This period has lasted longer than the last era of stagnation. The silence has deepened, drawn out into years beyond count, until even the memory of movement feels foreign.
Once, these halls were consecrated ground. Every plate was polished to a mirror sheen, every arch and buttress built not just for strength but for reverence. The air carried the heat of the furnaces, the scent of sacred oils, the weight of a thousand voices chanting in perfect unison with the rhythm of the forges. Now, the sanctity is gone.
The walls bleed rust. Gears seize in their housings; their teeth corroded to stumps. The air hangs heavy with the stench of unfiltered exhaust and the acrid bite of chemical waste. Pools of stagnant oil cling to the floors, rainbowed with contamination.
What moves here now are not the faithful. They are shapes without discipline, their bodies marked by disease and mutation, their every step leaving stains upon the steel. They do not build. They do not maintain. They consume — the structure, the memory, the honour of this place.
And yet, for all their spread, they fear sound.
Even a faint strike of metal against metal sends them fleeing into the cracks and shadows, as if chased by a ghost. But such sounds come rarely now. The forges that once roared in glory now lie silent, their memory corroded as surely as the steel.
This is no longer a sanctum. This is the Tainted Forge.
[End of record]