The heart of Brasswick was not its forges, nor its zeppelins, nor even the colossal clocktower that tolled its hours. It was Parliament — where men in velvet coats and jeweled monocles played at gods while the city drowned in smoke.
Elric, Selene, and Evangeline slipped into the visitors' gallery under false papers smuggled by sympathetic clerks. Their allies among the Anomalists waited outside in the smog, ready to flee should the guards descend.
The chamber gleamed beneath chandeliers of crystal gears, every polished rail and stair screaming excess. Ministers filed in, their voices buzzing like hornets. On the docket: the Anomalist Registration Decree.
From the first speech, Elric knew. The words were not the ministers' own. They dripped with the Engineer's language — promises of perfection, of safety through surveillance, of sacrifice for the greater machine. One minister spoke of "culling instability." Another praised "the elegance of obedience."
Selene's hand gripped the gallery rail until her knuckles whitened. "He doesn't need machines to enslave us. He has Parliament."
And then, without warning, a raven of brass swooped down from the rafters, its wings clattering like blades. It dropped a single gear upon the Speaker's desk, the mark of the broken cog burned deep into its teeth.
Gasps echoed through the chamber. The Speaker lifted the gear with shaking hands, as though holding divine judgment.
In that moment, Elric understood the truth.The Phantom Engineer was no longer whispering in shadows. He had stepped openly into power.