The morning began, as it always did, with the creak of floorboards and the scent of yeast.
The copper bell above the bakery door rang once sharp and clear before being swallowed by the ever-present thrum of steampipes and the clatter of cog-wheeled carriages outside. A waft of fresh bread and spice rolled into the street, curling into the chilly morning like a warm, yeasty ghost. The scent had a way of dragging even the most gruff morning commuter sideways by the nose.
Aldwyn Thatch, badger-born Faunasian of broad shoulders and soot-black fur dusted with flour, stood before his oven in the dim light of predawn. His tail flicked absently behind him as he kneaded the final batch of dough with thick, calloused paws, the rhythmic slap of it echoing in the cozy stone-walled bakery that had stood on Braeside Street for over three generations.
The brass clock on the wall ticked loudly. The hour approached six.
Aldwyn wiped his brow and looked to the rising steam that curled from the first loaves golden and crusted, nestled in the heated belly of his great iron oven. Beside them cooled several batches of his signature offerings:
Ironcrust Rye: heavy, earthy loaves with a smoky aftertaste from the oakwood fuel.
Steamberry Scones: dotted with tart blue berries that only grew along the foggy Bramble River.
Spelt-n-Spice Twist: sweet knots drizzled in honeyed glaze, dusted with cinnamonroot.
The scent was heavenly, familiar a morning lullaby to the people of Bramblegate.
Outside, fog rolled over cobblestone streets. Gaslamps flickered against the grey of dawn. And above it all, between great chimneys belching black smoke, the silhouette of skybarges loomed their iron hulls etched with gilded runes, pipes hissing steam.
The Crimson Sky Phalanx, the aerial power of Victoria's military, was already in motion. Their slow patrols left droning vibrations in the stones below, and even Aldwyn's mugs rattled faintly on their shelves.
As the first chime of the hour rang, the doorbell jingled not by magick, but by simple wire and bell.
In stepped old Mrs. Tindle, wrapped in seven layers of shawl, her tabby cat ears twitching beneath a knit bonnet. "Mornin', Master Thatch," she chirped, voice like rustling leaves.
"Mornin', missus," Aldwyn said, sliding a loaf into a paper wrap. "Ironcrust, as always?"
She nodded. "Two, if ye please. The twins've taken a likin' to toastin' it wi' the sausage drippin's. Filthy appetites they've got."
He chuckled, already wrapping the second. "And what of the mister? Still thinks me loaves're dry as cracked mortar?"
She gave a wheezy laugh. "Aye. But he eats 'em faster'n I can slice 'em. Swears he's just sufferin' through it for my sake."
Aldwyn placed the wrapped bread into her wicker basket, added a scone for free. "Tell 'im he's sufferin' with better taste than most."
The bell rang again, and this time it was Old Marebelle, the raven-feathered Faunasian who ran the brothel down Saltneedle Row.
"Aldie, you'd best have saved me a twist or I'll be pluckin' ye meself!" she said, slapping the counter with her coin purse.
Aldwyn chuckled, pulling a warm Spelt-n-Spice Twist from the pile. "Still warm, Belle. As promised."
She sniffed it theatrically. "Smells like the old spring market in Delverfield. Back before they started rationin' cinnamon."
"Trade's been better this year," Aldwyn replied. "Had a half-sack bought in the market last week."
Marebelle's eyes twinkled. "Bless the merchants guild. 'Tis they who bring flavour to our food."
He handed her a small satchel with two extra scones tucked inside.
"For yer girls," he added.
Belle's sharp look softened. "You're a good man, Aldwyn Thatch."
He offered a tired smile. "Just a baker, Belle."
The door opened again, and then again more neighbors filtering in. Faunasians of fox, hound, and mole descent, a few humans among them. Steam curled from mugs of chicory brew as they stood about, exchanging gossip and worry beneath the comforting hum of the ovens.
"—say the Blood Night's due this evenin', sure as sunrise."
"Yeh? Thought it were two days hence?"
"Two days turned to one, friend. Capital has confirmed it."
"Archons preserve us…"
Aldwyn paused, a spelt twist half-glazed in his paw.
Blood Night.
It was a phrase spoken like a curse and a prayer in one breath. The last had come nearly two months ago. He still remembered the sounds the pounding of cannonade, the shriek of metal on stone, the scream of a dying thing that was once a man. Bramblegate had held, as it always did, behind iron walls and skyborn flame. But not without scars.
"Army's movin' out the big barges," said one gruff wolf faunasian merchant. "a fleet group of the Crimson Phalanx, reckon."
"And the IronKnights?"
"Drillin' near Old Quarter. Me cousin saw 'em testin' their new hullbusters. Mean lookin' things. Steam and sawblades both."
"Hah! Ain't no beast gonna fancy chewin' through that."
"But what of the folks in Thornside? They still ain't rebuilt after the last one."
"I heard the Council's makin' evacuation centers in the ring districts. They'll send runners once the horns blow. Just need to stay sharp."
The crowd murmured, uneasy. Aldwyn felt it, too that tension crawling up through the floor like rising smoke. The Blood Night brought more than monsters. It brought memories. Grief. Fear. And fire.
Still, the oven didn't stop. The people needed bread. And so he baked.
When the sun finally breached the veil of fog, the queue had thinned. The final customer a young Faunasian girl with rabbit ears and a copper coin purse smiled up at Aldwyn as he passed her a still-warm scone.
"Will it be dangerous?" she asked suddenly, eyes wide. "The Blood Night?"
Aldwyn froze, then slowly knelt beside her. "You'll be safe, little Miss. So long as yer with yer folks and stay inside. Let the guards and the gears do their work."
"Promise?"
He offered her a small, flour-dusted pinky. "Promise."
She hooked her pinky with his, then skipped off into the misty smoke.
As the last of the morning light warmed the soot-streaked windows, Aldwyn turned the shop's sign to Closed and bolted the door behind him.
The bread had been sold. The streets were beginning to empty. Far above, skybarges growled as they shifted formation, lining the western sky like iron vultures. A new broadcast hummed to life through the city's horn-speakers:
"Attention, citizens of Bramblegate. This is an official advisory from the Ministry of Civil Defence. The Blood Night begins this eve. All persons residing near outer ring sectors are to report to designated shelter halls before sunset. Prepare all homes for lockdown. Stay indoors. Trust in steel, Trust in Steam, Trust in our Majesty's Name. The Empire Endures."
The speaker hissed. Then silence.
Aldwyn took a deep breath and began dragging the steel slabs to reinforce his shop's shutters.
Above, the twin moons had begun their slow ascent pale white orbs creeping toward zenith, still quiet.
But not for long.
The sun bled its last light behind the smokestacks of Bramblegate, casting long shadows across the soot-dusted rooftops. The air had gone still not calm, but watchful, as though the city itself was holding its breath.
Aldwyn Thatch stood in his apron, sleeves rolled past his elbows, wrenching the final iron shutter into place with a grunt. The hinges groaned in protest, but at last the bolt clicked into its groove. He wiped his brow with the back of his paw and stepped back, surveying the barricaded storefront.
Every window was sealed tight with steel plates bolted to the brick. The front door reinforced with riveted iron slabs, layered like armor. His cellar hatch had been locked from the inside, triple-barred. Aldwyn wasn't a soldier, but Victoria taught all its children one thing
you prepare, or you perish.
From the alley, he could hear the rattling of others doing the same hammering nails, dragging crates, latching shutters with chain and magelocks. The old widow across the street chanted softly as she lit protective incense on her windowsill. A child cried somewhere distant, a raw sound lost amidst the deepening hum of the city's infrastructure coming alive for war.
Then came the horns.
BWWWWOOOOMMMM.
The great city horns mounted on towers of steel and rune-marked stone blared their warning in unison. A low, mournful sound that rolled across every district, shaking rafters and hearts alike.
"This is the final broadcast. All civilians are to remain indoors. All ring-gate barricades are sealed. Military protocols are now in effect. The Blood Night has begun."
The voice echoed across the city's network of brass horn-speakers, then fizzled out in static.
From the bakery's second-floor window, Aldwyn peered out through a narrow slit between the shutters. His shop sat nestled in the Thistledown District, one of the older wards close to the mid-ring far enough from the outer walls to avoid the worst of things… supposedly.
He could just barely see the blackstone walls of the city in the distance, beyond the rusted chimneys and winding alleys.
And there, beyond the walls, just cresting the tree-choked hills of the Nyrwood, the moons began to rise.
Twin sisters in the night sky.
Sylvaria and Myrr the celestial orbs of Aereth, pale guardians of night.
Except now they changed.
Their radiant white faded. First to grey. Then to rust. Then to crimson.
Like twin eyes bleeding into the heavens, they glowed angry, hungry, full of omen. Clouds curled across the sky in a slow spiral, gathering mass like ink spilled into water. The light dimmed unnaturally, not with the gentleness of dusk, but with a choking weight.
And then came the storm.
Red lightning cracked across the sky in jagged arcs, lighting up the clouds in flashes of ruby and blood. Thunder followed not the clap of air, but the roar of ruptured metal and the shriek of unholy things.
Aldwyn stumbled back from the window. His breath fogged in the cold air that now crept beneath the floorboards.
He tried to steady himself. Put the kettle on. Warmth. Routine. That's what he needed. He prepared his supper in silence bitterroot stew with crusts of morning bread, soft now and half stale, dipped into the brown broth. The act of eating felt absurdly calm. With each bite, he pretended the world beyond his walls did not exist. The copper kettle hissed over the stove's blue flame. He poured the brew into a battered ceramic mug and sat down at his small wooden table the same one he'd built with his father as a boy. Everything here was familiar. Solid.
Outside, the world had gone mad.
Out there, down the winding cobbled alley's, the city was sealing itself shut. Steam whistles shrieked in the distance emergency valves hissing out excess pressure as steam constructs deployed from their armored towers, clanking in disciplined lines toward the outer gatehouses.
The deep rumble of steam-engines thundered across the city as skybarges roared into formation above the mid-ring. Massive constructs of blackened steel and brass, shaped like warships with wings of piston-driven fins and arcane sails. Steam hissed from their underbellies. Cannons bristled from their sides.
Each bore the white-and-red sigil of the Crimson Sky Phalanx. They passed over Aldwyn's home like great iron whales swimming through the blood-colored storm.
Their target lay beyond the walls, in the Nyrwood a vast, dark forest that bore dungeons and wildlife and now birthed horrors.
And now the skybarges opened fire.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The cannons spoke in rhythm, belching flame and smoke into the crimson sky. He couldn't see what they fired at not clearly but he saw flashes. Shadows moving like ants, too many, too fast. The storm obscured all but glimpses: a writhing sea of monstrosities, crawling from the forest and out of the dungeons beneath.
The baker's hands trembled.
He knew their names from whispers, from warning posters and watch reports horrors catalogued by hunters and scholars alike.
Gorewretches: once-people, now twisted by rising from death. Their flesh rotted yet refused to die, moving in spasms of hunger.
Bleakmarrows: skeletal revenants cloaked in dark ichor, armored in cracked bone and rusted steel. No eyes. Only the drip of black blood on its body.
Beastkins: bestial, horned, furred, feather, muscled brutes, blood-frenzied under the Blood Night.
Gnarr Warbands: their muscled green skin inked with glyphs and tattoos, wielding crude weapons and armor.
Guttergobs: vile, feral small green creatures with serrated teeth and oil-slick skin. They swarmed like rats in dark.
And there were more. Always more.
Another tremor rocked the ground beneath Aldwyn's feet. He set the mug down before it could spill.
The fire from the barges lit the rooftops in flickering crimson. Sirens wailed faintly. Distant cries carried on the wind. The smell of burning tar, gunpowder, and something darker something metallic, wrong filled his nose.
He stood. Slowly. Walked to the back of his shop. Lifted the trapdoor set into the floor.
Below was his cellar bunker once used for flour and wine. Now stocked with dry food, lantern oil, blankets. A place of last resort. A place to wait.
He hesitated.
Through the shutter slits, he caught sight of something distant something awful.
The outer wall, far away, was alight. It cracked. Crumbled. Black shapes poured through the breach like floodwater.
The horde had broken through.
Shouts echoed now closer, clearer. Somewhere down Braeside Street, a ironknight bellowed orders. The heavy, rhythmic chug of legged-constructs, and tread-constructs stomped into earshot a walking siege engine of gears and hissing valves, its brass arms fitted with blades, boilers, and guns.
The Steamguard Constructs fought back alongside the legions of the victorian army.Tall as two men, powered by magick and clockwork, they stomped into the horde like knights, swinging weapons of steel and spewing jets of flame. Brass faces emotionless, gears whirring, limbs pumping.
Aldwyn's heart pounded.
A scream pierced the street. Then another. The chaos was moving inward toward Thistledown. Toward his area.
He slammed the trapdoor shut from below and braced it, then lit the lantern and sat in the darkness, the noise above growing louder and louder with each passing moment.
The Blood Night was here. And it would not be kind.
The cellar walls groaned.
Not from age or storm, but from the deep, soul-shaking impact of something vast moving above.
Aldwyn sat hunched beside the lantern, arms wrapped tight about himself, the soft flicker of flame dancing shadows across sacks of rye and barley. The cellar smelled of old flour, iron, and smoke creeping in from the floorboards. It had once been a safe place where dough had risen and wine had aged in peace.
But not now.
Now it was a coffin with a candle.
The battle had come to Thistledown.
It began with vibrations faint, like a passing cart but grew to rhythmic thuds that shook dust from the beams. Outside, the world screamed:
gunfire, metal clashing, steam engines shrieking, monsters howling with inhuman rage.
Then came the crashing.
Something slammed into the shop above. The sound of wood splintering shelves falling glass shattering. A roar, wet and guttural, echoed through the floorboards.
Aldwyn froze.
He heard claws scraping against timber. The low, snorting breath of something large sniffing through the wreckage.
"Please…" he whispered under his breath, "Please pass me by…"
A scream tore the night apart not from a beast, but from a man. A soldier, maybe. A civilian. Aldwyn would never know. The voice rose in agony, then stopped with a crunch.
Then silence.
For a time, he could hear nothing but the hiss of steam and the occasional gunshot farther off.
Until the banging began.
thud.
Thud.
THUD.
The front door of the bakery. Someone or something was trying to break it down.
He held his breath. Sweat dripped from his ears. The trapdoor above creaked as something heavy stepped atop it. Sniffing. Pacing.
Aldwyn reached down into the grain bin beside him and pulled out a small flint pistol an old thing, rusted but loaded. He'd never fired it at anything living. He prayed tonight wouldn't be the first time.
The creature sniffed again, then let out a low growl.
It moved on.
Boom!
A detonation shook the walls. The lantern toppled, spilling flame but Aldwyn caught it before it hit the floor. He clutched it to his chest as the ceiling above began to rumble.
It's too close… too close…
The bakery groaned.
Then came the collapse.
Part of the ceiling not the trapdoor but the northeast corner caved in under weight and fire. Bricks and timber came crashing down into the far end of the cellar. Aldwyn threw himself behind a flour barrel as dust and rock filled the air.
When he peeked out, coughing, he saw the intruder.
A Gorewretch.
It had once been a man perhaps a miner, or a smith, judging by the tatters of leather and soot-stained cloth hanging from its twisted frame. Now its body moved in spasms, limbs twitching like a marionette, skin sloughing off in strips. Its jaw hung loose, dislocated, mouth full of blackened teeth and viscous fluid.
It turned toward the light.
And screamed.
A high-pitched, gurgling wail that rattled Aldwyn's skull.
He raised the pistol, aimed it with both hands, and fired.
CRACK.
The flint sparkled. The barrel roared. Smoke filled the cellar.
The Gorewretch jerked back, hit in the chest but didn't fall. It snarled and lunged, arms flailing, teeth gnashing. Aldwyn stumbled backward, crashing into sacks of flour, kicking them toward the creature.
Then came the sound that saved him.
A new explosion closer than before ripped through the bakery above, sending floorboards flying.
Aldwyn barely had time to cover his head as the weight of the upper floor came down crushing the creature beneath it.
Boom.
Then silence.
Dust hung thick in the lanternlight.
Aldwyn lay on his back, ears ringing, chest heaving. The creature was gone buried beneath beams and stone.
He'd survived. But just barely.
Time passed.
He did not know how long.
Outside, the thunder continued. The Blood Rain had begun red droplets pattering softly against the ruins of his shop. They leaked through cracks in the cellar roof, staining the flour with spots of crimson.
He sat slumped in the far corner now, arms around his knees. Cold. Exhausted. The pistol was gone. Maybe buried. Maybe useless.
He started to hear things.
Not outside, inside.
Laughter.
Not malevolent, but innocent. Familiar.
Children.
He blinked. The lantern flickered. And then…
The cellar was gone.
He was ten again, standing barefoot in his family's bakery, watching his father knead dough with strong, flour-covered paws.
"Like this, Aldy. Use yer weight. A crust's only as good as the press beneath it."
The air was warm, full of rising yeast and joy. Outside, birds chirped. The sun streamed through the open window.
Then the scene flickered.
Aldwyn stood at his mother's side as she decorated cinnamon rolls for the midwinter fair. She smiled, ruffled his ears, placed one still-warm roll in his hands.
"Don't forget to share this time."
Another flicker.
Now he was running through the streets, a paper bag of pastries clutched in hand, laughing as his friend Maeryn chased him, both of them drunk on stolen treats and boyish freedom.
Then something was wrong.
The colors dimmed. Maeryn turned and his face was gone. Just darkness. A black void where eyes and mouth should be.
The sky overhead turned red.
The sound of blood rain filled his ears.
The scent of ash and rot crept in.
And then screaming.
The world shattered like glass.
Aldwyn howled.
"NO NO! MAKE IT STOP!"
He sat down, fingers clawing at his skull, breath ragged, the hallucination dissolving into tears and terror.
And then blackness.
Time is slow in silence.
Then breath.
Then pain.
Aldwyn Thatch stirred beneath a collapsed beam and a blanket of flour dust. Every inch of his body ached. His mouth was dry, his ears still rang, and his head throbbed like a kettle set to boil.
He lay still for a long while, blinking up at a faint line of gold cutting through the cracks in the cellar roof. A trickle of sunlight. Morning.
He was alive.
The Blood Night… had passed.
Aldwyn groaned as he pushed aside broken wood and sacks of grain. The cellar, or what remained of it, was buried under what had once been his shop now a mangled ruin of scorched brick and twisted iron. He coughed, spat dust, and wiped dried blood from his temple.
His first steps were agony.
He limped toward the broken stairs, half-collapsed but still climbable. One slow hand after another, he pulled himself up. With a final gasp, Aldwyn emerged into the husk of his bakery.
The roof was gone.
The walls, mostly rubble.
The oven cold and cracked down the middle.
Sunlight streamed through the holes in the structure, catching motes of ash that still danced in the air like lazy snow.
He staggered forward, past scorched dough, shattered shelves, and a blackened sign that once read: Thatch & Crust – Finest Loaves in Thistledown.
No more.
The doorframe remained upright a charred skeleton of wood. Aldwyn stepped through it into the street.
And beheld ruin.
Thistledown, once a bustling merchant quarter, now lay broken and silent. Rows of elegant townhouses and cobbled alleys had been reduced to jagged rubble and twisted metal.
Steam curled from collapsed constructs massive iron defenders that now lay still, their boiler-casings shattered, their glass eyes dim.
Corpses littered the street.
Not just of men but of beasts.
He saw a massive gnarr, impaled on a wrought-iron lamppost. A horned beastkin, half-vaporized by what must have been a lightning caster. A Gorewretch, its ribcage exposed and black ichor congealed on the flagstones.
And then bodies in uniform.
The army of The Greater Victorian Empire, the Red Watch Legions, clad in crimson coats and bronze-trimmed helms, lay strewn where they had made their stand. One clutched a broken rifle. Another lay atop a makeshift barricade of crates and cobblestones, his mechanical arm sparking faintly.
Then across the streets steam bellows.
The paving stones had been torn up by siege engines or beast talons. A Steamguard Construct lay sideways in the intersection, its brass faceplate half-melted, one arm missing, its steam-core gutted and silent.
Aldwyn lowered his eyes in silence.
Then came the sound.
A low blare from a distance not a scream, nor alarm but a deep, authoritative tone, echoing from speakers mounted high on street posts and towers.
The emergency horns.
He turned slowly and looked up.
Above the battered skyline of Bramblegate, a skybarge drifted massive, soot-streaked, its hull plated with brass and obsidian iron. Smoke bellowed from its stacks, and gunports along its side still glowed with spent heat. The proud banner of the Victorian Royal SkyFleet flapped in the wind: a crimson field with a gilded crowned on a golden dragon, its wings unfurled.
The speaker crackled.
"Citizens of Bramblegate. The Blood Night has passed."
The voice was deep, clear, commanding the unmistakable tone of a high official.
"The twin moons have returned to stillness. The skies have calmed. The enemy has been broken. Our lines hold."
"Districts west of the Ironrail including Thistledown, Lanternreach, and the Edge of Flowers have sustained severe damage. Civilian recovery and apothecary teams are en route. Stay within safe zones until the banners are raised. Aid shall be distributed shortly."
A pause.
"We mourn the fallen. But Bramblegate… stands."
The horn cut out.
For a moment, there was only wind.
Then a sound faint, but rising.
Voices.
Doors creaked open.
Boards were un-nailed.
Aldwyn turned to see others emerging from the wreckage ash-covered, bloodied, limping. A mother with soot on her cheeks held a child tight to her breast. An old craftsman with a bandaged head helped another man with a splinted leg.
Survivors. Dozens. Maybe more.
One by one, they looked to the sky as the light of dawn spilled between buildings and reflected off the puddles of dried blood rain now evaporating into mist.
Aldwyn looked down at his own hands blistered, caked in flour and ash then slowly up at the sunrise.
No horns.
No screams.
Only golden warmth.
His lips quivered.
And for the first time in years, he smiled.
Morning broke the grey and cold over Bramblegate.
The blood-streaked skies had given way to a misty drizzle, and though the twin moons had faded back to their ivory hue, the stain of the night still clung to the stone.
On the eastern part ofthe city, where skybarges once fired volleys into the tide of beasts, steam still hissed from ruptured lines. Workers toiled amid the wreckage soldiers, engineers, and citizens alike hauling debris, covering corpses with cloth, pulling wounded from the splinters of homes and manufactories.
A clocktower had crumbled into the ground.
Entire blocks were nothing but burnt skeletons of buildings.
Crates full of healing rations were being handed out by uniformed volunteers. The air was thick with soot, salt, and the copper tang of blood that had yet to wash away.
And through it all, the city endured.
High above the ash-streaked districts, behind the reinforced doors of the Spirehall, the twelve councilors of Bramblegate sat around their great brass-inlaid table. Steam-fed hearths warmed the chamber, shielding them from the carnage that still simmered below. At the center, an arcane projector pulsed with slow, flickering light. Maps of the city shimmered in midair, glowing with angry swathes of red and orange across three districts: Thistledown, Lanternreach, and the Edge of Flowers.
Each councilor wore the colors and seals of their district.
None of them smiled.
"The Outer Wards are in cinders," growled Councilor Kane Redbridge, a gruff bear-Faunasian with iron-grey mane and soot-streaked shoulders. "Lanternreach is half-flooded from ruptured boiler mains. Thistledown… Thistledown is gone."
"I warned you," snapped Lady Veyra Cauldmere of Florentine District, her fox-tail flicking behind her seat. "Too many resources funneled into Fort Sternlight. Not enough into housing reinforcement."
Councilor Brom Yeltridge, a crow-Faunasian, let a smoldering fleck of ash drift from his feathers.
"The Fort held. The walls held. What would you have had us do turn our skybarge artillery into bread ovens?"
Lady Tamsin Vee, sleek and sharp-eyed with coal-dyed lynx fur, flipped open her bound leather ledger. "Sanitation reports confirm full evaporation of bloodstorm residue. No corruption detected. But the streets remain hazardous unspent alchemical charges, collapsed lanes, monsters corpses."
Across the table, Engineer-General Mortlach Hews a deer-Faunasian with grease-caked gloves grunted, "Three skybarges are grounded. Resolute took a blast of hexfire lost two ballast chimneys. Stern Widow limps, but she's flying. As for the western bastion, we'll need to rebuild the left turret from scratch."
Councilor Greaves leaned forward.
"And the constructs?"
Mortlach shook his head.
"Scrap, most of them. The older steam-lads couldn't hold against the tide."
A junior clerk entered with a tray tea for some, brandy for others.
The reports continued.
"Three districts," bellowed Councilor Alwen Blace, Minister of Infrastructure. His voice was ragged as he slammed a crumpled sheet onto the table. "Lanternreach, Thistledown, and the Edge all but flattened. And now half our bakeries, mills, and transit lines are buried under slag and rot!"
Lady Caedra Vaunt, High Auditor of Bramblegate and the city's appointed tax-mistress, pinched the bridge of her nose. "We can recite the damages again, Alwen but unless you can reforge the Ironrail overnight, I suggest fewer tantrums."
Councilor Alwen scowled as he looks at her.
"Don't you lecture me, you bloody wom—"
"Three thousand displaced," interjected Mistress Quinley Greel, her reptilian eyes focused behind heavy spectacles. Her voice cut the rising tension like a scalpel. "Two thousand injured. Two hundred confirmed dead. That number is rising."
A heavy silence settled across the chamber.
Beyond the stained glass, morning light filtered in brass and garnet hues. Rain tapped gently against the glass.
At last, Lord Commissioner Harthlow oldest among them, his beard white as steam-smoke spoke. "And yet… the city endures."
He gestured toward the soot-scarred map on the wall twelve districts, three of them now blackened with damage marks.
"Three nights ago, we braced for annihilation. The Blood Night came early. But our lines held. The fleet descended. The constructs fought until their boilers burst. And we pushed them back."
Councilor Redbridge stood, fist slamming the table. "At what cost? Boilers are ruptured in two sectors. The Foundry Guild reports critical losses. Six foodstores collapsed!"
Lady Cauldmere snorted.
"Then perhaps you should've fitted proper fire suppression in your bloody grain towers, you bristled oaf."
A few chuckles rumbled. Others scowled.
"Enough," said Harthlow, calm but firm, raising his hand. "We'll assign relief crews. Reroute the steam lines. See to the wounded."
Mistress Greel adjusted her glasses.
"And the public? They'll demand answers. Assurance."
Harthlow slid a slim dossier across the table.
"Give them this: The Blood Night is passed. And Bramblegate still stands."
Meanwhile… in Thistledown
Aldwyn Thatch sat on the edge of a broken fountain, half-buried in rubble and quiet as smoke drifted past the ruins.
He held a warm mug of something spiced and sweet not his own, but gifted by a neighbor who'd survived just down the block. His apron was tattered, and a new scar ran across his brow. But he was alive.
Around him, families picked through the wreckage. Children sat beside fires. Soldiers helped erect canvas shelters.
He looked to where his bakery once stood.
Gone. Flattened.
But nearby, a little girl ran past, giggling, holding a scrap of scorched bun. He didn't even know if it had been his.
A voice called from across the street someone asking if he'd help grind grain once the mill got running again.
He gave a nod.
Not much else needed saying.
Aldwyn took another sip of the spiced drink, warm and bitter. Above him, banners of the Empire's dragon fluttered in the smoky morning breeze.
He watched the steam rise from a damaged vent in the street.
And for the first time in days… he breathed.