Elias's warning—a raw, human sound in that chamber of mechanical hell—lashed against her back. Run.
But run where? The iron door had swung shut behind her, its series of bolts slamming home with a sound of terrible finality. The gantry was a dead end, a tongue of metal hanging over the abyss. There was no other door, no ladder, no exit.
Shuffle. Drag.
The sound was on the gantry now, moving toward her from the direction of the sealed door. It was closer than it had ever been. The roar of the machine had masked its approach.
Lane spun around, pressing her back against the cold iron railing. The candle in her hand guttered wildly in the damp, churning air, its flame threatening to die. The thing was there, at the head of the gantry, its form a wavering distortion against the hellish glow of the machinery below.
It did not rush. It advanced with a slow, inevitable pace, its shuffle-drag a counter-rhythm to the groaning pistons and hissing steam. It was herding her.
Her eyes darted frantically, searching for anything—a tool, a weakness, a way out. The gantry was bare. Below, the massive machine began to power up again, the gears grinding, the chains on Elias's cage rattling as he was forced to resume his pointless labor. The sound was deafening, vibrating through the metal under her feet.
The thing was twenty feet away. Fifteen.
It was enjoying this. Her terror was a spice in the air. She could feel it drinking it in, its form seeming to solidify slightly, the edges becoming more defined. It was building itself from her panic.
It cannot create. It can only imitate.
The thought cut through the noise. It was imitating now. This entire engine room, this vast, impossible space—it was an imitation. A grotesque parody of industry built from her own understanding of machines, from her fear of being trapped, from her family's history of futility. It wasn't real. It couldn't be.
But the railing behind her was cold and solid. The heat from the furnaces below was blistering. The smell of oil was thick in her lungs. The imitation was perfect. It felt real because it was built from things that were real to her.
Ten feet away.
It stopped. The formless head tilted. A low, wet click emanated from it, a sound that wasn't part of the machine. It was a question.
Lane's grip tightened on the fireplace poker. It was a pathetic weapon against this. Useless. She had nothing else.
Her eyes fell on the candle. The tiny, guttering flame.
Elias's journal had mentioned silver and mirrors. Ancient remedies. Tools of reflection. The candle was fire. Primordial. A thing of light and purification. A thing that consumed.
The thing took another step forward. Five feet. The freezing aura around it pushed against the machine's heat, raising goosebumps on her skin.
It was now or never.
With a scream that was torn from the very core of her being—a scream of defiance, of rage, of all the fear it had forced into her—Lane didn't swing the poker at the thing.
She swung the candle.
She thrust the clay holder forward, jamming the base of it into the center of the wavering darkness, as if trying to stanch a wound.
For a split second, nothing happened. The candle's flame was inches from the void where a face should be.
Then the thing recoiled. It was a violent, spasmodic jerk, a puppet with its strings yanked. A sound ripped from it—a high, screeching feedback whine that was utterly alien, devoid of any biology she understood.
The flame didn't touch it. It didn't need to. The light did.
The intense, focused light of the candle flame pierced the gathered darkness of its form. For a breathtaking moment, the thing wasn't a column of shadow. It was a window. Lane saw straight through it to the rusted iron door behind it. The thing had no substance. It was a concentration of absence, a sculpted vacuum.
The light violated it. It was an element it could not imitate, could not control. Fire was creation. It was life. And this thing was only death.
The screech cut off as abruptly as it began. The thing collapsed in on itself, not like smoke, but like a singularity, sucking the light and sound from the air around it before vanishing completely.
The candle in Lane's hand went out.
She was plunged into blackness, the sudden silence ringing in her ears. The machine had stopped. The groan of gears, the slam of pistons, the hiss of steam—all of it was gone.
The only sound was her own ragged breathing and the faint, desperate clinking of chains from far below.
"Hello?" Elias's voice, thin and reedy, called up from the darkness. "Is it… is it gone?"
Lane fumbled for the matches in her pocket. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely strike one. The flare of light was blinding. She lit the candle again, her heart hammering against her ribs.
The scene below had changed.
The vast, infernal engine was gone. The cavernous space was gone. She was standing on the same metal gantry, but it was shorter, ending just a few feet ahead of her. Below was not a bottomless pit, but a small, concrete cellar, filled with dusty, forgotten junk—an old rocking horse, a pile of mildewed books, a broken chair.
Elias's cage was still there, but it was just a simple, rusted birdcage, hanging from a hook on the low ceiling. Inside it was a small, carved wooden figure, a crude toy. The chains were bits of old, rotten rope.
The thing had imitated the cellar, but it had amplified it, building a cathedral of torment from a single, dusty room. It had shown her what she expected to see—a hell for her damned uncle.
The iron door behind her was still there, but now it was just a normal, wooden cellar door, slightly ajar. The great bolts and wheel were a fiction.
"Hello?" Elias's voice came again, but it wasn't from the birdcage. It was from the corner of the cellar, behind a stack of old tea chests.
Lane climbed down a short, rickety ladder from the gantry, her legs feeling like water. She moved toward the voice, the candle held high.
Curled in the corner, behind the chests, was a man. He was skeletally thin, draped in filthy rags, his hair and beard a matted, grey nest. He was shivering, his eyes wide with a terror so profound it had worn grooves into his face. He clutched a rusted can opener in one hand like a shiv.
It was Elias. The real Elias. Not an imitation. Not a soul powering a machine. Just a starved, broken man who had been hiding in his own cellar for God knows how long.
He stared at her, his eyes reflecting the candle flame. "You… you fought it," he whispered, his voice cracking from disuse. "You used the light. I… I never thought of that."
Lane knelt before him, her own fear receding, replaced by a wave of heartbreaking pity. "Uncle Elias?"
He flinched at the name, as if it were a physical blow. "It doesn't like us to use names," he whispered, his eyes darting around the shadows. "It makes us real. It prefers us to be echoes."
"It's gone for now," Lane said, her voice softer than she thought possible.
"No," he said, shaking his head violently. "No, it's never gone. It's just… thinking. You surprised it. It will come back. It always comes back. And it will be angry." His eyes focused on her, filled with a desperate urgency. "It's learning you. It's building new rooms. The house is bigger now because of you. You have to get out. Before it finishes."
"Finishes what?" Lane asked, dread coiling in her stomach.
Elias's eyes filled with tears. He pointed a trembling finger at her, then at his own chest.
"Its new skin."