Chapter 180 - 180: The Day the World Tilted

As the sun rose on the twenty-eighth of June, something climbed out of the ravine with the smoke.

The wreck lay twisted below like the skeleton of an iron beast—engine torn open, boiler split, rods bent into obscene shapes. Coal had spilled everywhere, a black dune poured out across stone and pine needles, still smoldering in places, still hissing where hot metal met damp earth. Small flames crawled along broken timbers and caught at grass. The green world around it had begun to burn in little bites—thin tongues of fire licking uphill, smoke drifting through branches in pale sheets.

And in that smoke—

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