The map of the Western Marches lay stretched across a long steel table, secured at the corners with iron cogs and brass weights. By the hearth's amber glow, Magnus Veyron leaned over it, one hand resting on the curved hilt of a compass, the other tracing a straight line from Emberhold to Greyharbor.
Then another, angling sharply eastward—toward the grain-rich heartlands of Dunmere Vale.
"Steel rails," he murmured, his voice low and deliberate, "will run from forge to field, port to palace. Roads no longer bound by mud or noble decree. Only fire, steam, and will."
The room was silent, save for the soft whirring of an automaton's gears in the corner and the occasional pop of the firewood. Around him sat his closest advisors: Seraphine, arms folded, always skeptical; Marinus, eyes flitting across numbers on a copper-etched slate; and Helena, arms wrapped around a ledger, brows arched in fascination.
"This... Project Steel Pulse," Seraphine said at last, "will provoke more than the earth. You'll have every highborn cur spitting at your boots."
"Let them spit," Magnus replied. "They'll ride these rails in the end. Or be dragged by them."
And with that, the age of rails began.
I. First Spike
At sunrise, smoke bloomed on Emberhold's eastern ridge like a black flag unfurling.
Magnus's steam-pounding behemoths—massive, snorting machines he christened Ironhounds—began driving spikes into earth and stone. Each hiss of compressed air drove home another foot of track. Each thundering impact sent flocks of birds skyward.
The villagers came to watch, slack-jawed. Many brought their children. Some wept. Others knelt, mistaking the machines for some divine golem.
One child asked if it was alive.
Magnus watched from a perch above the site, a simple steel monocle strapped over his eye. He said nothing—only turned to his engineer.
"Faster," he said. "Double the line teams."
Progress answered fear with rhythm.
II. Lords in the Dust
From the tall towers of Dunmere Castle, Lord Rhydan watched the steaming skeleton of the railway expand like a spreading infection.
"They bypass my roads," he spat, hands clenched behind his back. "No tolls. No permissions."
His steward shifted uneasily. "He claims the rails don't cross noble boundaries. Only leased land."
"Leased from peasants!" Rhydan bellowed. "This is theft dressed in clever ink."
He whirled to the window again. "Send saboteurs. Quietly. Oil and fire should remind the boy how fragile his toys are."
The steward bowed—and trembled.
That night, five men crept into the construction site with torches and crude blades.
They were caught before reaching the second rail. One screamed as the Iron Guard snapped his leg backward like a twig.
The next morning, their severed thumbs were nailed to the railway post.
Beneath them hung a new placard:
"Interfere—and be reworked."
—Magnus Veyron
III. Court of Smoke
Within the velvet halls of Velwynd Court, House banners rustled with fury.
Duke Albrecht, once proud patron of Magnus's genius, now found himself caught in a torrent of outrage. Scrolls flew in from every noble seat.
"The Iron Vanguard undermines sovereignty!"
"This is rebellion with copper teeth!"
"Private armies and machines in peacetime!"
In the House of Lords, arguments rang like hammers on anvils.
House Verrimond demanded a royal edict to seize the rails.
House Lyweth called Magnus a pretender king.
But even as the nobles screamed, carts of grain—cheaper, faster, and unspoiled—arrived from Dunmere via Magnus's new railway.
Even the king's own kitchens now baked with bread borne on Ironhounds.
The court grew quieter with each feast.
And in Emberhold, Magnus sipped wine and sketched his next rail line—toward Blackford.
IV. The Railgate Accord
To quell the rising tension, Magnus invited twenty-two lords to Emberhold.
Not to his forge, nor his palace.
But aboard his newest marvel: a steam-powered train lined with velvet seats, crystal chandeliers, and polished bronze ceilings. He called it The Sovereign Arrow.
As the train coasted gently through golden fields and budding stations, Magnus rose.
He wore no crown. No armor. Just a waistcoat of blackened leather and soot-streaked gloves.
"This train," he began, "carries not just passengers, but prosperity. Food, gold, ore—all delivered without mud or middlemen. I offer you a share in its future. Not command. Profit. And the right to name a station in your land."
Silence.
Then a goblet clinked.
Then another.
By nightfall, eleven had signed. Seven more scheduled private meetings. Only four refused outright.
One of them was Rhydan.
V. The Miracle at Morvenhill
If words couldn't win them all, deeds would.
Magnus turned his gaze to a withering village on the edge of the duchy—Morvenhill, a place where children died of frostbite and the church's bell hadn't rung in three years.
Within weeks, Magnus's engineers built a rail spur to it.
They installed steam-heated pipes through the homes. A clockwork grain silo, powered by piston-timed gears, distributed rations to families on schedule. A central furnace warmed the cobbled square.
The death rate halved in a month.
Bards sang of it. Journalists inked breathless columns.
Magnus never appeared. But an iron plaque hung in the village square:
"Built by hands. Fueled by minds. Protected by Iron."
—Veyron
VI. The Hearth Rebellion
Not everyone sang.
Baronies like Cinderford and Old Ashcombe, steeped in tradition and rigid hierarchy, saw Magnus as a threat to the very order of nobility.
Together they declared the Loyal Hearth Pact—an alliance to block the Iron Vanguard from their lands, build their own rail system, and reclaim control.
It was a joke.
Magnus offered free shipping to all baronies surrounding them. In weeks, Cinderford's grain market collapsed. Their coal reserves sat unused.
Ashcombe held firm.
So Magnus turned to Helena.
"Exercise the Guard. Let them train near Ashcombe's border."
Helena grinned. "With live rounds?"
Magnus nodded.
VII. The Warspur Engine
It came rumbling like a storm: the Warspur Engine, Magnus's first military locomotive.
Armored carriages. Rotating flame-throwers. A hold for three hundred Iron Guard soldiers.
It pulled into the Ashcombe border station bearing a banner of diplomacy.
Two days later, it returned.
The banner did not.
Ashcombe's baron stepped down. His niece, a schoolteacher from Emberhold sympathetic to the Vanguard, was named his successor.
No battles. No blood.
Only rails.
And as Magnus marked the conquered territory with a tiny brass cog on his map, he whispered to no one:
"Soon... Blackford."