POV: Jax, Magitek Engineer (Former)
The hum of the Geothermal Converters was a lie. Jax knew this now. It wasn't the sound of power, but the sound of a beast on a leash, straining. He stood before a massive, shuddering energy relay in the Chrome Military Factory's lower sectors, his hydro-wrench gripped tight in a hand stained with black coolant and old regret. The official work order called it a "pressure fluctuation." Jax called it by its true name: a spiritual rot.
His shift had ended six hours ago. Yet here he remained, the sole figure in a cathedral of industry, lit by the frantic orange glow of overheating conduits. The main story—the Seekers, the Crystal, the war in the shadows—meant nothing to the men and women who kept the lights on. Their story was one of decaying infrastructure and managerial indifference.
A side quest. That's what this was. An unsanctioned, unpaid, and undoubtedly foolish attempt to fix what the bosses above had willfully ignored.
Squeak. Thump. Squeak. Thump.
The relay had developed a new arrhythmia. Jax closed his eyes, listening past the obvious. Beneath the mechanical protest, he heard it—a wet, gurgling whisper, like mud bubbling through a pipe. It was the same sound he'd heard in the Colossal Woods before the guardians turned violent. Corruption. The Bleed wasn't confined to the deep places; it was seeping into the city's circulatory system, and this relay was an infected heart.
"Another late night, Jax?" a voice echoed from the gantry above. Foreman Holt, a man whose soul had been polished smooth by decades of compromise, looked down, his face illuminated by the data-slate in his hand. "The diagnostic team from the Institute is scheduled for next month. Stand down."
"The diagnostic team will find a smoldering crater next month," Jax replied, not looking up. He tapped a pressure gauge with a grimy finger. The needle was deep into the red. "The resonance is all wrong. It's not an engineering fault. It's a... metaphysical one."
Holt sighed, the sound swallowed by the industrial din. "Metaphysics don't show up on the balance sheets. We work with what we can measure."
"And when what we can't measure tears this entire sector apart?" Jax finally looked up, his eyes hard. "What will your balance sheets say then?"
A sudden, violent shudder ran through the platform. The thump became a BANG. A seam on the main conduit split, vomiting not just superheated steam, but a gout of that same virulent green energy he'd seen in the woods. It wasn't as concentrated as the Bleed below, but it was a direct relative—a malignant echo.
Alarms blared, strobe lights painting the chaos in frantic slices. Holt stumbled back, his data-slate clattering to the floor.
Jax didn't flinch. This was the side quest becoming the main event. He lunged, not away from the leak, but toward a forgotten, manual override panel—a piece of analog stubbornness he'd fought to keep installed. This wasn't a problem for complex magitek solutions. This was a problem for a wrench and a strong back.
The green energy lashed at him, not with heat, but with a cold that burned. It whispered to him of futility, of the pointlessness of his struggle. He saw flashes of the factory silent and dead, of his colleagues as desiccated husks. The Bleed showed him his greatest fear: that his life's work would amount to nothing.
He gritted his teeth, shoving the psychic assault aside. He was no Seeker. He had no crystal shard. All he had was a wrench and the certain knowledge of how things ought to fit together.
With a final, grunting heave, he slammed the override lever home.
The result was not a graceful shutdown, but a catastrophic systems purge. With a sound like a dying god's last breath, the entire sector went dark and silent. The relay shuddered and went still. The green energy, starved of its power source, flickered and died.
The only light came from the emergency strips on the floor. The only sound was Jax's ragged breathing and the drip, drip, drip of condensing steam.
Holt picked himself up, his face pale in the gloom. He stared at the dead relay, then at Jax. The financial cost would be astronomical. But the factory, and everyone in it, was still here.
"You're fired," Holt said, his voice hollow.
Jax nodded, wiping his face with a greasy rag. He'd expected nothing less. He turned and walked away, the hydro-wrench hanging heavy in his hand. He had no crystal, no grand destiny. But he had, for one night, held back the dark. It was a small story, a side quest in a world cracking at the seams. But it was his. And as he stepped out into the perpetual twilight, he knew the next faulty machine was already waiting.