“Stop. Don’t come further, Allain.”

The machine’s low buzz filled the tense space between them. Four years had sharpened Daniel’s skills, his focus, his gauntlet—but some things never changed. Like the wary stillness that fell over him when Allain entered uninvited.

Allain ignored the warning, stepping fully into the lamplight. His smile was all easy confidence. “Well, isn’t this nice, Danny? Very… industrious of you. Killing the worksmith, conquering his forge. Making it your own.” He tossed a folded newspaper onto the soot-streaked table between them. “The Table has called.”

Daniel didn’t look up. He placed his tools down one by one with deliberate calm. Only the flicker of his eyes toward the paper betrayed any interest. “I don’t care.” A beat of silence. Then, casual as a knife-slide: “What’s that about?”

“Oh, this?” Allain tapped the headline. “It’s about that wunderkind Colonel from Ordovia you’re so obsessed with. The one who keeps making the news.”

Daniel’s hand stilled. The gears in his mind, always turning, clicked into a new configuration. “Hilda,” he said, the name leaving his mouth not as a question, but a statement of fact. He had followed her career like a blueprint, studying the enemy's newest, shiniest weapon.

“The very same,” Allain said, watching him closely. “She’s done it again. Saved hundreds. They’re calling her the ‘Shield of Ordovia’ now. Poetic, isn’t it? While you’re down here in the dark, she’s up there in the light, being their hero.”

The air grew thick, charged. The buzz of the machine seemed to deepen into a warning hum. Daniel finally looked up, and his eyes were cold.

“She’s not a hero,” he said, his voice low and precise. “She’s a symptom. A symbol they parade around to prove their system works. While that system grinds the rest of us into dust.”

He picked up a hydrospanner, his grip tightening. “They don’t need a shield. They need a reckoning.” His gaze fell back to his gauntlet, its new, modified plates gleaming. “And I am nearly ready to deliver it.

…

Daniel’s eyes, which had been fixed on his gauntlet, went distant for a fraction of a second. The hum of the machine seemed to fade into silence as the pieces clicked together in his mind. His head snapped up, his gaze sharp and intent, finally locking onto Allain.

“Wait.”

The single word was not a shout, but a command, cold and clear, cutting through the air. He took a single, deliberate step forward.

“Now I care. Explain.”

The polished oak door of the council chamber burst open with a force that silenced the room’s low murmur.

All eyes turned toward the entrance. There, small but crackling with furious energy, stood a ten-year-old Daniel Renghod. One of his hands was smudged with oil; the other was encased in a rough, partially assembled gauntlet, wires still exposed and faintly humming.

“Sander!” Daniel’s voice was sharp, cutting through the formal air. “Explain this instant! What do you mean I have to stop developing my gauntlet—or else the entire council will come after me? A ten-year-old?”

From the side of the room, leaning against a bookshelf with an expression of pure theatrical delight, sixteen-year-old Allain slowly brought his hands together in a soft, deliberate clap.

“Finally, huh?” he said, his voice carrying a clear note of pride as he pushed off the wall and walked toward Daniel, not to stop him, but to join him. “Took you long enough to show up and ask them yourself.”

He came to a stop just behind Daniel’s shoulder, a tall, grinning shadow offering silent backup. His presence transformed Daniel’s solitary outburst into a staged confrontation. Allain’s smirk was a challenge directed at the councilmen, his eyes saying, Go on. Try to explain yourselves to the prodigy you’re trying to stifle.

Councilman Sander’s face flushed a deep crimson, his composure cracking. “This is not a matter for children to debate!” he thundered, the words echoing in the stunned silence. “This is a council order! Your… contraption is a danger to yourself and to the fragile peace we maintain!”

“It is a matter of my work!” Daniel’s voice, though higher in pitch, was no less commanding. Allain’s silent, grinning presence at his back was a shield, transforming his solitary outrage into a united front. “And I’m not debating. I’m demanding an answer. What is the real reason?”

Sander spluttered, his eyes darting between the prodigy and his provocateur. “The resources you drain, the attention you draw—it is unsustainable! We are a council of survival, not of… of indulging a child’s dangerous hobbies!”

From behind Daniel, Allain let out a low, mocking chuckle. “Indulging? Is that what you call it when he single-handedly reroutes power for a block? Or when his ‘contraption’ dragged one of your own ‘peacekeeping’ soldiers into the shadows without a sound?” His gaze swept over the other councilmen, who shifted uncomfortably in their seats. “Seems more like you’re scared. Scared his genius will outgrow this little box you’ve built for yourselves.”

Daniel’s eyes never left Sander’s. The pieces, sharp and cutting, clicked into place. It wasn’t about safety or resources. It was about control. About maintaining the stagnant order they presided over. His gauntlet wasn’t a hobby; it was a threat. A symbol of the innovation and power they had tried to bury with his family’s legacy.

He took a final step forward, the hum of his unfinished gauntlet the only sound in the room.

“Your order is meaningless,” Daniel stated, his tone cold and final. It was not the plea of a child, but the declaration of a force of nature. “You cannot stop progress. You can only choose to be left behind.”

With that, he turned his back on the entire council, a gesture of breathtaking disrespect. The stunned silence was absolute. Allain’s grin widened into something triumphant and fierce before he too turned, falling into step beside the small, retreating figure.

The polished oak door did not slam. It clicked shut with a quiet, definitive finality. The council was left with the echo of a promise and the chilling understanding that the genius they had tried to suppress had just declared war on their world.

It was pouring heavily outside, the sound of harsh rain silenced every other noise. The torrents felt like speeding bullets as they came crashing down. Daniel looked at the weather with a deep sigh. Daniel didn’t have much to cover him from the rain.

The council's heat was instantly forgotten, replaced by the shocking, bone-deep cold of the rain. Daniel stood frozen for a second on the steps, his small frame shuddering as the water soaked through his thin, scavenged clothes. The adrenaline that had fueled his defiance evaporated, leaving a hollow, trembling void.

Allain, shrugging his own heavier coat tighter, looked down at him. "Well, that went—"

"Shut up," Daniel whispered, his voice barely audible over the storm.

He hugged himself, the crude metal of the gauntlet cold against his skin. The councilman's words echoed in his mind, not as a threat, but as a taunting truth. A child's dangerous hobbies. The resources you drain.

A sickening doubt uncoiled in his gut. What if they're right? What am I but an orphan playing with scraps? A nobody from the rubble, thinking he can challenge an empire. He looked down at his gauntlet—a mess of exposed wires and rough welds. It wasn't a weapon of revolution; it was a pathetic toy. The weight of it felt like the weight of the entire city, crushing him. He was just a stupid child, wet, cold, and alone.

His breath hitched. He was nothing.

Then, his eyes lifted from his own creation to the street before him. Through the curtain of rain, he saw the flicker of a candle in a window across the way—the worksmith's old home, now his forge. His sanctuary. His mind, trained to solve problems, automatically traced the path of the stolen power line that fed it, the line that also powered the dim, flickering lights in the hovels next door.

He saw a woman quickly usher two shivering children inside a battered doorway. He saw an old man huddled under a makeshift awning, trying to stay dry.

They were all just "nobodies." They were told their place was here, in the rain and the ruin. That survival was the only ambition allowed to them. That advancement was impossible.

The council's fear wasn't of a child. It was an idea. The idea that a nobody from the slums could possess a power they couldn't control. The idea that he could show everyone else that the boundaries placed on them were lies.

The doubt didn't vanish; it was forged into something harder. Into purpose.

Allain was watching him, his usual smirk gone, replaced by a look of quiet expectation. He wasn't going to give Daniel courage. He was waiting to see if Daniel would find it himself.

Daniel’s shivering stopped. His small hands, one flesh and one metal, clenched into fists.

Without a word, he turned his back on the council building and stepped off the stairs, into the flowing gutter. The water was ice-cold, but he didn't flinch. He began to walk, not with haste, but with a grim, newfound determination, heading straight for the glow of his forge.

Allain’s grin returned, wider and more genuine than before. He fell into step beside him. "Where to now, boss?"

Daniel didn't look at him, his eyes fixed on the light ahead, a lone star in the drowning dark. "The council is afraid of the attention I draw?" he said, his voice low and steady, carrying a new, dangerous edge. "Good."

He lifted his gauntleted arm, rain sizzling on its warm power core.

"Then it's time to give them something to really look at. It's time to build something they can't ignore."