Miles away, the intelligence ship The Eye soared through the darkness. Its hull was a mass of bolted iron ptes and funnels belching grey smoke.

  Inside the bridge, three sves sat upon metal seats. Copper cables tethered the base of their skulls to the ship’s systems, processing sensor data. Gss monitors began to flicker with green interference. One of the sves convulsed.

  “Power spike detected,” the sve said, his voice strained. “Originating from the coordinates of the snow dwarves' territory. The old structure has reactivated its internal systems. The signal is constant.”

  General Secundus stepped toward the monitors. He was a slender figure, cd in burnished pte armor fitted with such millimetric precision that it left no room for visible bolts or noisy vent valves. The breastpte looked like a ceremonial piece—smooth and fwless. He gazed at the data on the screen, unmoved.

  “Signal the freighter to head there,” Secundus ordered. “The subject is inside. Do not strike the building. I need the boy and the power source.”

  The two ships gathered speed. The freighter was a blocky iron structure bristling with external piping. It began its descent, venting steam from its engines.

  The freighter touched down a short distance from the mall. The impact kicked up snow and mud, spraying the building's facade. Metal ramps lowered and struck the ground.

  Soldiers marched out in files, burdened by heavy armor. Behind them moved the mechanical octopuses: contraptions of iron and leather with articuted tentacles ending in bdes.

  Secundus descended the gangway of his ship. His burnished armor reflected the white light emanating from the mall. He paused to observe the building.

  “Seal every exit,” he told an officer. “Kill anyone who tries to escape, but bring the boy to me alive.”

  The army began to encircle the building.

  Secundus walked across the snow with light steps, while the soldiers around him struggled to keep their bance in the frozen mud. He stopped before the mall’s great gss entrance, which was partially cracked. The white light from within highlighted the perfection of his burnished armor, devoid of any seam or bolt.

  He removed his helmet with a fluid motion. His face was well-groomed, wearing a faint smile that conveyed a constant, unwavering calm. He looked at the officer standing beside him.

  “Colonel, do not be so tense,” Secundus said. His voice was melodic and firm. “Look at this light. It is the testament of a world that has stopped fighting. We are here to bring order to this chaos. It is an act of extreme kindness, don’t you think?”

  The officer nodded without responding, avoiding the General’s gaze.

  “Good,” Secundus continued, turning toward the mechanical octopuses standing motionless on the ramp. “Send the machines into the upper vents. Monitor every movement inside. If you encounter the dwarves, bring them here alive. I wish to expin to them why their resistance is devoid of logic.”

  Secundus’s smile remained fixed as his eyes scanned the structure.

  Inside the Mall, the jolt from the freighter’s nding had shaken the control room walls. Dust fell from the ceiling, settling over the desk and Nadine’s mummy.

  Zeryth dashed toward the internal gss partition overlooking the central atrium, watching the lights flicker. “What was that?”

  Moko let out a sharp hiss. For the first time since they had set out, it opened all eight of its eyes. Its multiple pupils spun frantically, catching every minute vibration and thermal shift from the outside. It was in a state of maximum alert.

  Llyr-Vahn pressed herself against the wall, clenching her bare fists. She had no swords, no daggers; her only defense was her physical strength and the blonde wig that sat awkwardly upon her shoulders. She looked at the security monitors Nadine had left on: one of the external screens showed the slender silhouette of Secundus advancing toward the building.

  “It’s not Primus,” Llyr-Vahn whispered, her arm muscles taut. “This one knows exactly how to spring a trap.”

  Tsuki felt Etan’s presence stir with such violence that it took her breath away.

  The Mall’s loudspeaker crackled. The advertising jingle faded, and Secundus’s voice rang out clearly in every corridor, amplified by the systems the Empire was already seizing.

  “Dear guests of the shopping center,” Secundus’s voice said. The tone was so friendly it sounded unnatural. “My apologies for the interruption. My name is Secundus, and I am here to help you. There is no need to hide among the debris. Come out, and I promise your usefulness to the Empire will be rewarded.”

  The Dwarf King threw himself at Tsuki’s feet, hands csped. “Help! The monster’s voice… that kind voice will kill us all! Do something!”

  In a single movement choreographed by tension, Zeryth, Llyr-Vahn, and Tsuki ripped off their blonde wigs, letting them fall to the floor like useless rags. Without the disguise, they appeared as they truly were: exhausted fugitives, unarmed and hunted.

  Moko let out a sharp click and flicked its tail against Tsuki’s leg, motioning for her to follow. The small creature slipped into a side closet, amidst old rusted buckets and moth-eaten broom handles. With one limb, Moko pointed to a long piece of rotting wood that must have once been part of a shelf.

  Moko looked at Tsuki, then at the wood, and jerked its head as if to say: “Modify.”

  Tsuki stood still, confused. “What… what should I do?”

  “Focus,” Etan’s voice resonated in her mind, cold and precise. “Do not look at the wood for what it is now. Imagine the atoms tightening, the fibers hardening into steel. Feel the density. Transmute the matter.”

  Tsuki closed her eyes and gripped the wood. A white heat radiated from her palms. Beneath her fingers, the rotting wood began to writhe, darkening and thinning. In seconds, the weight shifted; the heat vanished, and in Tsuki’s hands appeared a longsword with a pitch-bck, razor-sharp bde—void of reflections, yet lethal to the touch.

  The Dwarf King, who had witnessed the scene from the doorway, fell back in astonishment. “Magic… creation from nothing…”

  Llyr-Vahn stepped into the closet, eyeing the weapon critically, but she did not smile. “Good work, kid. We have a sword. Maybe you can make more. But let’s be realistic.” She turned toward Zeryth and Moko. “I can manipute kinetic energy, I can punch through a line or two of guards with an impact, but then what? We are four against an army and those metal octopuses. We have no defenses, no armor, and above all, Secundus knows we’re here. The element of surprise is gone.”

  Moko, feeling slighted, stopped pointing and began to hop frantically in pce. Its eight eyes vibrated, its legs drumming against the metal floor with a furious rhythm, as if deeply offended or angry at being underestimated.

  It emitted small, high-pitched whistles, pointing its tentacles toward the Mall’s walls, as if trying to show them something they could not yet see.

  Moko stopped hopping and locked its eight eyes onto Zeryth’s, then pointed to the thick power cables on the control room ceiling. With its tail, it mimicked a connection between the cables and the warehouse’s metal frame.

  Zeryth’s eyes widened, then he looked down at the silver veins pulsing beneath the skin of his wrists. “He doesn't just want us to use the Mall as a conductor. He wants me to be the bridge. My blood can handle the load and override the Imperial frequency.”

  “It’s suicide,” Llyr-Vahn said, noting the tension in her companion’s muscles. “If the flow reverses, the mercury will boil in your veins.”

  “It’s the only way to seize control of those machines,” Zeryth replied, stepping toward the metal wall.

  Tsuki wasted no time. She focused on the pile of scrap in the closet: old iron pipes and rusted shelving. Guided by Etan’s voice, she reached out her hands and enveloped the metal in a white heat. The pipes melted like wax, and with a fluid gesture, Tsuki projected the molten matter against the door and the vent grates, sealing the room in a single block of bck steel.

  “Zeryth, now!” Tsuki cried out, barely propping herself up against the wall.

  Zeryth seized the two copper terminals connected to the generators Tsuki had awakened. Instead of merely connecting them to the wall, he pressed them against his wrists, exactly where the mercury-blood was most visible. A scream died in his throat as the electricity surged through his body. His veins glowed with a blinding, metallic light.

  With hands vibrating from the shock, Zeryth grabbed the metal pte Tsuki had fused, closing the circuit between the girl, the Mall, and himself.

  The Mall shuddered. A deep hum rose from the sublevels. The lights in the atrium shifted to electric blue.

  Outside, Secundus’s voice cut out.

  A mechanical octopus, intent on scaling a column, was struck by the discharge transmitted through Zeryth’s mercury. Instead of exploding, the machine locked up for an instant. Zeryth, teeth clenched and eyes sparking silver, fought to impose his kinetic will through constant physical contact with the wall.

  The octopus’s tentacles stopped cwing the wall and began to move erratically. Then, under Zeryth’s forced guidance, the machine turned toward the entering Imperial soldiers.

  Aboard The Eye, the energy feedback was devastating. Monitors exploded and the sve-servers bcked out instantly, but Secundus, in the atrium, saw his octopus change targets. The machine leveled its bdes at an Imperial officer, forcing him to fall back.

  Secundus did not flinch. A spark brushed his burnished armor, vanishing upon the perfect surface. He observed the rebelling octopus with a thin smile.

  “Interesting. A living conductor,” he said softly. “Tsuki… Etan… and now a mercury-mutant. You are becoming very expensive. And I adore expensive things.”

  In the control room, Zeryth was pinned against the wall, his body racked by violent tremors. Moko hopped around him, its eight eyes ensuring the physical contact remained unbroken, while Tsuki struggled to keep the generators' energy flow stable.

  They had hijacked one of Secundus’s weapons, but the price was Zeryth’s life, trapped in a circuit he could not break.

  On the control room screen, Secundus’s face shifted. The thin smile vanished, repced by an expression of cold bitterness—like a collector seeing a prized piece ruined before his eyes.

  “What a waste,” Secundus muttered. His tone was no longer friendly; it was ft, devoid of humanity. He turned to his colonel and gave a short hand gesture. “Enough with these pleasantries. Kill them all. Now.”

  The Dwarf King, eyes glued to the monitors, saw the order being carried out and fell into a violent fit of trembling.

  “Oh, may the gods help us! That I should not have to witness such sughter!” the King wailed, hands csped. “Though we hoped for your mercy, it seems fate wills that our blood shall stain the snow! Let someone intervene, lest our kin be extinguished in this cursed pce!”

  Below, in the atrium, Zeryth was struggling to maintain control. His mercury-blood glowed erratically, greyish smoke venting from his pores. The octopus he controlled moved sluggishly, its tentacles trembling as it tried to aim its bdes at the Imperial soldiers. That distraction allowed a handful of dwarves to bolt toward a service tunnel.

  “Run! May the earth hide you and your steps be swift!” the King shouted at the screen, but his voice remained trapped within the bck steel walls.

  The success was short-lived.

  Two more mechanical octopuses dropped from the ceiling with a metallic hiss. Without hesitation, they ignored the fugitives and lunged at the “traitor” octopus. They struck with surgical precision, severing the transmission cables Zeryth was maniputing.

  The shockwave of the energy feedback hit Zeryth like a sledgehammer. He was hurled backward with violence; his physical contact with the wall snapped, and the circuit broke. Zeryth colpsed, helpless, his body wracked by residual spasms, his silver veins extinguished. He was spent.

  Without their electrical defense, the Imperial soldiers began the execution. There was no battle, only a systematic sughter. The screams reached the control room as muffled echoes.

  “Cursed be the day I believed there was hope!” the Dwarf King wailed, falling to his knees and covering his face. “May the mountains close over us before our eyes behold the end of all things!”

  The Dwarf King watched the screen with glistening eyes, his hands trembling so violently that his knuckles rapped against his belt buckle. With a slow, almost agonizing gesture, he grasped an ebony and silver horn at his side. He stared at it for a moment, hesitating, as if praying for any miracle to stay his hand from this final act.

  But on the screen, another group of dwarves was overrun by Kaelosian spears.

  “May heaven forgive me for what I am about to unleash!” the King cried, his voice breaking. “If it be true that our end has come, let us not fall alone into this abyss!”

  He took a massive breath and pressed the horn to his lips. The sound that emerged was not a metallic note, but a dull vibration—so deep it shattered the remaining gsses in the Mall’s bar. From his lips, streaks of pale blue magical light erupted, coiling around the instrument.

  Then, the earth buckled.

  It wasn't a mere tremor. The walls of the control room, the atrium, and even the ceilings began to crack with noises like cannon bsts. Suddenly, metal and concrete exploded inward.

  From the walls emerged the mechanical worms. They were monstrous, segmented creatures cd in rusted iron ptes with rotating steel teeth. Some were small, as agile as hounds; others were looming titans, dozens of meters long, capable of swallowing a grown man without even slowing down.

  They burst from the foundations, destroying everything in their path. A medium-sized worm leaped from a column and sheared an Imperial soldier in half before he could even raise his shield. Another, a behemoth, surged through the atrium floor directly beneath a rank of guards, heaving tons of debris and gulping down three men in a single mechanical bite.

  Secundus, who until that moment had remained motionless, flinched. His grey eyes widened as a piece of the ceiling colpsed just meters away. For the first time, his mask of superiority crumbled. He took an instinctive step back as the dust and the blood of his soldiers stained his ceremonial armor.

  “Retreat!” an officer screamed in a panic, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the worms, which were literally devouring the Mall’s very structure.

  In the control room, the Dwarf King dropped the horn, watching the chaos he had unleashed with horror. Tsuki and Llyr-Vahn had to cling to the console to keep from falling, while Moko huddled against Zeryth—who y senseless on the floor—trying to shield him with its body as the ceiling above them began to show its first dangerous fissures.

  The great worms made no distinction: the Empire was their primary meal, but the Mall was becoming their tomb.

  The Dwarf King cast one st look of anguish at the group. “May the deep earth be light upon you, and may the shadows protect you! I must go, lest my people perish utterly into oblivion!” Without waiting for an answer, he vanished into a narrow trapdoor hidden beneath a pile of rubble.

  The Mall had become a hell of smoke and screams.

  Moko darted forward, its eight eyes wide and independent: two fixed on the colpsing ceiling, four monitoring the worms' movements, and two locked on the soldiers' positions. It emitted a near-silent whistle and signaled them to move.

  Llyr-Vahn hoisted Zeryth’s limp body. Her arm muscles, bare of armor or weapons, shook from the strain, but her grip was iron. Tsuki followed unsteadily, dragging her feet through the debris, her mind clouded by the power she had just spent.

  They emerged from the control room through a breach in the wall torn open by a passing worm. The atrium was unrecognizable.

  A few meters away, a giant mechanical worm was locked in combat with a squad of Imperial soldiers. The monster’s pting screeched against the infantry’s spears, while a soldier was flung aside like a rag doll, crashing through a storefront. The roar of rending metal drowned out their heavy footsteps.

  “Hold,” Llyr-Vahn whispered, freezing behind a structural column.

  A small worm, no longer than a man, slithered just inches from Tsuki’s feet. The girl held her breath, watching the creature’s rusted iron scales reflect the Mall’s flickering blue lights. The monster paused, its ptes vibrating as if scenting the air, then it lunged toward a wounded man moaning nearby.

  Moko tapped Tsuki’s ankle and pointed to a side path between the wreckage of an overturned kiosk and a gaping hole in the floor.

  They moved like shadows amidst a massacre. In the distance, they could see Secundus, surrounded by his honor guard. The General was striking down a mid-sized worm with a swift blow of his burnished bde, moving with a terrifying grace that defied the surrounding chaos. He was busy barking repositioning orders, his eyes too occupied with managing the army’s retreat to notice four fugitives among the mountain of debris.

  Tsuki tripped over a chunk of concrete, but Llyr-Vahn caught her by the scruff of the neck with her free hand, keeping her from falling and making noise.

  They reached the rear warehouse area, where the ceiling was lower and the worms had breached fewer walls. The stench of ozone and blood was unbearable. Moko stopped before a drainage grate that led outside the perimeter, just beneath the level of the deep snow.

  As they pushed into the service corridors, the smoke cleared for an instant, revealing a harrowing scene. Before them, a mass of dwarf refugees was trying to reach the same exit. These were no warriors: they were women clutching weeping children, elders struggling to drag themselves along, and the wounded leaving trails of dark blood in the dust.

  Guarding them were only a few reserves—young dwarves in oversized armor, their hands trembling visibly upon their axes. It was clear they had never faced a true battle.

  Moko stopped abruptly. Its eight eyes caught the terror of a dwarf child left behind. The creature did not continue its flight; it turned back a few steps, emitting an encouraging whistle to urge the stragglers on and point out where the ceiling was most stable.

  Suddenly, from the shadows of a side warehouse, a Kaelosian soldier stumbled out, blocking their path. He was wounded, his dark armor dented and bleeding from one shoulder, but his runic spear was still charged with blue energy. He raised the weapon with a grunt of effort, leveling it at Tsuki.

  Before he could thrust, a short, heavy bde pierced his throat from behind. The soldier slumped forward, revealing the figure of the Superintendent, the King’s right hand.

  The dwarf was covered in ash and blood. He no longer bore the stern air of a mall manager; his eyes were dull, filled with unbearable sorrow. In his right hand, he gripped a golden staff adorned with ice runes: the insignia of command.

  “The King is dead,” the Superintendent said. His voice was a mencholy whisper that seemed to chill the air more than the winter outside. “He remained so that the ceiling of the Great Hall would not crush the little ones. He bore the weight of the mountain until his heart burst.”

  A stifled wail rose among the dwarf refugees. Tsuki looked at the staff, grasping the full weight of the sacrifice. Llyr-Vahn gripped Zeryth tighter, her jaw set.

  “Take the children,” the Superintendent ordered, handing the staff to a young soldier to be guarded like a relic. “We must leave now, or the snow will become our common headstone.”

  Moko moved to the head of the group, its eyes scanning the darkness like protective beacons, guiding what remained of a people toward the frozen freedom outside.

  The group emerged from the Mall’s gloom, hit by a bst of frigid air and concrete dust. Before them, the snowy pin was a hell of smoke and strobe lights. Secundus’s Intelligence Ship, The Eye, was already ascending with a dull roar, its propellers churning up a storm of frost.

  But Secundus had no intention of letting them escape.

  The second Imperial freighter, instead of gaining altitude, fired its reverse thrusters in a suicidal maneuver. The massive iron hull smmed down, plowing through the frozen ground and wedging itself before the Mall’s only exit like an immovable block. The impact shook the earth, raising a barrier of twisted metal and soil that barred the way to the woods.

  From the belly of the crashed ship, the drill-hatch began to rotate, screeching open. It wasn't men who emerged, but a river of mechanical octopuses. Hundreds of steel-and-leather machines poured onto the snow, their tentacles whirring in a frantic rhythm. One of them, perched atop a piece of the hull, raised a mechanical limb and emitted a blue light signal: it had spotted them.

  “They’ve seen us!” the Superintendent cried, clutching the deceased King’s staff.

  Llyr-Vahn, still supporting Zeryth’s limp body, lowered him to the ground with a swift motion. Her face was a mask of sweat and ash, the veins in her neck bulging from the strain. She cked the strength for a frontal assault, but her eyes searched the surroundings for leverage. Above the freighter’s ramp, a section of the Mall’s facade hung perilously, held by only a few rebar rods.

  Llyr-Vahn thrust out her arms, her hands trembling violently. She didn’t fire energy; instead, she “seized” the weight of gravity and multiplied it. With a primal scream, she literally tore three tons of concrete and steel from the ceiling.

  The block of debris plummeted with surgical precision, crushing the freighter’s ramp just as the "river" of octopuses was about to submerge them. The ramp’s metal buckled under the weight, trapping most of the machines inside and fttening those that had already leaped out.

  Llyr-Vahn colpsed to her knees, her breath reduced to a wheeze.

  “Quickly! Into the Frost Tunnels!” the Superintendent ordered, pointing to a depression in the ground covered by frozen branches and mud.

  As Moko led the surviving dwarves, its eight eyes searching for every danger, Tsuki and the Superintendent dragged Llyr-Vahn and Zeryth into the darkness of the subterranean tunnel. Just as the st dwarf vanished beneath the snow line, the sky above them ignited.

  From above, Secundus’s ship began to shell the Mall’s ruins and its own freighter to erase all traces. The explosions rained earth and mud into the tunnel, but the group kept running through the slick darkness.

  After a mile of silent flight, they emerged into a karst cave—damp and freezing, far beyond the Imperial perimeter.

  The Superintendent pnted the King’s golden staff into the cave’s mud. Around him, dwarf women and children slumped to the ground in absolute silence. Zeryth was still unconscious, Tsuki was reduced to an empty shell, and Llyr-Vahn stared at her hands, which would not stop shaking.

  They were alive, but the Mall, the King, and their safety were ash.