The Peel Tower sat in the Military Tower Drome north of Rafborough, with repair workers moving around it.

  The Drome itself was a vast, sunken expanse of reinforced stone and iron, carved deliberately into the bedrock long before Rafborough had grown large enough to pretend it was a city instead of a support hub. The walls were thick, ribbed with buttresses and gantries, their surfaces darkened by decades of steam exhaust and magical discharge. Heavy cranes rested on circular rails set into the ground, their arms folded like sleeping animals until called to work.

  The Peel Tower dominated the space.

  It had rolled in under its own power, slow and deliberate, tracks grinding as they crossed from city stone to Drome iron. The damaged tread assembly was obvious to anyone who knew what to look for. A slight asymmetry. A faint hesitation in one segment of rotation. To a civilian eye, it would have looked whole. To the Empire, it looked incomplete.

  Crews were already at work.

  They moved with the same practiced rhythm that had governed the tower’s recovery in the Wilds. Mechanics in reinforced leathers swarmed the damaged tread, measuring, marking, and calling out figures that were recorded and immediately cross-checked. Replacement links waited on heavy pallets nearby, stamped and inspected, their surfaces still bearing the dull sheen of recent forging. Artificers stood back from the physical labor, watching resonance patterns flicker faintly along the hull where lift stones and power routing intersected.

  This was not an emergency repair.

  This was maintenance.

  High above the Drome floor, in a viewing chamber built into the northern wall, the commander watched the work continue.

  The chamber was spare by design. Stone walls. A wide reinforced window angled downward to give an uninterrupted view of the Peel Tower below. A long table of dark metal dominated the center of the room, its surface etched with permanent maps and grid lines. No banners. No ornamentation. Authority here was implied, not announced.

  The commander stood with his hands clasped behind his back, posture straight, gaze fixed on the slow replacement of the damaged tread. He had not removed his uniform jacket. It remained immaculate, pressed, and clean despite the dust and steam that filled the Drome beyond the glass.

  An aide stood a respectful distance behind him.

  The man was slight, shoulders narrow beneath his tailored coat, a slate held tight against his chest. He spoke only when spoken to. When he did speak, he did so quickly, efficiently, as if afraid to waste even a second of the commander’s attention.

  “The city is quiet, sir,” the aide said. “Our presence has been absorbed without incident. The Peel Tower’s return has been registered as routine maintenance. No unrest.”

  The commander nodded faintly.

  “Search teams?” he asked.

  The aide glanced down at his slate. “Active. Discrete. We have agents positioned in all salvage markets, artificer quarters, medical houses, and power-stone handlers. No confirmed leads yet, but we have narrowed the probable zone to Rafborough proper and its immediate outskirts.”

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  “Probability of departure?”

  “Low,” the aide replied. “Integration signatures suggest the unit is stationary or moving slowly. No evidence of organized extraction.”

  The commander remained silent for a moment, eyes never leaving the tower below.

  “The DAC-P,” he said finally.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It must be found,” the commander said. His voice was calm, level, as if stating a fact rather than issuing a directive. “And when it is found, it must be destroyed.”

  The aide hesitated.

  “Sir,” he said carefully, “there has been some internal discussion regarding disclosure. If field teams understood precisely what is at stake, they might...”

  The commander turned.

  It was not a sharp movement. He did not raise his voice. He simply turned, fixing the aide with a look that stopped the sentence where it was.

  “Do you know what is at stake?” the commander asked.

  The aide swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then speak it.”

  The aide straightened. “If system-level integration is allowed to proceed unchecked, it could trigger cascading failures across every established power structure. Infrastructure collapse. Armed escalation. Widespread loss of life.”

  The commander watched him without expression.

  “That is the small version,” he said.

  The aide’s throat worked. “Sir?”

  “The large version,” the commander continued, “is that everything we know would end. Not reform. Not change. End. The systems that hold this world together would be rewritten by something that does not care whether we survive the process.”

  He turned back to the window.

  “Cataclysm is not too strong a word,” he said. “Civilizations have burned for less.”

  The aide shifted his weight. “Then perhaps informing our people would...”

  “No,” the commander said.

  The word was quiet. Absolute.

  “If you tell them,” he continued, “you create panic. Panic creates questions. Questions create factions. Some will fear what is coming. Some will try to flee. And some,” he paused, “will want it.”

  The aide looked up, startled. “Sir?”

  “There are always those who believe they will be the exception,” the commander said. “That they will control the system. That they will guide it. That it will reward them.”

  He shook his head once.

  “The fewer who know,” he said, “the better.”

  Silence settled back into the chamber.

  Below them, a replacement tread segment was guided into place. Mechanics moved in tight coordination, hand signals flashing as crane arms adjusted by degrees too small to notice unless one knew what to watch for. A supervisor stepped in, ran a straightedge along the alignment, checked it twice, then gave a single nod.

  Progress.

  A knock sounded at the chamber door.

  The commander did not turn. “Enter.”

  The door opened, and a man stepped inside.

  He was tall and broad-shouldered, his presence filling the doorway without effort. His uniform was crisp but worn in the way of something used, not displayed. Even at rest, his build was obvious. Muscle sat easily on his frame, not strained, not exaggerated. His jaw was square, his expression composed.

  “Sir Helmut,” the commander said. “Report.”

  Helmut came to a stop several paces inside the room and saluted.

  “All Steam Knights are back to full readiness, sir,” he said. His voice was steady, unembellished. “The two injured during the incident have recovered and returned to duty. Equipment inspections complete. We can move at your word.”

  “Excellent,” the commander replied.

  He turned slightly, regarding Helmut now. “And do try not to kill potential witnesses next time, as you did with those young scavengers.”

  Helmut’s expression did not change. “Of course, sir.”

  The aide looked down at his slate, pretending very hard to be occupied.

  The commander returned his gaze to the window, where the Peel Tower’s repaired tread began its first slow rotation under test load.

  The tower did not complain.

  “That will be all,” the commander said.

  Helmut saluted again and exited without another word. The door closed softly behind him.

  The commander stood in silence as the Peel Tower continued its measured return toward readiness.

  Somewhere in Rafborough, a single missing component had already changed the future.

  The hunt would find it.

  It had to.