The sally port, slick with algae and smelling of brine, offered a grim gateway to the tower’s interior. Bronik and Lidyana emerged, dripping and shivering, the salvaged gears clanking against the wet stone as they hauled them through the narrow opening. The air inside hummed with a different kind of tension than the frigid current outside. A hostile quiet fell across the bailey the moment their bronze visors clanged against the flagstones. “Well, look who decided to resurface,” Mirzela’s voice cut through the stillness, sharp as a whetted blade. She stood on a makeshift platform of stacked crates near the half-finished ark frame, her face pale but her eyes gleaming with triumphant malice. Tomaz, a wide, smug sneer plastered across his face, stood beside her, his hand resting on the hilt of a rusty butcher’s cleaver. The compound, usually a hive of frantic activity, was eerily still. Dozens of gaunt faces turned toward Bronik and Lidyana, shadowed beneath dim lanterns. They held improvised armaments: sharpened planks, rusted lengths of rebar, even heavy mallets meant for driving pilings. The ark’s pontoons, still skeletal frames, loomed behind them, stark against the darkening sky. “They’re back, see?” Tomaz bellowed, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “After weeks of driving us like oxen, they went for their little swim, leaving us to rot. Leaving you to starve while they hoard the last of the food and the shelter.” He gestured wildly towards the locked pantry door, a thin trail of muddy water leading from it to his boots. Bronik swept his gaze over the assembly, reading the raw hunger twisted into resentment. His cynicism, a bitter shield he’d worn for months, pulled like lead in his gut. The mutiny had arrived. Tomaz had played his hand while Bronik hunted iron in the deep. “We brought the gears,” Lidyana said, her voice surprisingly steady, though her body trembled from the cold. She pushed one of the heavy iron cogs forward with her boot. “For the drive assembly. To steer the ark. Without them, it’s just a floating coffin.” Tomaz laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “A machine? We don’t need steam or brass to float! We need to cast off before this whole pile of rock sinks! They’ve been lying to you, spinning tales about another flood crest to keep you slaving. The water’s peaked. It’s time to take what’s ours!” A chorus of shouts rose from the crowd. “He’s right!” “The ark is ours!” “No more Bronik’s rules!” Bronik felt a familiar anger flare, a desire to lash out, to remind them of his warnings, to mock their stupidity. But then he saw Lidyana’s eyes, wide and apprehensive, fixed on him. He saw the flicker of hope, of pleading, beneath the fear. He remembered the press of her hand in his, trading mouthfuls of stale air beneath the black water. His cynicism had brought him here, to a circle of angry faces and sharpened sticks. It had made him strong, but it had also made him utterly alone. He looked at Tomaz, then at Mirzela, their faces alight with spite. They weren’t seeing a man. They were seeing a tyrant, a madman. And in a twisted way, they were right. He had driven these people, used their fear, threatened them. He had hoarded his foresight like a miser stacking coin. Now that coin bought nothing. “You want the ark?” Bronik’s voice was hoarse, but it carried a strange, unyielding calm. He unlatched the heavy, water-logged satchel from his shoulder, letting it fall with a wet thud. The gear clanged against the stone. Then, with deliberate slowness, he unbuckled the wide leather belt holding his short axe and the heavy diving knife he’d used to cut Lidyana free. They hit the ground with dull thuds, the iron clattering loudly across the silent flags. Lidyana gasped softly, a faint sound swallowed by the sudden silence. The mutineers lowered their clubs and rebar slightly, confusion dimming the hostility on their faces. “Go on,” Bronik said, spreading his empty hands. “Take it. It’s yours.” He stepped away from the gears, away from Lidyana, towards the center of the ring of weapons. “But before you leave, let me tell you what you’re really taking.” He met Mirzela’s gaze, then Tomaz’s, then swept his eyes over the bewildered faces of the workers. “You think I’m mad. You think I’m paranoid. You think I’m a cruel tyrant, driving you to build a ship for a flood that won’t come.” He paused, letting the words hang in the air. “You’re right about one thing,” he continued, his voice dropping to a near whisper, yet carrying to every corner of the courtyard. “I *am* mad. Mad with knowledge I shouldn’t possess.” He took a deep breath, the cold air burning his lungs. This was it. The confession. The complete surrender of his last secret, his last defense. “I died,” he stated plainly, his eyes fixed on Mirzela’s now slack jaw. “Not in this life, not yet. But in another. A life where I watched this whole *valley* drown. I watched the water rise, not once, but twice. The first surge took everything, just like it did this time. And the second… the second took even the Vulture’s Anvil.” A murmur went through the crowd. Some scoffed, some looked genuinely terrified, others just stared, trying to discern if he was finally breaking. Tomaz looked like he’d swallowed a sour berry. “You mock me for buying this crag, Tomaz, Mirzela. You called me a fool. But I saw it as salvation. Because in that other life, you both drowned. Drowned in the very fields you swindled from me. Drowned with all the others who mocked the rain, who laughed at the watermarks, who refused to believe the sky itself could turn against us.” He turned to the workers. “You think the water has peaked? You think Tomaz, the man who let you starve, knows more than I do? Ask Lidyana. Ask her what we saw in the cellar. The watermarks. The true height. The first surge hasn’t even reached the lowest of them. The next surge, the one that fractured the ridge and drowned everything… it will hit. And it arrives faster than it did before.” He pointed to the sky, then to the floodline creeping up the bastion stairs. “The mountain runoff is outpacing my memory by an entire week. The crest isn’t waiting for Day Ten. It will strike in days. Perhaps hours.” He looked at the half-finished pontoons. “Without Zivtar’s propulsion, without these gears, you can’t steer it. It’ll be a lumbering log, smashed against the crags, torn apart by the currents that tore through mountainsides. Without my recollection of the crosscurrents, of the true peak, of the breaks in the cliff… your ark is just a bigger, slower coffin.” Bronik met each pair of eyes, his own burning with an intensity that brooked no argument. “I built this sanctuary. I planned for this. My goal was to save myself. And perhaps, if you worked, to save a few more. But I’ve held you at arm’s length. I’ve treated you as tools. And I’ve been a fool for it. Because alone, I can’t finish this. Alone, I can’t steer it. Alone, I will drown, just as I did before.” He gestured to his discarded tools. “My steel is on the ground. My secrets are spent. You have the hull. You have my labor. You have the drive gears, though Zivtar himself is likely dead drunk in his shop, oblivious to the panic. You have Lidyana’s salves and the hidden strengths of this tower. What you lack is time. And you have no idea what rushes toward this peak.” Bronik took a step back, leaving the center of the flagstones open. “Choose. Choose to follow Tomaz, and abandon this tower, this ark, this last chance, to a fate you don’t understand. Or choose to use what I have given you, what I have confessed, and build this ark to survive the true deluge. The choice is yours. I will follow your lead. Or I will drown here, with the truth on my lips.” The courtyard was utterly silent. The only sound was the drip of water from the melting snow and the distant, mournful rush of the flood. Faces turned, not to Tomaz, but to each other. The anger in their eyes slowly, hesitantly, began to transform into something else: fear, yes, but also a dawning comprehension. They looked at the gears, then at the water level on the steps, then at Bronik, who stood exposed and unarmed. Then, a grizzled old plowman with a face like cured leather stepped forward. He still held a sharpened plank, but his hand was shaking. He didn’t look at Bronik. He looked at Tomaz, then at Mirzela. “He tried to starve us,” the old plowman rasped. “And he lied about the water. He said it was over. But it ain’t over, is it?” He glanced at Lidyana, who nodded grimly. “And this… this engine thing. If it truly steers the beast…” He looked at the other workers, a silent question passing between them. Another worker, a young woman named Ryla, her eyes wide with terror, pointed a trembling finger at Tomaz. “He kept the food! We saw him!” The tide had turned. The mutiny crumbled beneath a reality far more terrifying than Tomaz's bluster. Hands that had clenched clubs reached out, seizing Tomaz by the collar. He twisted and shouted, but the refugees, bound by Bronik’s warning, pinned him to the paving. Mirzela shrieked, lashing out, but she too was quickly seized, her frantic kicks doing little against the determined hands of the refugees. Bronik watched, cold air filling his ribs. He had given up everything. His pride, his secret, his control. And in doing so, he had gained… what? A fragile, desperate trust. He glanced at Lidyana, who offered a small, weary smile, a flicker of approval in her eyes. It was enough. Just as the last rope was cinched around Tomaz’s ankles, a sound erupted from the dark expanse of the flooded outside world. It wasn't the distant rush of the river, nor the mournful groan of collapsing structures. It was a deafening, tearing crack, like the very bones of the world were shattering. It echoed through the *valley*, a primal, guttural roar that vibrated through the stone of the Anvil, shaking dust from the ceiling and sending a wave of terrified cries through the courtyard. The ground beneath their feet trembled. The second surge wasn't hours away. It was here.

The Prophet's Confession