The earth didn't just shake; it liquefied.
Kael Light ran through a world that was dismantling itself. The basalt path beneath his boots was cracking like dry pottery, fissures opening up to reveal the angry, pulsing red of the magma beneath. The sky was gone, replaced by a suffocating blanket of black ash that turned noon into midnight, illuminated only by the strobe-light flashes of lightning generated by the volcanic plume.
He was bleeding from a dozen cuts. His lungs burned with every breath of the sulfur-choked air. His left side—the stump—throbbed with a phantom agony, as if his missing hand was trying to claw its way back into existence to help him climb over the debris.
Left foot. Right foot. Breathe.
He repeated the mantra, forcing his exhausted body to obey.
Ahead of him, the prison city of Cinder was sliding into the sea. The great stone tenements, where generations of slaves had lived and died, were crumbling. He saw a watchtower tilt slowly, gracefully, before crashing down into the main thoroughfare, crushing a steam-walker that had been abandoned in the panic.
Kael scrambled over a pile of rubble—the remains of the Administrative Block. He slid down a slope of loose gravel, tearing the knees of his trousers, and hit the cobblestones of the harbor district.
The heat was intense. It wasn't just the air; the ground itself was radiating a temperature that melted the rubber soles of his boots.
"Warning," his internal clock whispered. "Thermal critical mass in T-minus two minutes."
He rounded the final corner, dragging his leg.
And there it was.
The Iron Lung.
The dreadnought was a behemoth of shadow and steel in the glowing fog. Its massive paddle wheels were churning the dark water, fighting the chaotic currents caused by the island's tremors. Black smoke poured from its funnels, mixing with the ash.
The gangplank was gone. The ship had cast off.
It was twenty yards from the pier, drifting further away with every second.
"No," Kael rasped, his voice a dry croak. "No, no, no."
He forced himself into a sprint, ignoring the screaming protest of his muscles. He reached the edge of the pier. The water between him and the ship was boiling, hissing where burning debris struck the surface.
Twenty yards. A suicide jump for an athlete. An impossibility for a cripple.
On the deck of the ship, hundreds of grey-clad figures were scrambling, securing lines, putting out fires. They looked like ants on a floating leaf in a hurricane.
"KAEL!"
The roar cut through the sound of the eruption.
Kael looked up.
Standing on the stern railing of the Iron Lung, silhouetted against the burning mountain, was a mountain of a man.
Adam.
The Titan was holding a heavy mooring chain, the links as thick as a man's wrist. He wasn't looking at the volcano. He was looking at Kael.
"JUMP!" Adam bellowed.
Kael didn't think. He didn't calculate the trajectory. He didn't check the wind speed.
He ran to the edge of the stone pier and launched himself into the void.
For a second, he was flying. The heat of the boiling water rose up to meet him. He saw the black hull of the ship, the turning paddles, the white face of Isolde screaming something he couldn't hear.
Gravity took hold. He was falling short.
He reached out with his one hand, his fingers clawing at the air.
The heavy chain whipped through the smoke. Adam had swung it like a lasso.
Clang.
The cold iron link smashed into Kael's forearm. He grabbed it. His fingers locked around the metal with a desperation that bypassed strength and went straight to survival instinct.
The jerk nearly dislocated his shoulder. He slammed into the side of the hull, the rusted metal scraping his cheek. He dangled there, feet kicking in the spray of the boiling sea.
"Pull!" Adam roared from above.
Kael felt himself rising. Adam was hauling him up—chain, man, and gravity combined—hand over hand, as if he were pulling a bucket from a well.
Kael scrambled over the railing and collapsed onto the iron deck.
He lay there, gasping, staring up at the ash-filled sky. Rain began to fall—black, oily rain.
"You cut it close, Engineer," a voice said.
Kael turned his head. Isolde was kneeling beside him. Her face was smeared with soot, her hair plastered to her skull by the rain. She looked terrified and fierce and beautiful.
"The... tower..." Kael wheezed. "Vance..."
"Gone?" Isolde asked.
"Deleted," Kael whispered.
The ship lurched violently.
"Hold on!" Captain Elara—the mute girl, now gripping the wheel like a veteran—spun the helm.
A massive wave, generated by a chunk of the island falling into the bay, slammed into the side of the Iron Lung. The dreadnought groaned. Rivets popped. Men slid across the deck.
Adam planted his feet, grabbing a stanchion with one hand and Kael's belt with the other, anchoring them both.
"We need speed!" Kael shouted, forcing himself to sit up. "The shockwave! When the main chamber goes, it'll crack the shelf!"
"The engines are at maximum!" Isolde yelled back. "Pressure is in the red!"
Kael looked at the smokestacks. The smoke was black, thick with unburnt coal dust.
"Too rich!" Kael yelled. He scrambled to his feet, swaying. "You're choking the firebox! Who's in the engine room?"
"Mara!"
Kael didn't wait. He ran toward the mid-deck hatch. "Adam! Get the aft shields up! Anything you can find! Metal sheets, debris! If the mountain throws rocks, we're a big target!"
"I will protect the Lantern," Adam rumbled, moving toward the stern where Lucius was sheltered.
Kael slid down the ladder into the engine room.
The heat down here was infernal. The roar of the furnaces was deafening. Mara and a dozen women were shoveling coal frantically, their faces masks of exhaustion.
"Stop!" Kael ordered, grabbing a shovel from a woman's hands. "You're suffocating it! It needs air, not just fuel!"
He rushed to the intake manifold. It was a brass wheel, rusted shut.
"Help me!" Kael shouted to Mara.
Together, they grabbed the wheel.
"On three! One! Two! Three!"
They heaved. The rust cracked. The wheel spun.
Fresh air rushed into the firebox. The flames roared, shifting from a dull orange to a blinding white.
The pressure gauge on the main boiler jumped. The pistons driving the paddle wheels hammered faster. Thump-thump-thump-thump.
The ship surged forward, cutting through the water with renewed power.
Kael slumped against the bulkhead, watching the pressure needle. "Hold... hold..."
Above them, the world ended.
The volcano didn't just erupt; it detonated.
The sound was felt before it was heard—a pressure wave that hit the ship like a physical hammer. Every window on the Iron Lung shattered instantly. The iron plating rang like a bell.
Kael was thrown to the floor.
Then came the sound. A crack so loud it deafened them all for a full minute.
Kael scrambled back up the ladder. He had to see.
He burst onto the deck.
Where Cinder had been, there was now a pillar of fire reaching into the stratosphere. The island itself was breaking apart. The Design Tower, the mines, the barracks—they were all sliding into a boiling cauldron of magma and sea water.
Steam explosions, massive white geysers, shot up thousands of feet as the ocean poured into the breach.
The shockwave of water—a tsunami of dark, debris-filled sludge—was racing outward from the epicenter. It was forty feet high.
"Brace!" Adam's voice was the only thing audible over the roar.
He stood at the stern, facing the wave. He wasn't holding a weapon. He was holding Lucius.
The baby was awake. He looked at the wall of water.
The wave caught them.
The Iron Lung pitched up. Up, up, up, until the deck was almost vertical. Slaves clung to ropes, to railings, to each other.
They crested the peak. For a moment, the massive iron ship hung suspended in the air, the propellers spinning in the void.
Then they crashed down the other side.
The impact was bone-shattering. Water swept over the deck, washing away loose crates and the bodies of the unlucky.
Kael gripped the railing until his fingers bled.
The ship rolled, groaned, and then righted itself. The paddle wheels bit into the water again.
They were still moving.
"We made it," Kael breathed. He looked back.
Cinder was gone.
Only the jagged peaks of the rim remained, surrounding a boiling lake of fire and steam. The prison that had held them for years, the machine that had eaten their lives, was erased from the map.
Silence fell over the deck. Two thousand survivors stared at the tomb of their oppression.
There were no cheers. No celebrations. Just the hollow, ringing silence of shock.
Isolde walked over to Kael. She was clutching a piece of the railing, her knuckles white.
"We did that," she whispered.
"We broke the anvil," Kael said.
"And killed everyone who didn't make the ship," Isolde added, her voice hard. "The ones in the infirmary. The ones in the cells."
Kael looked at the fire. "It was them or us, Isolde. That's the math."
"I hate your math," she said, but she leaned against him, her shoulder touching his.
Adam walked toward them from the stern. He was soaked, his massive chest heaving. He held Lucius against his shoulder. The baby was dry, untouched by the spray.
"The sea is open," Adam said, pointing north.
Kael looked past the destruction. The blockade ships of the Sultanate had been scattered by the eruption, their formations broken. The open ocean lay ahead, grey and vast and terrifying.
"Check the coal stores," Kael said, his engineer's mind already pivoting to the next problem. "We burned a lot of fuel to outrun that wave. We need to ration the water. And we need to figure out how to navigate. The compasses will be spinning wild from the magnetic interference."
"We go North," Adam said simply. "To the twins."
"To the Rustlands," Kael corrected. "It's a wasteland, Adam. Raiders. Scavengers. No law."
"Good," Adam said. "I am tired of laws."
Kael looked at his hand—his single, soot-stained hand. He looked at the mechanical monstrosity of the ship beneath his feet. He looked at the god holding a baby.
They were free. But they were alone in a world that wanted them dead.
Kael walked to the helm. He gently moved Elara aside and took the wheel. He felt the vibration of the engine, the resistance of the rudder.
He steered the ship away from the column of smoke, turning the prow toward the cold, grey horizon.
"Full steam ahead," Kael said.
The Iron Lung chugged into the mist, leaving the age of fire behind, and entering the age of rust.