The pen moved slowly across the paper. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. The sound filled the office alongside the soft crackle of the fireplace, a mechanical cadence that underscored the stillness of the room. Outside, snow fell calmly over Cocytus, though it was no longer that dead land covered in hunger and ruins that Lloyd had found upon arrival. The city remained cold, harsh, and brutal, but it now possessed an electrical vitality pulsing beneath the stone.
Lloyd barely looked up from the document he was signing. The high office windows let in the grayish morning clarity, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the heated air. Beyond the glass, the view was a testament to engineering and will. Cyclopean chimneys belched columns of grayish smoke into the white sky, enormous metal pipes lined with runic insulation crossed the districts like steel arteries, and black rails extended between buildings of reinforced stone and alchemical concrete.
