The morning after Magnus's triumph over the drawbridge commission should have been one of celebration. Instead, it arrived with ash in the air.
He awoke to the sound of frantic pounding—Thoren at the door to the guest quarters in the keep.
"Magnus! The forge—get up! The forge's burning!"
Magnus jolted upright, still half-dressed, and scrambled into his boots. Smoke trailed like gray serpents into the sky as he and Thoren sprinted down cobbled streets toward the courtyard.
Flames curled along the roof of the Royal Forge.
Water lines were already running from the castle cisterns, and guards formed a frantic chain with buckets. Engineers shouted orders. Marinus was throwing sand on a crate of spare oil drums as they hissed dangerously near the heat.
"Boiler's still intact!" Jakel yelled from the interior, his face black with soot. "We stopped it before the pressure build—"
"Move!" Magnus shoved past him, eyes wild.
Inside, scorched parchment littered the floor. Half-melted gears glinted in the light like teeth from some slain beast. His latest schematics—the dual-lever pressure regulator, the concept designs for a mobile engine—all gone.
Jakel grabbed his arm. "We think it was set."
"Sabotage?"
"No doubt. I saw the oil trail leading to the far vent. Whoever did this wanted the fire to spread slowly—to destroy the work, not the building."
Magnus's jaw clenched as he stared into the flickering remains of his progress. His mind, as always, turned to calculations. Not just pressure and torque—but now, betrayal, revenge.
That night, as the embers died, he sat alone at the ruined worktable, drawing again.
If they feared innovation, he would show them fear made real.
A week later, the forge was repaired, but the air within it had changed.
Jakel never left without checking each vent and lock twice. Marinus had stopped singing while he worked. Even Thoren had taken to sharpening his hammer like a blade.
But the worst was not within the forge.
It was at home.
His mother, Ada Veyron, stood at the threshold of their modest manor, holding the charred remains of one of Magnus's early sketches. He had kept it for sentiment—a crude image of a gear train and piston with a smiling sun scrawled in the corner.
It had survived Emberhold. But not the fire in the capital.
"I warned you," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "Great minds make enemies. But I never thought… they'd come this soon."
"They fear what I build," Magnus replied. "Because it exposes how little they've changed in centuries."
"They fear what you might do," she corrected. "And I'm beginning to wonder if they're right."
Magnus's eyes flickered, but he said nothing.
Ada looked down at the burned parchment. "Do you even sleep, anymore? Or do you lie awake plotting new ways to move the world?"
"I'm building a better future."
"At what cost, Magnus?"
He turned to the mantle and lifted a small trinket—his first working steam valve. Its parts were rough, mismatched. But it worked. It had started everything.
He held it in his palm, weighing it not just in grams—but in guilt.
Court life pressed onward, heedless of private grief.
Magnus was invited to sit as an honorary observer at the Duke's Council. He stood among silk-robed nobles and perfumed scholars, listening as war taxes were discussed, as trade rights were sold like meat in a stall.
Lord Haldrim scoffed at proposals to build new roads for merchant carts. "The peasantry has legs. Let them use them."
Magnus spoke for the first time. "If the roads are better, trade is faster. Grain reaches starving towns before it spoils. Fewer riots. Less need for soldiers."
The room fell silent.
The Duke, seated at the head of the table, smiled faintly. "Wise words."
Haldrim glared. "From a child who plays with boilers."
Magnus stepped forward. "From the man who lifted your drawbridge in half the time with a quarter of the men."
There were no further objections.
As the weeks passed, Magnus's prestige grew. Artisans sought him out. Foreign emissaries offered patronage. Women of court whispered his name, half in awe, half in fear.
But Ada Veyron, ever watchful, withdrew.
One evening, Magnus returned to find her not in the garden, but packing.
"You're leaving?" he asked.
She nodded. "Back to Emberhold. Back to a home that remembers peace."
"But this is my work."
"It is," she said, pausing. "But it's no longer my son's."
He didn't try to stop her.
Her departure left a void in Magnus he didn't speak of.
Instead, he filled it with metal.
He began constructing his first true engine—not a boiler or a bellows, but a compact, mobile power source that could drive carts, cranes, even weaponry.
"The military will pay handsomely," Thoren said one evening.
"And nobles will pay more to keep it out of enemy hands," Jakel added.
Magnus shook his head. "They'll all pay. Because I'll no longer sell machines. I'll sell outcomes."
Marinus blinked. "What does that mean?"
"It means…" Magnus held up a gear, smiling faintly. "I no longer want their approval. I want leverage."
That night, he received a visitor.
Not a noble. Not a rival.
Elara.
The Duchess of Belmire. Third most powerful noble in the realm. Young, cunning, unwed—and untouchable.
She wore no finery that evening. No jewels or veils. Just a travel cloak and gloves. She entered his forge like a shadow, her eyes taking in the machinery with a calculating hunger.
"They say you turned fire into obedience," she said.
Magnus didn't look up. "They exaggerate."
"Do they? You've bested Ezzan. Charmed the Duke. Raised a gate with a hiss and a whisper."
"What do you want, Duchess?"
"To see the future."
He handed her a parchment.
Steam-carried carts. Armored plating moved by gears. A compact cannon that fired molten pitch.
She smiled. "And your price?"
He finally met her gaze.
"You. Your lands. Your backing. Your silence."
Elara laughed—low, musical, terrifying.
"And if I say no?"
"Then you'll watch the Eastern Marches fall to those who said yes."
Later, long after she left, Magnus sat in the silence of the forge.
He held a ring in his hand—his father's old signet. Bram Veyron, the smith who had once swung hammers, now gone to rust and time.
He pressed it to the workbench, branding a new seal into the wood.
It wasn't the Veyron sigil.
It was a gear surrounded by flame.
A symbol of what was to come.
Not just machines. Not just power.
But conquest.