The ruins of Marville smoked for three days.
From the hills beyond the Argonne, it looked like a dying star had crashed into the earth — craters still glowed, train tracks lay twisted like iron ribbons, and the skeletal frame of the enemy depot sagged in on itself. German soldiers combed the wreckage in silence, boots crunching over powdered stone and ash. There were no survivors in the command bunker. No weapons salvaged.
And no witnesses to what had done it.
Only whispers.
Some said it had been French sappers with new explosives. Others claimed a flame-tank had rolled through, vomiting fire from a twin barrel. One prisoner, shaken and weeping, swore he had seen a beast made of armor and bone rise from the fog.
The Germans dismissed the report.
But Wilhelm Rainer did not.
He stood inside a temporary forward command station overlooking the wreckage. The air stank of ozone and scorched copper. Engineers knelt beside a crater where the charge had landed, sifting through debris.
Rainer held a piece of twisted armor plating in his hand — thick, sloped, and unfamiliar.
"This isn't ours," he said.
His aide, Hartwig, shook his head. "Our best guess is Laurant. Again."
"Not just him," Rainer said. "A new class. No turret signature. No frontal cannon. Yet they breached our southern cordon, neutralized two bunkers, and escaped without pursuit."
He turned to the officers present.
"I want schematics. Drawings. Estimates of armor thickness. I want the wreckage from the slope catalogued, boxed, and sent east."
"To Berlin?" asked Hartwig.
"No," Rainer said. "To Höllenlager."
Back at the Laurant Foundry, the mood was triumphant — but Emil felt no joy.
The engineers were ecstatic. The Brèche test had exceeded all projections. Reinforced armor plates had absorbed direct fire. The modular detonation system had worked flawlessly. Field resistance was minimal. Best of all, the machine had returned intact.
But Emil knew better.
"We won a raid," he told Fournier. "Not a battle. And certainly not the war."
Fournier sighed. "You always say that."
"Because it's always true."
He tapped a blueprint on the table — one of several recovered from the Projekt Morgenrot cache beneath the Forest of Black Sweat. Unlike the earlier Rückgrat designs, this one was labeled differently.
"Versuchsgerät 8: Doppelte Lunge"
Experimental Device 8: Double Lung.
Emil had no doubt.
"It's a gun," he said quietly.
"A what?"
"Not a turret. Not a field piece. A weapon built into the body of a machine. No elevation, no rotation. Fixed forward. Like lungs, locked in the ribcage of armor."
"Range?" Fournier asked.
"Unknown."
"Payload?"
Emil looked up.
"If it works the way I suspect… any trench within a kilometer would vanish."
The news reached Paris within 48 hours. Lavalle convened a private war session.
He read the intercepted German report aloud:
"Enemy machine class unknown. No heat signature until detonation. Reinforced armor assumed. Design favors impact over occupation. Nicknamed 'le Boucher d'Acier' — the Iron Butcher."
"That's what they're calling Brèche now," he said, folding the page.
A silence followed.
Then Minister Claude spoke: "If Laurant can strike like this at will, we need a leash."
"No," Lavalle said. "We need a replacement."
The generals present exchanged looks.
Lavalle continued.
"Begin Project Écraseur. Heavy assault platform. Manned by command-loyal crews. Laurant's talents are undeniable — but so is his arrogance. If we cannot own him, we must surpass him."
Emil received the news two days later — not directly, but through a change in his requisition orders. He was being bypassed. Materials once routed to the Laurant Foundry were now being diverted to Bordeaux, Nancy, and Metz.
He confronted Amélie in her office at the Ministry.
"They're building a shadow program," he said.
"Yes," she replied, not bothering to deny it. "They don't want to depend on one man."
"But they still want my machines."
"They want your results, Emil."
He paced, angry.
"They'll get people killed. The Carapace, the Brèche — they aren't just hardware. They're extensions of a system I designed by hand. You can't mass-produce intuition."
"You can't stop a war with prototypes," she said.
He stopped pacing.
"No," he said. "But I can buy time."
Emil returned to Verdun that night.
He gathered Fournier, Rousseau, and a dozen engineers he trusted.
"We're going dark," he told them. "No more reports. No more transmissions. Nothing leaves this facility unless I authorize it directly."
"And if the Ministry pushes back?" Rousseau asked.
"They'll do it through the proper channels. By the time they navigate the paper maze, we'll have finished what they can't even begin."
Fournier leaned over the drafting table.
"What are we building?"
Emil unfurled a new sheet. On it: a new design. Taller than Brèche, with an extended neck-like frontal engine bay, two staggered barrels emerging from armored gills, and layered pressure vents across the dorsal line.
"Gargouille," he said. "It won't just strike. It will haunt the front lines."
Over the next ten days, the foundry became a forge of phantoms.
Noise dampeners were installed. Test firings were scheduled only during artillery barrages to mask the sound. No one left the compound without escort. Every blueprint was printed once, read thrice, then burned.
And every man who worked on Gargouille swore the same oath:
"I will not build a weapon I do not understand.
I will not unleash what I cannot kill.
I serve the mind — not the machine."
On the eleventh day, it stood ready.
Gargouille.
Its armored faceplate resembled a skull — stylized vents carved like jaws, dual cannons extended forward like fangs. Its chassis was ridged, the plating layered in staggered plates that shimmered in sunlight. The machine was not elegant.
It was ominous.
Fournier, awestruck, whispered, "What do we aim this at?"
Emil replied, "The Doppelte Lunge."
That night, he sent a final encoded message to Amélie:
"Gargouille complete. Capable of breaching reinforced bunkers and intercepting mobile artillery. I'm moving east. I don't ask for permission. But if I fail, burn the plans."
She didn't respond.
But he knew she would obey.
Far across the line, Wilhelm Rainer watched smoke rise from Metz. He stood beside a new construction site — one lined with cranes, armored cables, and four massive cooling towers.
In the center: a cradle.
Empty.
Waiting.
Behind him, a covered rail car contained two enormous cylinders.
Each marked with the symbol of a double lung.
Rainer smiled.
"Let's see how your ghost guns handle a symphony."