The skyline of Sector Seven did not possess the organic contours of the old world. It was a jagged, sterile sprawl of immense limestone blast-furnaces and towering basalt columns that pumped a thick, oily black grease into the choked atmosphere. This was the Alabaster Foundry—the primary manufacturing matrix where Aurelius did not merely forge weapons, but systematically unmade the biological remnants of the northern tribes, stripping their marrow and re-assembling them into the dread Stone Men.
Kael stood at the apex of a rusted iron crane, his long, liquid-silver hair whipping across his pale face like a shredded banner. The wind here smelled of sulfur, molten bronze, and the clean, terrifying scent of ozone that always preceded an imperial deletion cycle.
"The conveyor lines are moving at maximum velocity, Father," Kael said, his deep, newly broken baritone carrying a strange, mechanical resonance that cut through the thunderous grinding of the pneumatic hammers below.
