Legend LXX – The Mechanist of Ironstead

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Ironstead was not a place one stumbled upon by chance. The town lay like a rusty clamp between two mountain slopes, whose shadows remained dark even at midday. Steam rose from a hundred chimneys, and the sky was filled with the wheezing, pounding, and hissing of tireless machines. In the midst of this metallic labyrinth lived the one known only as the Mechanist—a small, green-skinned tinkerer with eyes that glowed like coals and a patience sharper than any tool in his workshop. The Mechanist of Ironstead rarely spoke. It was rumored that his voice had fallen into a gear case years ago and never been heard from again. But he scarcely needed it, for his hands spoke volumes: they could feel screws that did not yet exist and detect mistakes before they were made. His workshop was notorious—not for the wonders that were created there, but for the rules. No one was allowed to enter. No one was allowed to disturb him. And no one dared ask what he was actually working on. The few who did returned changed. One claimed to have seen a pattern in the steam that looked like a heart made of gears. Another swore he had heard a machine sighing like a lost child. But no one could explain what it was all for. For the Mechanist was not merely an engineer—he was a keeper of a secret older than Ironstead itself. One evening, as the town's bells cast their harsh tones across the rooftops, the Mechanist's workshop trembled. Light filtered through the narrow windows, restless, strange, like the flicker of a flame gasping for breath. The inhabitants of Ironstead paused. For never before had anyone heard a sound from within the Spark Hall that did not come from metal. Inside, the Mechanist knelt over a misshapen contraption—half machine, half memory. Brass gears lay atop one another like ribs, tubes woven through a core where a faint glow pulsed. The Mechanist placed a hand upon it, and for a moment something soft reflected in his eyes, something incongruous with his grim face: longing. It was said that the Mechanist had not once been alone. A companion, clever and fearless, had helped him build the first machines of Ironstead. But one day she had vanished, swallowed by a misfire of the immense main engine—"the heart of Ironstead," as it was known. Everyone had believed her dead. Only the Mechanist had never accepted it. The machine before him was an attempt at return, a vessel built from all the knowledge and all the pain that the years had taken from him. And now, as the light within it flickered brighter, he knew: this was the moment when the machine would decide whether it could give life or steal hope. He pulled the final lever. The Spark Hall lit up as if struck by lightning, and the Mechanist was thrown backAs the steam cleared, something stood before him—not his companion, not a machine, not a ghost. It was a silhouette of light, formed from memories that should never have existed.