Angela Diaboli and the Heart of New Eden

The distant clanging finally resolves into a pattern, not random ruin, but tools striking steel. Angela reaches the bowels of the tower as the sound becomes a hammering roar. A support beam shudders overhead, then another. Something is taking the tower apart from inside.

Beyond the broken storage chamber, pale lamps flicker over armored drones crawling through the ribs of the building. They bite into braces, shear bolts, and drag lengths of metal away from the stairwell. Behind them, shapes move in the dust, scavengers hidden in work coats and masks.

Brutus plants himself at the east stairs, broad back braced against the surge. Silas stands ready in the smoke, head tilted toward the moving shadows, waiting for Angela’s order.

A drone rips free a brace with a shriek of metal. Dust pours from the ceiling. One scavenger stumbles into the light, then ducks back as the machinery keeps tearing open the hidden guts of the tower.

Angela's words land like a hammer in the hollow chamber. The scavengers freeze, and the drones do not. One machine swivels its lens toward her, then keeps sawing at the brace beside it, as if the tower itself is the answer.

A support groans overhead. Brutus shifts his stance at the stairs, ready for a rush that does not come. Instead, the scavengers look between Angela and the machines, suddenly unsure which master is more dangerous.

Angela's command hangs over the room, and the nearest drone answers by tearing loose a jointed arm from the wall, showering sparks into the dust.

The tower shudders hard enough to rattle teeth. Angela has their attention, but the price of it is plain, the structure is already being eaten from inside.

Angela snaps her fingers. The drones break apart mid-cut, metal turning to gray dust that spills from the brace and the wall seams.

The chamber gives a single violent shiver, then the wounded support answers her power. Fractures knit shut, twisted beams square themselves, and the ceiling steadies under a fresh lattice of reinforced steel.

One last spark races along the repaired frame and dies in a wet cough of smoke. The grinding noise stops.

Dust settles over the scavengers as they lose their cover. The dark room beyond the breach exhales again, that wet, labored breath sliding through the silence.