The canteen stood on one of the intermediate levels of the university, open to the evening air. Wide arcades overlooked the valley below, and the wind made the harmonic cables stretched between the columns vibrate softly. With every gust, a metallic murmur passed through the hall, as if the building itself were breathing.

Maxime pushed away his still-warm bowl — black bread, roasted vegetables, and a sauce far too salty that everyone mockingly called “nutrient fluid.”

“I maintain,” he said, wiping his hands on his tunic, “that Master Khorin has a personal hatred for automaton knees.”

“Incorrect,” Iria replied without looking up. “He hates all mobile joints. The knee is simply his favorite.”

There were six of them around the table. They had just finished their course in animated mechanics, and their hands still carried the scent of heated metal.

“Do you remember,” Jorel laughed, “when he asked you why your automaton was limping?”

“Yes…”

“And you answered, ‘Because it doubts’?”

Laughter broke out.

“I was serious,” Maxime protested. “It hesitated before every step.”

“It is a machine, not a poet,” Khorin had replied, implacable.

Iria finally set down her spoon.

“The worst was when he dismantled my gear assembly just to ask if I had listened to it.”

“Had you?”

“No. But I do now. It squeaks when it’s offended.”

They exchanged more stories:

an automaton that refused to obey an impatient student,
another that froze in the corridor because someone whistled off-key,
and the time — told for the tenth time — when a student swore his project whispered his name at night.

Twilight light turned amber against the pale stone and polished copper walls.

Then the bell rang.

A single strike. Long. Deep.

The sound did not rise from below, but from above, from the great central tower. It descended along the levels, slid across the terraces, and passed through the canteen like a slow wave. Conversations extinguished instantly.

Maxime felt a chill run down his spine.

“Twenty-one,” someone murmured.

“The Birth,” Iria said.

They stood almost at the same time. Trays were abandoned. No one ran, no one raised their voice. Along the open corridors, students converged toward the ascending stairways and suspended walkways, drawn by a shared force.

At the summit of the university, the cathedral awaited.

Where the Physician-Electrician was already preparing the copper nerves.

Where the Acoustic Priest, surrounded by his network of voices and singing pipes, was tuning the silence.

Maxime lifted his eyes toward the tower, whose upper windows pulsed with a pale glow.

“Do you think it will speak tonight?” he asked.

Iria shrugged.

“They all speak. The real question is — to whom.”

The ascent to the cathedral followed a wide external ramp spiraling around the tower. The wind was stronger here. It tugged at cloaks, made the metal railings tremble, and sang in the tensioned wires between the levels.

Maxime walked in silence, slightly behind the others.

With every step, the same thought returned — dull, insistent — the one he had been pushing aside for weeks.

Why me?

He knew how to assemble. He knew how to calculate. He knew how to listen to a mechanism long enough to understand when it was lying or when it was fatigued.

But tonight was not an exercise.

Not a failed prototype.

Not a pedagogical automaton.

It was a Birth.

He remembered the Master’s hands earlier that day, stopping mid-gesture.

“You are precise, Maxime. Too precise. You always seek to understand before you accept.”

At the time, he had nodded, almost pleased.

Now, the sentence weighed on him.

What if they were wrong?

What if the voice they claimed to hear in machines was nothing more than an echo of their own pride?

He paused, resting his hand on the cold railing.

Below him, the university levels stretched downward, illuminated by slow lamps. Ferrum-Vivum was not a place of darkness. It was a place of will. Everything rose. Everything sought the sky.

“You are doubting,” Iria said softly, without turning.

Maxime almost startled.

“What do you think?”

“It’s a good sign,” she answered. “Those who never doubt tighten the bolts too hard.”

She offered him a brief, tired smile.

“And besides… we are not the ones who will give it a voice. We will only witness.”

The cathedral dominated everything else. It was not massive, but drawn upward, as if stretched by an invisible force. Slender arches. Metallic ribs. Translucent panes crossed by cables and pipes.

Inside, the silence was nearly total.

Students took their places on the circular tiers above. Below, at the center, the altar-table occupied the space: white stone veined with copper, encircled by electrical devices, levers, and coils.

Upon the table lay the body of the machine.

Humanoid. Restrained. No sculpted face — only a smooth surface interrupted by fine lines. The limbs were secured, not by constraint, but by precaution.

The Physician-Electrician entered without announcement.

His presence altered the air itself. Maxime felt his hair rise slightly. Discrete sparks ran along the cables of the ceiling.

The Physician inspected the connections, touched a copper nerve, corrected a tension. Each gesture was calm, almost tender.

Then came the Acoustic Priest.

He carried no visible instrument. Only a network of tubes, wires, and membranes linking his chest to the walls, to the organ, to the cathedral itself. When he inhaled, the building inhaled with him.

He raised his hand.

The interior bell resonated — not struck, but tuned.

The Physician placed both hands upon the altar.

Above them, the batteries awakened.

Lights ignited in succession, from dark red to pale azure. The condensers aligned along the arches responded with a progressive hum. It was not an explosion, but a pressurization — as though the cathedral were holding its breath.

He tightened a contact.

Reoriented a copper nerve.

Opened a secondary transmission channel.

Each correction produced a sharp click, followed by an electrical wave running along the metallic structures and vanishing into the heights.

Across the chamber, the Acoustic Priest calibrated.

A gesture of the hand, and the tonal organs emitted a brief note that traveled the space and returned laden with measured echoes. He adjusted his breathing. A second note followed, deeper, synchronized perfectly with the battery cycle.

“Transmission stable,” the Physician said quietly.

The Priest inclined his head.

“Initialization.”

The batteries released their primary charge.

This time the rumble was real — deep and continuous. Arcs of electricity leapt briefly between copper terminals before being captured by designated channels. Cables vibrated. Panes trembled faintly.

Maxime felt the discharge inside his chest.

The Priest intoned the note.

Not a prayer.

A signal.

Internal systems aligned. Flows synchronized. The rumble subsided into a steadier, more organic hum.

The machine inhaled.

The internal vibration stabilized.

And the voice emerged.

Faintly metallic. Still raw. Perfectly audible.

“Where… am I?”

There were no cries. No panic.

Students began writing.

Masters observed their readings.

The Priest adjusted the resonance.

The Physician recorded the charge levels.

Everything unfolded as intended.

Maxime felt his doubt transform — not into fear, nor exaltation — but into responsibility.

At Ferrum-Vivum, no one marveled that machines could speak.

It was not a miracle.

It was a beginning.