The night bled red as the automaton moved.
It did not stride like a man. It reconfigured. Whole districts folded into legs, streets tilted and locked into new shapes, towers bent like knees. Brasswick itself became a walking cathedral of steel. Each step crushed neighborhoods, yet within its body, gaslamps still burned, taverns still stood, even corpses prayed.
Elric's party infiltrated as the city-body advanced, moving along hidden aqueducts that twisted into veins. Steam hissed like arterial blood, pipes groaned like bones. Everywhere they went, they saw faces—etched into brass, cast in stone, fused into walls. Some still screamed, some still wept, others stared blankly, already part of the sum.
Evangeline faltered when she recognized one of them. A child, her apprentice once, now fixed into a copper valve, his eyes dull. "He… he's using them as memory," she whispered, choking. "Every soul he takes becomes a calculation, a thought in his mind."
Selene pulled her along roughly. "Then we cut him out before he writes the whole damned universe."
At the heart of a rising tower, they emerged into a grand chamber—a cathedral of gears, each the size of houses, turning in sacred rhythm. Choirs of brass-throated enforcers sang as they labored, their voices blending with the sound of machinery into a hymn of obedience.
Elric paused, absorbing it. "He's not hiding his religion. He's building it."
And as they pressed on, the hymn grew louder.