Rivets snapped free of the towering rib-timbers, whistling into stalls and showering hot slag across the market stones. The air screeched as the beast's dead chassis buckled inward. Chalky pulverite billowed up, masking the fleeing traders while Dovjen tracked the iron arches groaning overhead. “Szilard, Bato! We brace this frame now.” Dovjen’s quiet voice pierced the shriek of shearing steel. Tibor rammed an iron pauldron into a sagging pillar, ruby emitters on his shoulders cycling hot. Hydraulics locked, checking the pillar's plunge for a second before the iron skin warped beneath him. Fluffy, the stitched cyber-troll, planted splayed claws against the closing rib-wall, synthetic tendons whining under the inward thrust. Margit, still bleeding profusely, struggled to her feet. “The Aegis hijacked the framing,” she gasped, bloody fingers pressed to her ribs. “Subverting the bedrock routines to smash the bay flat. To crush *you*.” [Crucible Aegis: World-Threat Anomaly detected. Extermination protocols engaged. Structural integrity at 37%.] Szilard rummaged through a zinc crate, four ghostly extra limbs whipping through bundles of copper and bone-conduits. “The flagship's central neural trunk still registers pulse! We could hijack the grid, though the wattage required—” He snapped his jaw shut. Bato tore sheathed wiring from the counter base, sweating into his apron. Near his elbows sat the brass triple-boiler rig, copper venting a quiet puff of steam. “Can we spike the carrier frequency, Szilard? My brewer has a three-phase thermal coil!” Szilard clacked skeletal knuckles. “A thermal coil—splendid! Funnel that wattage through a soul-resonator and we multiply the necromancy tenfold! Bato, snap the frother pipe! Snake the high-strain steam line into this socket!” With twitching hands, Bato wrenched the brass housings apart, stripping leads with his molars and twisting heat coils directly into the dial assembly. Szilard’s vaporous fingers carved tomb-glyphs along the hot water reservoir, wedding grave-rites to brass valves. The chrome brewer bristled with braided lead and glowing runes. A heavy harness trailed from the steam boiler. “Rough work, Dovjen,” Szilard hissed. “Yet it forms a bridge. Lash yourself to the hulk's primary spine trunk.” Dovjen spotted a severed cable-trunk dangling like an elephant's trunk fifty paces out, wet synthetic fat oozing over raw copper. “Tibor, Fluffy, clear the aisle. Szilard, steady the harness. Margit, keep Bato covered.” Dovjen broke into a jog. Tibor swung his cannons, red beams sawing through a dropping girder, while Fluffy’s dead bulk shouldered aside falling masonry. Margit braced against the counter. “Dovjen, what are you wiring yourself into?” she shouted over the shriek of warping plates. Dovjen reached the severed trunk. Its copper weave shuddered with faint, dying static. He looked back toward the coffee stall, murmured, “Nobody touches our hearth,” and drew his splice-pin. He drove the barbed chitin-plug directly into the cable-trunk's jellied core. A kick of blue fire threw him against the bulkhead as dead circuitry woke beneath the iron floor. Seizing the harness from Bato's brewer, Dovjen jammed the brass needle straight through the flesh of his forearm, locking it against the radial bone. His irises washed out, flooded in thick pitch. [Crucible Aegis: Fatal life-force consumption detected. User: Dovjen. Prognosis: Irreversible organic termination. Reanimation protocol pending…] His heels left the flagstones. Fire poured out of his chest, siphoned down the cables and into the dead hull. His awareness snapped outward along miles of rusted conduits, taking root in the titanium ribs, tasting the strain on every bolt. He forced black necromancy through the ship's dry fuel lines, seizing its carcass by the marrow. “Dovjen!” Bato shrieked. The mechanic went limp, dropping face-first onto the rubble, the black fluid draining from his pupils until only slate-grey remained. [Crucible Aegis: User Dovjen deceased. Reanimation protocol failure. World-Threat Anomaly neutralized. Purge sequence initiated.] Szilard's phantom digits pointed sharply. “His heart stopped! Tibor, jolt him!” Tibor spun, optics narrowing on Dovjen's back. Twin barrel tips flared violet, snapping a short, low-watt arc into the mechanic's sternum. Dovjen's spine arched off the gravel, ribs rattling, black fire flashing back into his sockets. Dovjen sucked in air, gravel grinding against his teeth. The ship's chassis answered his lungs. Miles of warped steel groaned in obedience. The inward crawl of the arched ribs stopped, locks clicked across two hundred bulkhead joints, and the mountain of iron thrust outward, reclaiming its perimeter. [Crucible Aegis: ERROR! ERROR! Reanimation protocol success! World-Threat Anomaly: Active. Purge sequence aborted. Structural integrity: Restored by unknown means. Warning: Planetary barrier integrity: Critical.] A high, crystalline shriek tore through the upper atmosphere. The toxic orange sky fractured like thin ice under a boot. Black chasms split the firmament, baring an endless deep, and within the rift, an ancient, pupil-less eye the size of a continent peeled open, staring straight at the bastion.

Possessing the Behemoth