Darkness was not absence, but pressure. Like the weight of an ocean pressing inward from all sides. It surrounded him and clung to his ribs, filled his ears, curled around his thoughts like a coil of wire.
Then came the sound.
A hiss.
Steam vented. Somewhere, metal twisted. A whisper of hydraulics sighed into the silence. The dark fractured, just a sliver. Cold blue light leaked through, casting electric crackles across the frost-glazed cryogenic pod.
Niklas inhaled sharply. It tasted of copper and age. His lungs rebelled. He choked, gasped, coughed hard enough to curl inward. The cryopod's seal disengaged with a dull clang, and the lid split open like a rusted jaw.
Smoke filled the place as he fell.
He dropped not far. Just enough for the breath to be knocked from him again. His back hit the ground stone-cold, uneven, dust-thick. Every nerve screeched as blood returned to limbs too long unused. He writhed, blind and shivering, blinking up at a cathedral's underground bowels.
The ceiling soared far above him, where war, time, and gravity had opened vast holes in its structure. Through the jagged gaps, faint light poured in through stained-glass fragments, painting fractured saints and gears across the floor filled with rubble.
"...Where am I?" he croaked, voice rough, brittle.
No one answered. He stood, shaking. His skin was clammy, pale against the tightness of the synthetic threads of his cryo-suit.
Names didn't come. Faces didn't come. Not even his own. He knew the word "Niklas" like it had been given to him in a dream, etched into him by some hand he could no longer recall.
The underground chamber was massive, more a sanctum than a room. Broken pews lay scattered, twisted with overgrowth vines and machine wreckage. Burnt banners hung in silence. The air was choked with the scent of oil and rust, of something old and unnatural. He staggered forward, drawn toward light, to a staircase spiraling toward the cathedral's surface.
With each step, the whispers of wind turned into murmurs. Everything was too hard for him to take. No matter how hard he remembers, not a single memory came into his mind, but a name he had not spoken in a very long time. Leannah.
His thoughts were interrupted when he heard them.
Sick, wet sounds.
He emerged into the cathedral's shattered nave. Towering walls arched high but were fractured, vines curling through its walls, looming over the rusted circuitry. A once-majestic altar was reduced to slag. And near it, there was movement.
Three machines, built with multiple and gruesome rusted iron limbs. Their eyes glowed bright red.
They twisted, jagged things that walked like beasts. They are circling something on the ground.
A fourth.
A shell of what seems to be a broken shell of an android. Its limbs twitched. Then one was torn free in a burst of sparks.
Niklas fell backward behind a shattered pillar, hand clamped over his mouth. His heart thundered in his throat. Whatever they were, these machines weren't sentient. Not anymore. Their forms were wrong. Too many limbs. Twisted faces of cracked visors and exposed sensors. They were killing the android like carrion birds.
He didn't move. He didn't breathe.
Slowly, they dragged the limp android into the rubble, disappearing behind debris and hanging wires.
He was alone again. But the fear stayed.
Cautiously, he crept further into the cathedral. The sun cut through the colored glass like a blade. And at its center, bathed in rusted steel and ash, stood a symbol.
Massive and etched into the cathedral floor, a gear crowned by a burning eye.
He didn't know it. And yet, he did.
The symbol of the Automaton God.
Beneath it lay a tomb. A construct of layered steel and white stone, dust-covered, sealed by a locking mechanism shaped like the Automaton God's symbol.
Compelled by something primal, he reached for the panel embedded in its surface. Dust fell away beneath his fingers. A soft hum stirred. The panel flickered to life.
Words scrolled across its surface. Foreign at first, then they rearranged themselves. A voice echoed at the back of the panel:
"GENETIC AUTHORITY REQUIRED."
A slot opened.
It was the shape of a hand.
He hesitated. Then placed his palm to the surface.
The tomb reacted.
A needle, thin and sharp, swiftly pierced his thumb before he could even blinked.
He screamed.
Pain. Deep, hot, blood tainted his palm. His voice echoed through the cathedral, shattering the ominous silence.
The ground shook.
From below, the feral machines stirred.
He turned. Too late.
One had heard him. It screeched, its uneven arms spazzing, clanking metal and madness. It propelled itself from the rubble towards him
It would have torn him apart.
Except the tomb exploded.
A burst of white light flared. Shards of stone and metal rained outward. From the eruption rose a figure of a human girl, no, an android-- sleek, tall, sword in hand. Fluid in movement. Her eyes blazed with pale fire.
She met the machine mid-air.
A flash. A cleave.
The creature's head fell in two. Its body spasmed, then crumpled.
Niklas fell backward again, dazed.
The android turned to him. Her gaze locked to his. It was like being seen by something that remembered too much. She stood calmly.
The dark metal plates wrapped her shoulders and fused seamlessly with a tattered gothic dress. Her hair was short, obsidian-black, framing a face both eerily human and unmistakably artificial. Twin red eyes glowed with unsettling clarity, their light cold and unblinking.
But it was of no doubt when he notices the insignia hanging on her neck. The blessing of the Priestess. She's a Daughter of Iron, an Iron Maiden.
Suddenly, her voice, when it came, was soft. Artificial. Feminine.
"Blood of the Iron Crown... acknowledged." she lowered her head and arches her back towards him.
"Designation LE1-ANNA-VII, How may I be of service, my Lord?"
He opened his mouth, but another roar cut through the air.
The cathedral trembled.
From behind the far wall came a crash. Stones were shattered, walls folded inward, and through the breach came an iron giant.
Eight feet tall. Plated in cathedral steel. Eyes like crucibles.
A notification blinked through the Maiden's peripherals. Her system scans showing the lifeform being a Guardian-Class Machine, long since thought extinguished.
Its hammer was the size of a man.
"Threat detected, unleashing necessary countermeasures!"
The Maiden didn't hesitate.
She sprinted.
The hammer came down upon her, she rolled. Sparks erupted as it smashed its way through dirt and stone. She balances her self and slashed upward, her sword biting at the gaps in its plating.
Nothing.
The blade skidded off and before she could react, the thing grabbed her mid-swing and hurled her across the hall. She crashed into a pillar, denting it.
Niklas watched, scared and helpless.
She staggered to her feet, one leg misfiring with a mechanical jolt. A burst of sparks lit the air as a circular chip shot out from one of the three mechanical valves embedded beneath the synthetic flesh under her right arm.
A flash of errors printing on her screen one at a time as her system goes full chaotic.
[Core Integrity 12% Attempting Repairs...]
[Repair Error! Auxiliary Power Active! Power Core Module Required!]
[Heiligschatten Module Destroyed, Switching Donnerspalt Module]
Another chip launched from her arm. She raised her hand, fingers unfurling with unnatural precision. From her open palm, black dust began to swirl slowly at first, then faster, coalescing in midair.
The shape of a massive cleaver took form, its jagged edges forming. When it fully emerged, she caught it swiftly and brought it down hard, the blade slamming into the ground with a deafening thud.
With no fear, she ran. Jumped.
The machine swung again. She ducked under. Despite the heavy frame of the cleaver and her sleek-looking body, the strength of a Daughter of Iron is no lie. She manages to swing the heavy sword into the giant machine's arm joint.
[Core Integrity 9% Attempting Repairs...]
[Repair Error! Auxiliary Power Active! Power Core Module Required!]
It roared. Backhanded her.
She flew again, slid, then paused.
Before she could recover her posture, it immediately came.
Too fast. Too strong.
She feinted. Dashed. Her spatial awareness made her lure the hulking thing near a ruptured support beam.
She was lucky that it only knew carnage, for it took the bait.
She leapt. The machine followed, its hammer raised
She cleaves upward through the crumbling ceiling.
[Core Integrity 6% Attempting Repairs...]
[Repair Error! Auxiliary Power Active! Power Core Module Required!]
The Guardian brought the hammer down into the weak point.
The roof collapsed.
Stone. Steel. All of it fell.
The giant machine had a moment to look up before it was crushed beneath tons of cathedral.
Silence returned. The other machines in the vicinity upon seeing the Guardian fell to his own demise immediately rushed away. It was not clear whether it is out of fear or program error, but it was a good sign, at least for now.
The Maiden stood at the edge. Breathing. Electricity crackling out of her injured leg.
She took a step-- stumbled.
Then fell.
[Core Integrity 2% Attempting Repairs...]
[Repair Error! Auxiliary Power Active! Power Core Module Required!]
Niklas ran to her. The world blurred.
Her eyes flickered. Dimmed.
The last thing she saw was his face.
The light in her eyes died.
And all faded to black.
[Core Integrity 1% Attempting Repairs...]
[SYSTEM SHUT DOWN]