Lythar was a city that never stopped working, and it made sure you felt it.
It wasn't pretty. No sweeping arches or grand towers meant to stop people in their tracks. It didn't try to intimidate like the old capitals with their stone walls and their history. Lythar just ran. The chimneys never rested, pumping steam that turned the sky into a permanent gray lid. The air had a metallic burn that settled in the back of your throat. Most people stopped tasting it after a few weeks. Gepetto noticed. He'd spent his whole life noticing things other people missed, and he doubted this new reality was going to break that habit.
He walked through the mess of workshops and elevated rails, letting the noise sink in. The thud of hydraulic presses. The hiss of pistons pushing air. The clank of valves opening. Gears grinding on gears. Everything moved. Nothing really went anywhere. The city worked like a big machine that didn't rule anyone—it just kept going.
He still had three days on the room he'd paid for, but no reason to stay inside. The thread experiments had eaten the whole first night and bled into the early morning. He'd worked through them without rushing, building a base with small, precise tests. Maximum range. How much load at full stretch. The exact point where control started to slip. That point changed depending on how many threads he was running, and the relationship wasn't clean or easy to predict. He'd need a lot more data before he could map it properly.
He hadn't expected it to be simple. Surprises were going to happen. The numbers were already showing their hidden curves.
By the time the city outside was fully awake, he had a baseline he could trust. The four remaining puppets stayed locked. He wasn't going to risk summoning them in a rented room in the middle of Lythar. Not when he still couldn't predict every outcome.
So he went out.
The city took him in with total indifference—the same welcome it gave everyone.
That anonymity was a quiet kind of mercy. Nobody looked twice. Nobody cared. He moved through the workshop district, under screeching elevated rails, past the crowded commercial streets near Central Station, and stayed nothing more than another man in a dark coat, another face in a place too busy to notice individuals.
He found it surprisingly easy.
Inside Central Station, the big brass departure board was coated in soot. The engraved city names had been worn smooth by years of people tracing routes with their fingers. He studied each one with the focus of someone who understood that choices made early would echo in ways later decisions couldn't undo.
AURELIA.
The administrative capital. Ministries, slow bureaucratic power, decisions wrapped in layers of precedent and formality. He knew the major events, the public fights, the official layout. What he didn't know were the real players: which families actually ran the Senate when no one was looking, which ministers held influence way beyond their titles, which doors were really locked and which only looked that way until you had the right key.
That gap was dangerous.
ELDRAVAR.
The old capital. Culture and academia, where reputations got built over decades through the right alliances and the right ideas. He knew the broad history. He didn't know which academies were gaining ground, which thinkers were quietly shaping the next generation, where the real fault lines ran between schools of thought that looked united from a distance. In that world, mistakes didn't kill you fast. They cut you off. And being cut off inside a closed system was a slow death of its own.
VHAL-DORIM.
The port city. Industrial center and financial heart of the Republic. Money moved like restless water, creating chances and dangers in equal amounts. He knew its reputation. He didn't know which banks were actually solid, which new machines were worth backing, or which industrial families were growing while others quietly bled out.
He stood in front of the board for a while, letting the options turn.
The ignorance didn't scare him. It bothered him, and bother was more useful. It showed the gap between the clean view he'd had for three years and the messy reality underneath. He'd watched the big events like someone with great seats but no idea what was happening backstage. Now the backstage was where he had to operate.
He could work with problems. Problems had answers.
Aurelia wanted influence he didn't have.
Eldravar wanted belonging he hadn't built.
Vhal-Dorim wanted results. Results, he could make.
He held that conclusion carefully, aware that the easiest answer was usually the one that confirmed what you already wanted. The patterns in his head came from a screen—simplified, curated for players. He wasn't outside anymore. He was in the system now, and those patterns might hold. They might also turn out to be rough approximations that crumbled on contact.
He set the uncertainty aside. Overthinking wouldn't fix it. Only moving and watching would.
A newsboy cut across the hall, voice rising above the noise.
"VHAL-DORIM — WAGES FAIL, WORKERS STRIKE!"
He bought a copy without thinking much about it.
The paper was damp, the ink a little smeared from the station's constant mist. The article was short and to the point. Shipyard and boiler factory workers had walked after wages froze while coal and imported food kept getting more expensive. Small shops were already reporting slower sales. Banks were pulling back on credit.
He folded the paper slowly.
The pattern looked familiar. Early inflation. Labor tension rising. Credit tightening. An economy starting to catch and grind. He'd seen enough versions of this cycle in economic history to recognize the shape before it was fully visible.
A crisis wasn't necessarily a disaster. It was a transfer.
Weak companies collapsed. Stronger ones bought them cheap. Patient money built up while everyone else ran dry. The people who kept their resources intact at the start of a contraction often came out much bigger on the other side, simply because fewer competitors were left to fight over what remained.
He didn't know every banking family or industrial alliance in Vhal-Dorim. He didn't know the hidden patents or the quiet deals. But he understood credit contractions, and he recognized the inflection point: the moment when fear peaked, assets hit bottom, and whoever had ready money got to shape what the recovery looked like.
He would learn which version of this was playing out here.
He walked to the counter.
"Next convoy to Vhal-Dorim."
The clerk processed the ticket on a perforated metal card. The stamp came down with a dry click that seemed to close the decision.
Gepetto put the folded newspaper in his coat pocket and walked toward the platform. Steam curled around the locomotive like breath as it sat idle on the tracks.
He wasn't going there to fix anything or play hero. That had never been how he thought. He was going to learn the city's real pulse, map where the pressure was building, and put himself at the intersections that would matter when the time came. The same way he'd always done things: not rushing, not forcing, just becoming necessary at the moment necessity appeared.
The locomotive blew a heavy burst of steam onto the tracks.
He got on the carriage without looking back.
Outside the window, Lythar kept working. Pistons pushed. Valves released. Gears turned.
He wasn't watching through a screen anymore.