The automaton above the Sanctum stirred, and Brasswick screamed with it.
Buildings folded like origami, their brick and mortar bending into brass plates that slid into place along the automaton's shoulders. Towers cracked, twisting into spines. Streets writhed like serpents, forming new limbs of stone and steel.
Those who had fled the city found no escape. Bridges twisted into cages, engines of iron rolled after them on spiderlike legs. The Phantom's voice thundered through every pipe and gutter:
"Do not run. You are already within me. You are mine."
Selene dragged Evangeline through a collapsing corridor, her shadows lashing at brass-throated enforcers that burst from the walls. Steam hissed through ruptured vents, scalding everything it touched.
"Elric!" Selene shouted. "Whatever clever words you've got—make them faster!"
But Elric was elsewhere. He stood in the eye of the storm, cane in one hand, chalk in the other, his mind locked in combat with the Phantom's infinite selves. The mirrored Sanctum flickered around him—sometimes solid, sometimes vanishing into stars, sometimes collapsing into a clockwork skull of impossible scale.
Evangeline stumbled, glyphs glowing brighter upon her skin. "He's inside me," she whispered, half-delirious. "Every thought I have, he has already calculated. Every choice I make, he makes before me."
Elric turned sharply, voice cold as iron. "Then choose the impossible. That is how we wound him."
The Phantom's laughter shook the chamber, a thousand voices braided into one."Impossible choice is only error. And error… is already accounted for."
But even as he spoke, cracks widened across the mirrored walls.