The rain, a relentless drizzle for the past week, had turned the Ovesta cemetery into a slick, miserable bog. Mireira pulled the coarse wool shawl tighter around her, damp wool doing little to blunt the sodden cold. Her gaze settled not on the freshly dug earth for Old Man Borian, but on the nervous postures of the mourners huddled under greasy oilcloths. Two years. Two years of blending into the mud and rust of this defunct settlement, and still, every shadow felt like a snare. “May the Iron Mother guide his spirit through the clockwork gears of the afterlife,” intoned the settlement elder, his voice thin and reedy against the drumming rain. A few murmurs echoed, and then the creak of the rough wooden casket as it was lowered into the pit. Mireira's eyes, sharp and restless, flickered to a patch of disturbed earth near the grave. A faint tremor, easily mistaken for the settling of the rain-soaked ground, vibrated beneath her worn boots. No, not settling. Rising. A low, guttural growl, brassy and inhuman, rippled up from the soil. She froze. Her lungs emptied as the ground above the coffin began to heave violently. A grotesque, segmented maw, studded with razor-sharp steel teeth, burst forth with a screech of tortured metal and pulverised mud. It was a quarry hound, a biomechanical terror with glowing crimson optics, its body a patchwork of polished steel plates, sinews of dark, artificial muscle, and boiled human bone fused into its frame. It reeked of ozone and burnt oil. Chaos erupted. The solemn gathering shattered into a chorus of terrified screams. Villagers stumbled, tripping over grave markers, their faces contorted with primal fear. The beast, still half-buried, thrashed violently, brass claws tearing at the sodden earth, sending clods of mud and disturbed human bone flying. Its crimson lenses locked onto the nearest movement—a portly miner named Joric, who had frozen mid-step, mouth agape. “Run!” Mireira hissed, a quiet command lost in the cacophony. But Joric remained rooted, knees locked. The hound dug itself free, its heavy, articulated frame clattering against the headstones, an engine of pursuit already winding itself up. It let out another shriek, a sound designed to disorient and terrify, and lunged toward Joric. Mireira didn’t hesitate. Survival was a cold, sharp knife in her hands. With a swift, brutal kick, she caught Joric squarely in the small of his back. The man yelped, a sound of surprise more than pain, and pitched forward, directly into the path of the lunging beast. The hound's jaws clamped down with a wet crunch, momentum carrying both man and construct away from her. Joric’s scream was cut short, a gurgling sound swallowed by the rain and the hound’s mechanical roar. Mireira didn't look back. Her legs were already churning, a practiced, silent sprint through the churning mud. She weaved between the ancient, leaning monuments, her mind racing, calculating angles of escape. This wasn’t a rogue automaton. This was one of Zareto's trackers. And it knew where to find her. “Tarnis! Recon!” she whispered, a barely audible command. From the folds of her shawl, a small, intricate mechanism unfurled. Tarnis, her avian chimera, spread brass wings with a soft whirring sound. Its singular, glowing optic flared, and it ascended into the dismal sky, a dark silhouette against the leaden clouds, disappearing into the rain-streaked gloom. Mireira did not pause. She burst past the burial ground's rusted gate, plunging into the narrow, winding alleys of Ovesta. The settlement was a maze of decrepit shacks, leaning workshops, and abandoned mining equipment, all coated in grime and rust. Her path was instinctive, a series of calculated turns that would lead her to her hidden caches, to the meager supplies she’d painstakingly gathered. She had to move, and she had to move fast. The screech of the tracker echoed from behind the tombs, closer than she preferred. It was still engaged, but it would not be delayed for long. The beast was built for one purpose: pursuit. And Zareto, the terrifying shadow that haunted her nightmares, had built it with her in mind. “Report,” she muttered, ducking under a collapsed awning, rainwater splashing against her temples. She kept moving, scanning the rooftops, the alleys, her senses stretched taut. A series of high-pitched clicks and whirs, a language only she understood, resonated directly into her mind from Tarnis’s internal comms array. The images flickered through her consciousness: a panoramic view of the quarry pits, scattering townsfolk, and then, a close-up of the tracker. Its steel plates were gouged, a dark, viscous fluid leaking from a ruptured joint near its foreleg. But it wasn't just oil. Around its splayed claws, the earth began to darken, to fester. Tiny synthetic spores, fine as ash, spread across the mud, shriveling the sparse weeds to black rot in seconds. Cinder Rot. And it was spreading directly from the hound's leaking fluids. Her two-year sanctuary. Compromised. Not just hunted, but poisoned. Zareto hadn't just sent a tracker; he'd sent a plague carrier. Her predecessors’ conspiracy, whatever insidious thing she had set in motion, was unraveling faster than she could comprehend. The construct had finally disentangled itself from Joric’s mangled corpse. It shook its head, dark fluid spraying across the overturned headstones. The crimson glow in its eyes intensified, fixing on the path Mireira had taken. Then, a distorted, crackling voice, familiar and razor-sharp, projected from its internal grill, cutting through the rain and echoing down the alleyways. “Did you enjoy the funeral, my runaway?”

Scent of Ozone and Mud