(One... two...)

No one could hear Mira count. No one could read her heart. But everyone saw blue foxfire pulse from the boulder’s cracks, and the stone swayed to that heartbeat. The solid core clicked apart.

Pebble-thin shards sloughed off like scales, unable to bear the surge inside. They peeled from the Firestone’s body, yet hung leashed by leaping arcs, hovering in orbit.

“Thirty, fifty... eighty! Ninety!”

Tela rattled off the swelling figures on the copper readout, hope rising like a tide. She sprinted to the control console, flipping switches with one hand and her notes with the other. “Yes, yes, yes! Break fifty thousand and we meet minimal start. We can fire it up—”

[Warning: Forging Hammer safety lock abnormal. Program initialization failed. Retrying. Please wait—]

The cold broadcast froze her smile. “No way,” she whispered, then redid the procedure by the book, hands careful as prayer. But—

[Warning: Forging Hammer safety lock abnormal—]

The machine had no heart and no mercy. Tela tried twice more, sweat slick as rain. Same result. She snapped. Two strides and she yanked Hos by the collar at the passage choke.

“Hey—what the hell—”

“You jinx! You cursed crow mouth! Why’d you bring up the safety lock that night? Why?!” Tela shook him like a storm shakes trees.

“How is that on me? Isn’t this your own design flaw?” Hos sputtered, stunned. “Wait, are you sure it isn’t the procedure—”

“Impossible! Do you know how many tomes on the Magma Forge I studied? How many times I trained on a replica console? I wouldn’t— I couldn’t make that mistake!”

Her life’s miracle stood right before her, and they were stuck at the first latch. Words fell apart in her throat—until a hand clamped her shoulder. She was spun around. Her childhood friend vanished from her sight, replaced by the squad’s tallest figure—Beanpole.

“Can you confirm it’s the automatic safety lock?”

Abrupt question, iron-serious face. His focus made her swallow and steady. The scream in her chest eased a notch.

“I’m absolutely sure. The Forging Hammer’s auto safety is jammed. Without a manual unlock, the Hammer won’t start. Even if the Firestone hits full.”

“Where’s the manual override console?”

Beanpole tossed his heavy scattergun to a teammate. The man went twin-guns, and a single blast turned two lunging Chaos Spawn into red spray. The sudden firepower shoved the swarm back down the passage.

“We’ve got enough bodies here.” Beanpole drew a compact steel repeater crossbow. He held out his hand to Tela. “Give me the map. I’ll lift the lock.”

Tela glanced behind. The main route into the Firestone control chamber was the one they’d taken. With the others holding, the Chaos Spawn shouldn’t reach Mira soon. She weighed it in a breath, then nodded hard and sketched a route across her notebook.

“This way’s narrow. There shouldn’t be many Chaos Spawn. Even if there are, you should spot them in time...”

She tore the page, shoved it into Beanpole’s palm. He turned to go—she flinched and called him back, finger stabbing at the last stretch.

“But if the records are right, before the console you’ll have to crawl a vent. Only wide enough for one tribesman.”

One tribesman—more precisely, one former Nacha Tribesman. Tela eyed Beanpole’s broad frame, a double-sized silhouette of what they used to be. No way he’d fit.

She looked to Barni, cradled in a teammate’s arms. Barni whimpered, wriggling to jump free, as if to say she could take the vent.

She could. Barni could swell or shrink, the best pick for this from the start. But blood still ran from her hind-leg wound, dark and steady. No world in which that was “fine.”

Send Barni, wounded, to carry this weight? Tela’s eyes flickered with doubt. Before she could choose, a tight voice came from behind.

“What about me? I’m human. I can squeeze in!”

Beanpole’s eyes went wide. Tela turned. Kabos had handed his fire-gun to a teammate and switched into light kit. He clipped a mag-link tether from his waist to Beanpole’s, then tugged and broke into a run.

“Save the speech. I get it.”

The warning on Beanpole’s face—this will be ugly—never got out. Kabos cut him off with a grin like a blade. “Brothers back brothers. Nothing else to say. We charge.”

“Mm.”

They vanished into a side passage where the lights hadn’t come back yet. Tela lifted her harpoon launcher to shore up the line. And right then, the Firestone gave a wrong-sounding tremor.

(One... two— cough, cough...)

In an instant, Mira’s face flushed a feverish red. Long, hard output dragged its claws through her body. Her steady breathing broke.

In that cough of a heartbeat, the digits glitched. The Firestone bucked like a frightened beast. When Mira crushed the reflex and fed power again, the readout steadied.

Tela’s heart climbed into her throat. Not just for the unnatural color on Mira’s cheeks. The numbers on the copper plate... were lower than before.

“No. No way...”

The cold sweat from the safety lock hadn’t dried. She said it again.

She dropped the harpoon and sprinted to the panel, hands flying. The machine voice marched with her inputs.

[Starting self-check: Firestone...]

The dot-dot-dot of waiting stretched like a winter night. Worse followed. Just like her darkest guess, the top-right light flipped red.

[Warning. Self-check result—Danger. Firestone charge ring malfunction. Energy leak detected. Please contact the Inventor for repairs—]

(Nacha curse)!

Tela hammered the console with her fist. She ignored Hos yelling, “I didn’t jinx it this time!”

“Damn it. Why the charge ring?”

The charge ring was delicate work. It didn’t hinder charging. But once the external feed stopped, a Firestone without its ring bled power as radiation—enough to boil a lake. For those around it, that’s no kinder than the maw of the Soul Devourer Sormaidon.

In short, the Firestone had become a time bomb. And Mira, feeding it, was both safety and fuse. Cross a critical mark, then the instant she stops, everyone here dies. And she can’t just keep going either. Past fifty thousand, the readout will race toward its ceiling. If the safety isn’t lifted to channel the charge into the Hammer, it’ll still blow from overload.

“When it rains, it pours—could you not be so damn right now!”

Tela vented, then told Mira the truth. If they stopped now, there might be time. She might find a fix.

Mira listened and only looked back. Sea-green eyes didn’t ripple.

“No. We... continue.”

Even speaking hurt. She leaned weight on that last word. The faith was bright as moonlight—every second the Firestone waits, Adelaide’s danger grows.

And Mira would never let that happen.

Tela wavered, then set. She took in Mira’s fever-pale, then the Firestone’s quaking light. After three heartbeats, she clenched her fist and nodded sharp. “Then we gamble!”

In her chest, a prayer unfurled. Moon Goddess, shelter us. Let Beanpole and Kabos lift that lock before overload. Let the Hammer drop and pulp that damned lizard in one blow. Please, no more missteps. Please.