Hope flickered in the unlikeliest of places.
Word came of a hidden enclave—the Widow's Market, a place where black banners flew, and Anomalists gathered freely under the protection of a warlord matron. Her name was Mistress Dour, and rumor claimed she once strangled a parliamentarian with her own hair.
Through twisted alleys they arrived, passing gates of scavenged steel. Inside, the market thrummed with life. Vendors hawked forbidden contraptions, children with glowing eyes darted through the crowd, and at its heart stood Mistress Dour herself: a towering woman draped in mourning silks, her hair braided into ropes as thick as chains.
"You come crawling to me, little sparks?" she said, her voice like gravel. "I should throw you back to the Phantom's jaws. You bring his gaze wherever you walk."
Selene bristled. "And yet you haven't."
Dour's grin was all teeth. "Because I hate him more than I hate you."
She led them to a chamber beneath the market, where stolen blueprints sprawled across the walls—maps of engines, spires, sewer lines. "He is building his god-machine. But even gods require foundations. Here." She stabbed a finger at a mark on the parchment. "The Cradle. Beneath the Parliament itself. Destroy that, and his body will fall before it learns to walk."
Elric studied the blueprints in silence. At last, he nodded. "Then the Cradle is where we strike."
But as he turned, he noticed a smudge on the plans—too deliberate, too recent. A misdirection. Someone had already tampered with their only chance.