Deep beneath the surface of a land untouched by war, hidden within labyrinthine tunnels of carved stone and metal, workers toiled under the dim glow of enchanted lanterns. Machinery, archaic yet ahead of its time, lay half-built, gears rusting from abandonment yet still waiting for completion.

This was the vision of a queen long buried by history.

'Our world moves on the backs of beasts and the will of men,' Yasmina had once said. 'But what if we could break free from such constraints? What if movement did not require suffering?'

The first engine, its blueprints painstakingly drawn by Layla’s own hand, rested here. Unfinished. Forgotten. But not abandoned.

Standing before it was a tall muscular woman cloaked in dark silk, her expression hard, her eyes filled with unyielding determination and besides her was a scrawny young man who is barely her height named.

Zafira had not met Emery through war or revolution—no, she had stumbled upon him in the most mundane of circumstances, yet it had changed everything.

She had needed spices—yes, spices—not for herself, but for the men under her command who wouldn't stop whining about the bland food. And so, she had gone to the market, expecting a simple trade.

Instead, she had found him.

A scrawny foreigner, wearing spectacles and arguing—no, lecturing—a merchant over the principles of leverage. She had rolled her eyes, thinking him another fool who mistook words for power. But then she had listened.

And she had realized she had never met a man who spoke like him.

He had spoken of numbers and equations, of the way the stars moved instead of stood still. He claimed that water spiraled differently depending on which side of the world it flowed from. He had written books—books!—on something called gravity, on motion, on the very fabric of space.

She had thought he was mad. She had thought he was brilliant. And she had thought, more than anything, that she needed him.

'You’re saying the stars don’t just hang there? They… fall?' she had asked, utterly bewildered. 'That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows the heavens are eternal.'

Emery had sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. 'No, they don’t just hang. They are in motion, pulled by an unseen force. Everything that rises must fall—it’s not magic, it’s physics. You drop a stone, it falls. You shoot an arrow, it arcs. The stars follow the same rules, just on a much grander scale.'

Zafira had crossed her arms, unconvinced. 'Sounds like nonsense. How do you know they move? Have you been up there? Have you fallen from the sky yourself?'

Emery had given her a long, exhausted look before muttering, 'And yet, here you are, listening.'

Now, standing beside her in the underground halls, he was no longer an eccentric scholar talking about the stars. He was her engineer, the one who would take Layla’s vision and turn it into something real. He was praising how amazing this engine looked and looking it up to down while murmuring to himself.

Even if he still insisted on saying the most ridiculous things.

Zafira watched him, arms crossed. 'You speak of her like a disciple worshiping his master.'

Emery didn’t deny it. 'Because I am.'

She scoffed, tilting her head. 'And what exactly did she do to earn your devotion?'

Emery adjusted his spectacles, fingers tracing the rusted edges of the unfinished machine. 'I studied everything she left behind—her writings, her diagrams, even her failed attempts to implement sanitation systems in the western capitals. She changed the world once, and had she lived longer, she would have done it again.'

Zafira exhaled, her gaze darkening. 'Yasmina envisioned a world where suffering was no longer the cost of progress. Where men did not break their backs pulling carts, where travel was not dictated by the speed of a dying horse. She wanted to free people from the chains of labor, so they could pursue something greater.'

She stepped forward, placing a hand on the machine’s rusted frame. 'Layla was the one who made it possible. She turned dreams into reality. Yasmina dreamed of progress; Layla built the means to achieve it.'

Emery chuckled, shaking his head. 'And now you want to turn it into a weapon.'

Zafira’s voice was cold. 'Now I want to finish what they started.'

She turned to the gathered workers, her voice rising. 'This is not about war. This is about justice. What was stolen from them—what was stolen from us—will be repaid in full.'

She had inherited Yasmina’s cause, but more than that, she has Layla's her fury.

'We do not build to live in the shadows,' Zafira al-Rahim’s voice rang through the underground halls, her words sharp as tempered steel. 'We build so that our names are never erased. So that history does not forget what was stolen from us.'

The workers before her—engineers, scholars, rebels—listened with rapt attention. They had long since cast away their old allegiances, drawn to her by a cause greater than themselves.

'What they did to Layla… what they did to Yasmina…' Zafira's fingers curled into fists. 'We will return their suffering tenfold. The east has a ruler who does not deserve his throne, and the west is ruled by ghosts. We will shape the future with our own hands.'

She turned, facing the massive unfinished machine at the heart of their underground facility. The engine, decades ahead of its time, designed by Layla’s own hand but left incomplete by her untimely death.

'We finish this, and the world will bow not to emperors, not to sects, but to us.'

''They will answer for what was done to you.'' she whispered. Her name was Zafira al-Rahim,, and she would see the man responsible for their suffering burn.

Even if it meant completing the engine herself—and using it as the weapon to bring Jinhai to his knees.

Emery adjusted his spectacles, his fingers brushing against the cold steel of the unfinished engine. His mind raced, piecing together the fragmented blueprints, the calculations, the principles far ahead of their time. This was not a machine built for war.

'Zafira,' he finally spoke, his voice even, but laced with doubt. 'You claim this is a weapon, but Layla did not design it as one. If she wanted destruction, there are a hundred simpler ways she could have done it.'

Zafira’s sharp gaze snapped to him. 'And what do you think she intended, Emery?'

He inhaled, his mind racing. 'I don’t know yet. But I do know that this—' he gestured to the machine before him, '—was never meant to be a tool for vengeance. Layla wasn’t building a future of war. She was building something else.'

Zafira scoffed, her fists tightening. 'You think I care what she intended? I care about what I can do with it now.'

Emery narrowed his eyes, realization dawning. 'So that’s it? This isn’t about Layla, or Yasmina’s dream. This is about you. About revenge.'

Zafira didn’t flinch, but something flickered in her gaze.

'You weren’t there, Emery,' she whispered, voice dark with restrained fury. 'You didn’t watch them erase her. You didn’t hear how they rewrote history, how they called her a failure, how they made the world forget her name.'

The workers behind them listened in silence, the weight of her words settling over them. Some nodded in agreement, others shifted uneasily.

Emery started to doubt her words. Was that truly what had happened? He had read so many accounts, studied so many conflicting reports, but the truth had always been elusive.

History was written by the victors—but what if neither Layla nor Jinhai had truly fallen that night?

His mind raced. He had assumed Layla had perished, that Yasmina had been lost, but if Layla had time to act—to push a mere pillow beneath Jinhai’s head—then she had time for more. What if she had prepared an antidote? What if she had accounted for treachery long before the poison had ever touched her lips?

And then there was Jinhai. The emperor should have died that night, yet he had lived. Why? He had been poisoned, just like Layla. If one had the means to counteract it, wouldn’t the other?

His fingers curled slightly, his mind calculating probabilities. It made no sense for one to survive while the other perished unless… unless one of them had planned for both to live.

But which one? And why?

Poison is efficient, but not absolute.

Emery sighed, turning his gaze back to the engine. His fingers drummed against the cold steel, mind spinning through calculations, probabilities, and contingencies. Layla had seen further than any of them, her vision stretching beyond the limitations of war and vengeance. And now, that vision stood on the precipice of being repurposed for destruction.

But for what? Would this truly be justice?

Or would it be the next step in burying her true vision beneath the weight of history?

And so his mind sharpened, visualizing the mechanics of what had to be done. Gunpowder—a mix of potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal. Ratio? 75:15:10, the optimal balance for combustion without catastrophic instability. He sketched out the process mentally, ensuring stability in every step. The barrels? Hardened steel, forged at precisely controlled temperatures to withstand the pressure of igniting powder. Rifling—subtle spiral grooves inside the barrel to stabilize projectiles. Ignition? Matchlock? Flintlock? No, too rudimentary. Something better, something reliable.

His fingers twitched, instinctively mapping the weapon’s design. The barrel—long and cylindrical. The firing mechanism—spring-loaded, striking a percussion cap to ignite the charge. The projectile—a lead ball encased in copper for stability. A semi-automatic function? Impossible without industrial-grade machining. A repeating mechanism? Achievable.

His hand moved before he could stop himself. With practiced precision, he grabbed a piece of charcoal and began sketching on a worn wooden board. The room fell into silence as they watched, some in awe, others in sheer confusion. The foreigner, the scholar, the man who spoke of stars and gravity, was now drawing something none of them could quite comprehend.

Zafira narrowed her eyes, arms crossed. She didn't understand the intricacies of whatever he was doing, but the way his hands moved—deliberate, confident, like a child lost in his own world—unnerved her.

'This man speaks of theories no one else grasps, and now he moves as though building something from nothing,' she thought. 'Does he even see us anymore?'

He sketched rapidly, almost feverishly. First, the barrel, its dimensions meticulously measured. He scribbled rapid calculations beside it, noting spin rates and bore diameters. Then, the firing mechanism, each spring, each hammer carefully designed for efficiency. His lips moved slightly as if running through equations, his fingers twitching with the need to refine, to perfect. Then, the ammunition—conical, aerodynamic, ensuring range and lethality.

By the time he stepped back, brushing dust from his coat, the entire schematic had been laid bare. The murmurs grew louder. Even the most hardened rebels among them found themselves drawn in, uncertain but fascinated.

'If war is what you want,' Emery finally murmured, adjusting his glasses, 'then let’s give you a war machine. But not one that will wipe out cities in a single blast. No. We need something efficient, practical, and reproducible. Something that will change the battlefield without turning the world to ash.'

He turned to the gathered engineers, his voice sharp, deliberate. 'We shift our focus. Forget large-scale destruction. Instead, we make something that can be produced rapidly—something that can be placed in the hands of every soldier, every fighter. A force multiplier.'

Zafira’s brow furrowed. 'What are you suggesting?'

'Firearms.'

A ripple of murmurs spread through the room. Emery tapped the metal frame of the unfinished engine. 'This machine’s greatest strength isn’t destruction—it’s production. We use it to mass-produce something smaller, something that will tip the scales of war without erasing entire nations.'

Zafira crossed her arms. 'And how exactly do you propose we make these… firearms?' she sounded confused but interested as she always has

'We need a stable propellant—gunpowder. A mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. Then we need steel, precisely forged for barrels, mechanisms that can handle repeated firing, a system of ignition—perhaps a wheel lock or flintlock mechanism. It’s complex, but achievable. The engine can streamline the process, cut down inefficiencies. If we do this right, we create an army that doesn’t need to rely on brute strength or cultivation alone. We give them power in their hands.'

The room was silent as Zafira considered his words. She was no fool—she knew that mass-producing weapons would fundamentally shift the balance of power. But Emery could see the conflict in her eyes. She wanted something grander, something catastrophic.

And that was exactly why he had to push this direction. He needed to control what they built.

She exhaled sharply. 'You think this is what Layla intended?'

Emery’s fingers curled slightly against the engine. 'I think Layla wanted progress. I think she wanted change. And I think she understood that power doesn’t always come from the loudest explosion—but from the quiet, relentless force of innovation.'

Zafira narrowed her eyes, but after a long pause, she nodded. 'Fine. We begin the research.'

Emery inclined his head. He had won this battle—but the war was far from over. He would need to find a way to shift their efforts even further, to ensure that Layla’s legacy wasn’t twisted beyond recognition.

But he needed to be smarter than Zafira. Than all of them. Layla saw further than any of them. And now, her creation stood on the edge of being repurposed for war.

Emery tapped his fingers against the cold steel of the engine, his mind spinning through every possible move. Zafira was blinded by fury, her resolve unshakable, but she wasn't stupid. She could be reasoned with—if she believed she was getting what she wanted.

He needed to buy time. Needed to shift the direction of this project without her realizing it.

'Fine,' he said finally, adjusting his spectacles. 'If you want a weapon, we will make a weapon. But we do it properly—testing, refinement, full control over its capabilities. If we rush this, we risk sabotaging ourselves before we ever strike. We take our time.'

Zafira eyed him, wary. 'And you, the scholar from the west, will oversee this?'

'Who else here understands Layla’s blueprints like I do?' Emery countered. 'You want this to work, don’t you? Then let me ensure it does.'

He watched as her jaw tensed, weighing his words. Then, finally, she nodded.

Emery exhaled silently. The first step was complete. Now, he just had to make sure the weapon they built would never be used the way Zafira intended.

As the workers dispersed, he remained behind, tracing his fingers over the edges of the unfinished engine. His mind drifted to Layla—what had she truly envisioned? What had she hidden beneath these layers of innovation?