was metallic and rough, the voice of someone who spoke too often near running engines. "It's been like that since dawn. We've checked everything, but every time we force it to run, it refuses the shop's rhythm."
"Sounds like a baby with hiccups," Rae said without thinking.
Brug shot her a quick glance—his smile appeared and vanished. "Don't say baby here. There are ears that take that as an insult."
As if summoned, the chain curtain at the far end of the shop clinked aside. Gruk-Tal, the master smith, stepped out—heavy-footed yet silent. His jaw was crowded with metal shavings shaped into a kind of beard; his dark, coppery eyes reflected the furnace light. Two black streaks ran from his brow to his cheekbones—not paint, but soot stains that had never quite faded.
"Who said baby?" His voice was flat, as if the question was more for the air than for an answer.
"The sound," Rae replied. "Not the machine."
Gruk-Tal approached without introduction—no one here needed it. Work was the only true greeting. He stood close to the machine's head, laid a calm palm against its casing. The furnace petals seemed to narrow slightly, as if the whole room was holding its breath.
"It's holding," he said at last. "Anything that breathes can be told to choose: inhale or exhale. This one chooses to hold."
Around them, the iron-skinned goblins of Ironroot moved like shadows. Their skin was silver-gray, their joints ringed with bulges like wooden knots—though all of it was metal. They rarely spoke; their language was hammer taps, deliberate scrapes on pulleys, a nod behind soot-black masks. In the corner, leaning against a forge table's leg, an old iron hammer "watched" the room through its worn steel head—its handle replaced countless times through the ages.
Rae stepped forward, pressing her palm to the machine's panel. Cold on the skin, heat surging from beneath. Amid the noise, she searched for the small things: an unsynced pause, a timid throb between growls. She closed her eyes, giving space for a pattern to assemble itself.
"They say you can make stone stop screaming," Gruk-Tal remarked, still watching the casing.
"I don't tell stone to be quiet," Rae said softly. "I listen for how it wants to speak."
"I hear you." Gruk-Tal gestured; two goblins shoved a toothed flywheel lock into the central shaft. "Show me."
Brug added, "We swapped the filters, reset the injectors, even cranked the flywheel by hand till our arms went numb. Same result. It's like it rejects the workshop's metronome."
Rae didn't grab the wheel immediately. She tapped the panel with her nail—once, pause, twice, long pause. A small sound, but the room seemed to listen. Then she took the wheel, turning it a single click, pausing, feeling. Another click, slower. On the third, the machine growled in protest. Rae stopped.
"Brug, tap the injector casing—twice, gently."
Brug raised an eyebrow, then obeyed. Two polite taps.
Rae waited for the echo to travel down the pipes, then turned the wheel again—half a click, pause, half a click. Slowly, the growl dropped half a pitch, opening into a wider breath. "Air," she whispered.
One goblin pulled a lever. Above them, the iron-lung bladders swelled, drawing air through the gill-vents. The machine inhaled deeply—then choked.
"The stator resists," Gruk-Tal said evenly.
"Because we're making it breathe to the furnace's rhythm," Rae replied. "It wasn't born in a furnace. It grew up in another tunnel."
She walked to the old hammer. Its weight wasn't just metal—it carried the labor of nails driven in years past, pins forced home, bolts taught to obey. Lifting it, she felt the balance of its worn head. Returning to the panel, she repeated her tapping pattern: once, pause, twice, long pause—like sketching intent into the surface: I won't force you; let me follow first.
"Turn it," she told the goblin at the lever. "One degree, repeat."
She herself turned the shaft wheel patiently. Along the machine's arm, a few runes glimmered—not in a burst of magic, but as electricity finally found a path unherded. On the seventh degree, the shaft engaged gently, like a shoulder finding its comfortable place after hours of stiffness.
"Small flame," she said.
Fire raced through capillary tubes; there was a tek like a sheet of tin struck by hand. The panel needle climbed half a mark. The shaft spun. Starved gears began to feed without biting back. From the gill-vents came a sound no longer a hiccup: dum—…—dum—…—dum. A heartbeat. Calm. Then steady.
The workshop fell silent. Even the furnaces seemed to hold their glow, letting the heartbeat fill the walls.
Brug nudged Rae's shoulder gently, as though touch might wake the machine. "For a moment there, I almost believed you'd bewitched it."
Rae caught her own reflection in the panel's small mirror—a fine coat of soot aging her face overnight. "We just stopped ordering it around," she said. "And gave it a foothold."
Gruk-Tal gripped another lever. "Shut it down. Start it again. If you were only lucky, luck shouldn't be a requirement."
They repeated the process—clearing the lines, finding the spin from zero, reestablishing the taps. Twice, three times. Rae swapped the sequence: air before spin, spin before flame. Each time, the machine found its breath faster, like a baby rocked into a rhythm its body already remembered.
Gruk-Tal didn't smile, but something rigid in his shoulders eased a fraction. "You don't dictate. You bargain." His gaze flicked to the hammer in Rae's hands. "Who taught you?"
"No one," Rae said. Then, honestly, "Maybe the breathing streets in this city."
The strange answer barely registered on Gruk-Tal's face—smiths were used to truths they didn't fully understand but could test. "Come with me. You too," he said to Brug, "if your tongue can stay as steady as your hands."
"My tongue's on leave," Brug murmured.
They passed through the chain curtain, down a corridor behind the shop. The walls were lined with notes: maximum torque, safe RPM, lubrication schedules—numbers that, if memorized, became the most honest prayers of a mechanic. Between them, small spiral symbols appeared again and again, like impatient arrows pointing toward a whirlpool. Rae remembered that spiral from elsewhere—in the cracks of Glassveil, in the mud maps, in the faint marks on her arm after the camp tunnel incident. A pattern that followed—or was followed—without knowing.
The spiral iron stairs led down to a place that borrowed no light from the furnaces. Below, a circular platform hung freely over a vast drop. In its center, a massive shaft ran upward and downward beyond sight. Its surface was finely engraved—lines that made the eyes ache if stared at too long, like reading prayers in a language too old. The shaft didn't spin fast, but enough to make the surrounding air vibrate. From the depths rose a sound that was neither water nor wind—something between friction and a restrained song.
"This is the backbone," said Gruk-Tal. "It turns dozens of smaller shafts across the city. If it coughs, we all choke."
Rae stood at the edge of the platform. Through her feet came a vibration that didn't match the young machine's heartbeat: Dum—dum—dum. Heavier. Slower. Older. She closed her eyes, letting her body become the oldest measuring tool anyone possessed.
"Different?" Gruk-Tal asked without looking.
"Different," Rae replied. "The earlier machine… younger. Like a student who can read but hasn't dared to argue with the teacher."
Gruk-Tal nodded slightly. "Some young machines resist the backbone's rhythm to find their own breath. That's good—for a while. Bad if they forget where the power comes from."
Brug stared into the depths. "You brought us here to… listen?"
"To remind you," said Gruk-Tal, "that aligning doesn't mean making identical. Sometimes, to keep the young breathing, you lower the backbone's voice. Sometimes you raise it. We don't understand it all; that doesn't excuse us from helping."
Rae said nothing. Something in that shaft reminded her of a dead radio that once called her name in a night without hours. She studied the spiral on its surface, and for a moment it seemed to move, joining with an unseen pattern beneath her skin. Brug, who knew Rae well enough to read certain silences, touched her arm briefly: you're here.
When they returned to the workshop, the once-stalled machine now breathed easily, half-asleep in a standby mode understood only by the goblins. Gruk-Tal barked short commands in their clipped tongue: clicks, whistles, stomps. Tools were closed, filings swept, covers drawn down. The room's rhythm shifted—not "repairing" now, but "arranging."
"What are we preparing for?" Brug asked, though he already suspected.
"Inspection," Gruk-Tal said, glancing toward the great shop door. "Overlord's tax audit."
The words fell like heavy coins into dark water, their ripples reaching every corner. Tax wasn't just numbers here—it was eyes counting revolutions, liters of lubricant, hours of burn; eyes that cared nothing for what breathed between the numbers. Tax meant young machines forced to the old drum, because the ledgers demanded uniformity.
"This machine will raise questions," Gruk-Tal continued. "Why was it running? For what purpose? Who touched it? Ledger-men don't like the answer: because it was holding its breath."
"Let me speak," Rae said, startled at the firmness in her own voice.
Brug's smile was quick and crooked. "In what language? Pauses and taps?"
"In the language of whoever's willing to listen," Rae said. "If there is one."
Gruk-Tal studied her a long moment—not judging, but measuring the space between two breaths. "Some will call you a curse. Some will call you a tool. I'll wait for you to choose for yourself. In the meantime…"
He crossed to the corner, took the old iron hammer, and placed it in Rae's hands. Up close, the worn engraving on its head looked like the veins of a leaf—lines not straight, but leading. "It belonged to the one who first taught this shop to bargain, not strike," Gruk-Tal said. "He died on a cold day, in a tunnel now sealed. This hammer has never refused a hand that came to soothe, but it's heavy in the hands of those who come to force. Hold it. Not to fight. To remember."
Rae accepted it. Its weight changed in her palm—or perhaps her palm adjusted. She felt something beneath the steel—not a spirit, not anything needing a name, only the residue of hundreds of taps that had once carried the same tool. Remember rhythm. Not a metronome, not the old drum. Rhythm—the kind that lets two different things walk side by side. She nodded, and this time Gruk-Tal's smile appeared—faint as a hairline scratch visible only when you tilted your head.
They weren't done tidying when a sound not born of the shop crept to the doorway: the measured clack of metal boots. Not running, not slow—the pace of people who knew every step added to a count. No torches; they rarely borrowed another's light. They brought their own insignia.
The door's chain was looped but not locked, a polite signal that this was a workspace, not a plaza. Brug glanced at Rae: ready? Rae swallowed the heat in her throat. The hammer felt colder than the air.
The line halted outside. A brief silence—the kind only those comfortable with torturing time could hold. Then a voice, not loud, but splitting the air like a nail through dry wood:
"Ironroot workshop. Overlord tax inspection."
Rae felt something shift in the young machine behind her—the heartbeat they'd just steadied hitching slightly, like a child sensing strangers in the house. She shifted the hammer to her left hand; the right would need to learn to speak.
"Name?" the voice asked, polite but flat.
Gruk-Tal stepped forward. "I am Gruk-Tal. Master of this workshop. This is a place of work, not parade. But we welcome your presence—so long as the eyes you bring are not blind to what breathes."
No answer at first. Then the chain clinked, the door sliding open a hand's width—enough to reveal silhouettes. Their shoulder plates were not gold or cloth, but black metal etched with a spiral. Not the spiral that lived in this shop—its lines were sharper, leaving no pause for a misstep. Whatever softness had once existed there was gone.
Rae stared at it, feeling another spiral—older, deeper—stirring beneath her skin. Not calling, not warning, only pointing toward a direction that had spun nameless all this time. Brug, noticing the smallest change in her expression, moved a little closer.
"Inspection begins now," the voice said. "We will count. We will record. We will ensure the city's rhythm does not stray from its backbone."
Gruk-Tal didn't move. "Rhythm does not always ring in a single note."
The voice outside almost smiled—if metal could smile. "Notes may vary. Rhythm must not."
Rae didn't realize she'd stepped forward half a pace. "If rhythm forces lungs still growing, they'll tear," she said. "And you'll be recording a leak you made yourselves."
Another silence—thinner this time. Brug held his breath. The goblins froze, like statues refusing to be statues.
"Who are you?" the voice asked at last.
"The one who listens," Rae said. It sounded stranger aloud than it had in her head, but the words could not be recalled. Here, sometimes a name was just a spear you threw into the dark to see how far the echo reached.
The door opened a little more. A pair of eyes scanned the room—not for tidiness, but for counts. They lingered on the machine beneath its cloth shroud, then on the hammer in Rae's grip.
"Very well," the voice said finally. "Begin by showing us the newest machine brought to life. We will measure its breath."
Rae and two goblins pulled away the cover, revealing the great beast that had decided to trust strangers only because its own house had asked it to. She brushed the panel once, a small pattern no one heard but skin trained to listen through metal.
Somewhere, far down a tunnel or further still, the city's backbone thudded: dum—…—dum—…—dum. Rae watched the panel needle that would soon be forced into sync, and a thought flashed through her mind: every rhythm forced to be the same loses its music first—then its breath.
Gruk-Tal stood at her side, not touching, but steadying. Brug on the other, his smile replaced by a serious line that scared no one but calmed the one in the middle.
"Then," said the inspector, "let us begin."
Somewhere unseen, a greater question waited: whose rhythm would remain when the numbers were written? Rae glanced from the lanyard's spiral to the shaft's spiral to the faint spiral she suspected lay within her. She didn't know the answer—only how to bargain.
And long before the official torches were lit, long before a red seal hit any paper, the news of "Overlord's tax" had already traveled faster than the inspectors' boots—like a small wind bragging it could slip through the tightest cracks. Tomorrow, the city would speak loudly. Tonight, the workshop would simply breathe.
The young machine's heartbeat—slow, brave—filled the space: dum—…—dum—…—dum. Not matching the backbone. Not opposing it. Two rhythms, side by side. For now. For as many nows as they could keep.