The world was still bleeding when I awoke.
I don't remember falling asleep. I must have collapsed, my body a marionette with its strings cut. My hands were raw from crawling over broken glass and twisted metal, my breath a shuddering rasp in the dead air. When I finally managed to lift my head, the slag field stretched around me like a graveyard, the sky above it bruised to near blackness.
But something had changed.
The machine—the massive carcass of iron and smoke—was no longer silent. Faint vibrations thrummed through the ground beneath me, rising in low, uneven pulses that gnawed at my bones. The air hummed with the memory of her voice, the woman with the stitched mouth and void-black eyes. Even though she was gone, her presence hung heavy, as if the world itself was waiting for her command to resume.
I staggered to my feet, every joint screaming protest. My legs felt like lead, my ribs ached with each breath, but I forced myself forward. Around me, the remnants of the armoured figures lay where they had fallen. They were scattered like discarded chess pieces, their bodies smudged with ash and glowing faintly where the sigils on their armour had cracked. Some had collapsed into themselves, folding as if they were made of paper. Others lay shattered, as if something had broken them from the inside out.
They were dead. Or something like it.
But the machine wasn't.
I could feel it calling, faint and insistent, like a heartbeat drumming just out of sync with my own. It was a call I couldn't ignore. Every instinct screamed to turn away, to flee, but the pull was stronger. My steps drew me closer, past the corpses of the not-men, past the stains of blood and charred metal. I reached the base of the machine and pressed my trembling hand to its surface.
It was warm.
Warm, and pulsing.
As if it were breathing.
A shudder ran through the machine's carcass, and the seams along its panels widened, bleeding pale light into the air. It wasn't like the soft glow of moonlight or the harsh glare of a search lamp. It was… hungry. The light reached for me, thin tendrils flickering across my skin, tracing the old wounds and fresh scars as though tasting them.
I flinched back, but it was too late. The machine's pulse matched mine, and something inside me—something jagged and fractured—stirred. It wasn't pain, not exactly. More like the sudden memory of pain, sharp enough to draw a breath that wasn't mine.
"You're waking up," a voice murmured.
I spun around, fists clenched, but there was no one. Only the slag, the corpses, and the machine. But the voice continued, threading through the air like silk.
"Don't you see? You're the key. You were always the key. The stars didn't die—they were stolen. And you were the lock they couldn't break."
I backed away, heart hammering. "Who are you?" I rasped. My voice was cracked and thin, but the words echoed louder than they should have, rippling through the air like a thrown stone.
The machine shuddered again, and the voice grew clearer. It wasn't from outside. It was inside. Inside me.
"I was the first," it said, a whisper layered with memory and grief. "I was the one they caught. They broke me, but not enough to kill me. They took what was left and locked it inside you. The rot you feel—the crack in your bones—that's me."
I collapsed to my knees, hands clutching at my head. Images flickered behind my eyes: a great machine, black as the void, pulling light from the sky; a woman with stitched lips, her hands bleeding against gears; a child screaming as the stars were torn from the heavens.
"No," I gasped. "No, no, no—"
But the voice continued, relentless. "You can't run from it. The Hollow March has begun. You're the last fracture in the seal. And when you break—"
The ground heaved beneath me, and a scream tore from my throat. The machine split down the middle, a gaping maw of light and shadow opening where once there had been rusted iron. Figures spilled out—shadow things, their forms slick with oil and glinting with half-forgotten starlight. They moved with a grace that was almost human, but their faces were empty, hollow holes where eyes and mouths should be.
They didn't speak. They didn't need to. Their hunger was carved into every movement, every flicker of their twisted bodies. They surged towards me, hands like claws, teeth like shards of broken mirrors.
I stumbled back, but the machine behind me pulsed again, and this time, I felt it—an echo rising from within, matching the beat of the earth. My hands burned, the old scars on my chest flaring with heat. Light, too bright to be contained, bled from between my fingers.
And they hesitated.
The shadow-things halted, their forms quivering with indecision. The voice in my head laughed, a bitter, broken sound. "They recognise you. You're marked by the fracture. They can't touch you—yet."
I didn't wait. I turned and ran, sprinting across the slag and shattered ground, lungs burning, legs shaking. The shadows followed, loping after me like hounds, but always at a distance. They weren't chasing to catch me. They were herding me.
Toward the tower of smoke on the horizon.
Toward the next machine.
The Hollow March had begun.
And I was its herald.