The Iron Sovereign did not look like a ship anymore. It looked like a wounded god of steel, currently undergoing a radical, surgical transformation.
We returned to the Blood-Crag bay under a sky that had turned the color of a bruised plum. The hum of the Eastern technology had been replaced by the frantic, metallic clatter of a thousand hammers and the rhythmic hiss of pressurized steam. The deck was a labyrinth of copper tubing and silver-iron plates, as the remaining Eastern engineers—now working under the watchful, bronze-armed gaze of Leo—tried to marry their mechanical logic to our hallowed resonance.
