Chapter 13 · Three Minutes to Storm

Three minutes.

The core's light pulsed red, and the floor under me started shaking. Not the kind of shake you get from a passing truck. The kind that says the whole structure's about to come down.

I didn't have time to process what Mom's recording meant. The walls were already cracking.

"Kai, move!" Ashmark's voice came from somewhere behind me, but I couldn't see him through the dust falling from the ceiling. The machine—whatever the hell it was—had woken up, and it was angry.

Two minutes fifty seconds.

The timer burned in my vision like it had been etched there. I don't know if it was the core projecting it or my own brain counting down to my death. Either way, I could feel the pressure building. The air tasted like copper and ozone.

Something groaned in the walls. Metal on metal, grinding.

I pressed my hand against the nearest wall and felt the sand beyond it. There was sand everywhere in this city, packed between steel plates, filling the gaps, holding Ironspine together like mortar.