The din was the city's breath. In Aethelburg, every piston, every valve, every pneumatic hammer of the Confrérie des Forgerons (Brotherhood of Smiths) screamed the same truth: the world ran on pressure.
Lyall Osyth, twenty-two, stood at the heart of this sonic inferno. The heat from the blast furnace was nothing compared to that of the gigantic bronze piston he was calibrating. Lyall wore the heavy oiled leather vest of his rank and copper-reinforced gauntlets on his forearms, their small gauges indicating the ambient pressure a necessary luxury for his work.
Today, he was finishing the week's most complex piece: a flow regulator for the Grand Guild transport. Efficiency demanded perfection. The metal had to be absolutely homogeneous, without a single air bubble, without the slightest flaw that could, under high pressure, shatter the regulator into a deadly hail.
Lyall raised his pneumatic hammer. He wasn't looking at the tool, nor was he looking at the metal. He was listening.
He heard the rhythm, the deep vibration, and the tension. The tension that made the metal feel alive and separated it from mere rock.
Clang. Clang. CLANG.
Each strike was not an act of brute force, but a targeted caress. Lyall felt the metal tighten, the atoms rearranging. His gift wasn't pure magic, but a heightened perception of physics. He could feel the object's internal pressure, that invisible flow that bound all matter, that omnipresent force that scholars called...
... the Cœur du Monde (Heart of the World).
To Lyall, this was Néxium. He couldn't see it, but he felt its electric pulse in his fingers, amplified by the copper gauntlets. Néxium made metal honest. If there was a flaw, the Néxium resonated falsely there, like an untuned string.
"Finished," Lyall announced, sweat trickling down his forehead, his sharp eyes fixed on the now cool and perfect piston.
The foreman, Balton, approached, grunting, his mood dark. He didn't bother to check the piece.
"Fine work, Lyall. Save your Heart of the World daydreams for the Veiled Ones. The real pressure is here," Balton said, unrolling a new set of blueprints stamped with an arrogant gold seal: the cipher of Archduke Merikh Silas Vane.
"Magnate Merikh Vane?" Lyall frowned. "His House is... ambitious."
"Ambitious and rich," Balton cut in, his eyes fixed on the figures. "This contract will pay us in pure Stators for two years. These are the master components for a new Mother-Pump in the Domain of Cinders. He demands the best pressure regulator for raw Néxium."
Lyall took the plans. The drawings were magnificent and complex; the engineering was cutting-edge. But when he brushed the ink, he felt no technical elegance. He felt... waste.
He focused. He plunged his awareness into the tension the blueprints demanded. It was abusive pressure, designed not to stabilize the flow, but to force it beyond the breaking point.
"Balton, the engineering is brilliant, but... the expansion chamber is too small for that kind of pressure. It's illegal. It will tear the rock, it will denature the raw Néxium."
"Your perception is flawed, kid," Balton hissed. "You don't read Néxium; you dream it. We do what Merikh Vane orders. Now, forge that first pipe joint. You start immediately."
Lyall had no choice. He took the required brass, heated it, and, as usual, the Néxium pulse filled his hands.
But instead of the high-pitched song, he heard a lacerating discord. The tension in the metal was so great it gave him a headache. It was a mystical and mechanical pain, the Néxium silently screaming under the strain of Vane's design. Lyall struck the joint, but the sound was weak, false.
There was a slight movement in the shadow of the gears. Lyall looked up.
A man stood there. He wore unmarked clothing and his face was partially covered by a wool scarf. He wasn't looking at Lyall or Balton, but Lyall felt watched.
As Balton turned away for a moment, the stranger made a swift motion. He dropped a small brass object onto the cast-iron floor. The tiny sound was muffled by the din.
The man walked away. Lyall, heart pounding, picked up the object. It was a currency Piston, insignificant, but on its surface, an engraving: the wind spiral, the secret symbol of the Veiled Ones of the Breath.
Lyall clenched the Piston in one hand, the Néxium pain in the other. Someone had just confirmed that the threat was real.