They like to call me Smokey Zolbayar. My name is actually Terwin Zolbayar, but I think Smokey fits.

Other times—like now, as my cigarette ignites the tenth boiler system and launches a plume of blue flame halfway to the moon—I think they simply lack vision.

The townsfolk are used to my shenanigans, they stopped screaming and running on the 5th machine. Most of them are watching behind fences or covering their fields as smoke pours out from my lab. But when the steam clears, they'll see it. They'll see the progress.

Because it worked.

It finally worked.

The machine stood twice my height, its central engine shaped like an inverted bell housing a smoking core of celestial tar, with pipes spiraling out in every direction like metallic vines. Legs—six of them—jointed like an insect’s, each ending in a sharpened claw designed to plant or harvest with surgical speed. The arms, two of them, curved over the top like tusks, carrying rotating turbine heads lined with spinning blades and seed-feeders.

It was beautiful.

It was mine.

I lean against the scorched fencepost, exhaling a long drag as the last of the ten turbines whirl to life. Each of them forged from scrap, wired with repurposed celestial nerve filament, and powered—of course—by my own custom-designed combustion chambers.

Which runs on smoke.

Not any smoke. Celestial smoke.

You see, the cigarettes I import from the capital aren't ordinary. They’re laced with trace remnants of divine tissue—celestial tar, they call it. A banned byproduct from when the first gods were harvested and ground down into fuel for this ever-churning machine of a nation.

They make my mind faster. Sharper. Unstoppable.

I’ve built ten machines in this town. Ash piled on my boot as I watched each one sputter to life. Today’s model was supposed to be the one.

A machine that could harvest wheat and replant it at the same time—no more back-breaking labor, no more hoes, no more baskets. Just speed. Clean, beautiful speed.

And when I bring this madness to the capital—they’ll finally understand. Innovaris doesn’t need stability.

It needs speed.

So I gathered the townsfolk to show them.

I dragged the machine out onto the field myself. Lit a fresh cigarette. Say a few words they don’t hear and light it up. The boiler groaned once. Then—pshhhhhkt—the valves opened.

I think I’ll call it “Violetfang,” though I’m not sure anymore.

A blast of white-blue steam hissed out of the turbine ports and flooded across the hillside. It was beautiful—violent, but beautiful. Like watching a dragon breathe frost through a chimney. The smoke coiled up past the treetops, casting shifting shadows across the golden fields.

We lived in a place called Lowthresh, a pocket of Innovaris where the ground rolled like ocean waves. The wheat here grows tall, thick as your wrist, and shines like polished copper in the afternoon sun. Wildflowers—those brilliant crimson stalks that only bloom near old celestial runoff—dot the hills like spilled paint. There's no real grid here. Just farmland, families, and a sky so wide it makes your chest feel too small.

It’s quiet.

Was quiet.

Until my machine screamed.

The field trembled. One of the turbines lurched forward—suddenly alive. Gears spun, pressure built, and then—shunk. The machine deployed its claws.

I clapped my hands together, grinning like a lunatic.

“It’s doing it! It’s harvesting!”

It wasn’t harvesting.

It was uprooting. Shredding.

The tines rotated faster than I intended, slicing through wheat like a meat grinder through parchment. The fuel chamber vented wrong—the divine smoke backfired—and the machine twisted hard to the right, crushing three rows of vegetables and tearing through a wooden fence before finally collapsing into the irrigation ditch.

The ground was black where it had passed.

Behind me, the townsfolk were screaming. Again. Some were rushing to stomp out embers. Others just yelled my name, shaking their fists.

But I didn’t hear them.

I was staring at the machine, my cigarette hanging from my lip, my mind already spinning. Not in panic. In progress.

“I need a better intake valve. Maybe an isolated tar distillery… Need to reinforce the hydraulic braces with something heavier. Crystal polymer?”

Later that evening, I sat on the hill above the wreck, just watching the sun paint the sky molten gold.

That’s when I saw it again—Navaris.

My eyes drifted back to the plumes of smoke trailing far on the horizon, where the sky met steel. The silhouette of the Capital Spires shimmered in the heat, rising above the clouds like spears stabbed into the heavens. A city built on invention and divine marrow.

That’s where they have what I need. The real parts. The real minds.

I spent three days packing tools, rechecking blueprints, reordering my parts bag four times. I left the machine in the field. Still smoldering. Still waiting.

And on the fourth day, with no fanfare, I boarded the train.

I set out from Lowthresh taking the train straight to the capital. The countryside unraveled behind me in a blur of color and regret.

Outside the train window, the hills bled into cliffs. The gold turned to gray. We passed over broken aqueducts, past rusted farming stations long abandoned, and beneath towers that carried power cables like taut strings pulled across the earth.

But even now—even leaving—I could still see it.

Lowthresh.

The wheat dancing in the wind. The copper sun slicing through morning fog. The distant shadow of my failed machine, still steaming in the field like a wound.

I didn't feel ashamed.

I felt impatient.

The train surged forward. We passed the edge of the outer spires—each tower like a needle stabbed into the sky. Smoke rolled off their sides in timed bursts. Drones zipped between them like gnats chasing static. Elevators the size of homes carried cargo to levels I could barely see.

The capital was loud even when silent. A place that never slept, never slowed, never apologized.

I lit another cigarette and watched the city swallow the horizon.