The rear alley was a narrow, wind-scoured trench wedged between the back wall of the workshop and the vertical black cliff of the mountain ridge.
It was barely half past twelve, but the mountain sky had already curdled into a heavy, twilight lead. The only sound was the crunch of Ethan’s patched leather boots as he forced his way through the drifts, carrying an iron ash bucket full of steaming furnace cinders in one hand and a flat-bladed coal shovel in the other.
He stopped ten paces from the back gate, his breath puffing in quick white clouds.
Against the sheer rock wall leaned a massive mound of frozen coal slag—a pile of low-grade anthracite rubble, porous clinkers, and smelting refuse dumped there weeks ago by the illicit ore-washers operating further down the gulch. The snow had frozen over it like a grey iron dome, sealing the jagged chunks of rock beneath two inches of hard crust.
Ethan raised his shovel to heave the hot ash onto the pile.
Scritch.
The shovel froze mid-swing.
The sound was tiny, muffled by several feet of frozen stone and packed snow. It sounded like the wheeze of a cracked leather bellows, followed by a wet, clicking gasp.
Pip... chitter...
Ethan lowered the bucket into the snow. He held his breath, tilting his head toward the base of the mound.
"A rat?" he muttered aloud.
No rat could survive out here. At twenty below zero, an exposed rodent would have turned into a furry pebble in ten minutes.
He stepped closer, sinking up to his thighs in the powdery drift. Near the bottom of the slag heap, where two massive slabs of black stone leaned together to form a shallow triangular pocket, he noticed something strange.
A tiny, pencil-thin hole was bored through the snow crust.
Rising from the vent was a faint, wavering thread of pale yellow smoke. It drifted up into the freezing air, dissolving before it reached his chest, carrying the sharp, unmistakable tang of raw brimstone and volcanic ash.
Ethan didn't hesitate. He reversed the heavy iron shovel, jammed the steel blade beneath the topmost slab of frozen slag, and threw his weight onto the ash-wood handle.
The frozen rubble resisted with a stubborn, icy screech. Ethan braced his boots against the hidden stones beneath the snow and shoved downward with his shoulder.
CRACK.
The frost-weld shattered. He began tossing chunks of frozen coal aside with his gloved hands, digging into the heart of the pile like a terrier after a badger.
Three feet down, in the dark hollow beneath the rocks, his fingers brushed against something that was definitely not stone.
It felt like a handful of wet gravel wrapped in cold, stiff leather.
Ethan scooped the snow away, clearing the bottom of the pocket.
Curled tightly inside a nest of black coal dust lay a creature no larger than a man's palm.
It was a lizard—or something very close to one. It had four short, stout legs with curved claws, a blunt, rounded snout, and a thick, paddle-like tail that looked like the handle of a miniature war club.
A Pyre Gecko. An infant, barely hatched within the last month.
Ethan recognized the species from the old bestiary sketches Frank had kept behind the counter. They were creatures native to the deep volcanic fissures beneath the Frostwall Spires, thriving in sulfur vents and basalt tubes where temperatures hovered near boiling.
How a hatchling had ended up discarded in a frozen slag heap on the outskirts of Dawnstone was no mystery. An infant that showed signs of sickness or failing heat would be tossed into the garbage without a second thought.
The little creature was dying.
Its scales were coated in a fine layer of grey frost. Its eyes were sealed shut by crusted ice, and its throat convulsed with a weak, agonizing wheeze every three or four seconds.
A faint wisp of pale sulfur smoke sputtered from its nostrils, thinning with every heartbeat.
"Hang on, little one," Ethan muttered.
He stripped off his heavy right mitten, reached into the hollow, and gently cupped the tiny body in his bare palm.
The gecko weighed barely a pound, but touching it was a shock. If its internal core extinguished, its biological furnace would freeze solid, and its heart would stop forever.
Ethan wrapped the limp creature in the thick, dry hem of his boiled-leather apron, tucked it against his chest, grabbed his shovel, and scrambled back through the drifts toward the workshop.
He kicked the rear door open, backed through the threshold, and slammed the heavy oak door shut against the howling storm, throwing both iron deadbolts into place.
The workshop was a different world. The forge embers glowed cherry red, the air was warm with the scent of boiled mutton and dried mint, and the kettle on the hearth was simmering softly.
Ethan walked straight to the main workbench.
He cleared a circle in the center of the oak planks, laid down a double-thick square of clean sheepskin, and carefully set the frozen hatchling down.
The creature didn't move. Its tiny front claws were curled tight against its chest, its stubby tail stiff as an icicle.
Ethan leaned in close, letting the cool blue light flare across his vision.
The dim room faded into a sharp, luminous grid. As he looked into the gecko’s tiny chest, he didn't see bone and muscle; he saw a delicate, organic aether circuit.
At the center of its abdomen hovered a tiny, spherical organ—a biological fire core the size of a hazelnut. In a healthy gecko, this core would be a roaring, miniature sun of high-purity thermal aether, circulating heat through the blood vessels to keep its volcanic metabolism alive.
Right now, that core was almost completely dark.
[ORGANIC TELEMETRY // PRECURSOR FIRMWARE]
Subject: Pyre Gecko (Hatchling / Infant)
Core State: Thermal collapse; internal fire core output below 8%.
Critical Flaw: Severe sulfur starvation; lipid reserves depleted; aether channels choked with cold stagnation.
Immediate Protocol: External sulfur catalyst; high-lipid warm feed; manual aetheric defibrillation.
A throbbing pulse echoed behind Ethan’s temple, warning him of the mental drain, but he ignored it. The window stayed open, painting the gecko’s choked channels in flickering amber and dying blue.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
"Sulfur and fat," Ethan said, his voice clipped and fast. "He's starving and freezing at the same time."
He moved with the practiced speed of a field medic.
First, the catalyst.
Pyre Geckos didn't eat meat like ordinary lizards; their digestive systems were biological smelters that required raw minerals—primarily sulfur, charcoal, and trace nitrates—to sustain the chemical flame inside their cores.
Ethan darted across the room to the chemical shelf above the etching acid bench. He scanned the labels until his hand closed around a squat brown jar marked with an ancient alchemical triangle: Sublimed Flowers of Sulfur.
He pulled the cork and shook a small mound of bright yellow powder onto a clean wooden saucer.
Next was the fuel.
Ethan grabbed a clean tin cup, went to the bubbling iron pot on the hearth, and skimmed off two tablespoons of rich, golden mutton broth from the surface. The liquid was packed with rendered sheep tallow, salt, and melted marrow—pure, easily absorbable lipid calories.
He carried both back to the bench.
The gecko gave another weak, fluttering gasp. A tiny drop of clear liquid bubbled from its nostril and froze.
"Hold on, boy," Ethan murmured.
He took a small brass dropper from his watchmaker's rack, dipped it into the warm mutton broth, and drew up half a dozen drops.
Holding the little creature's head steady with his left thumb, Ethan used the polished horn tip of his bone scraper to gently pry open the hatchling’s jaws.
Inside, its mouth was not pink, but a pale, ashen grey. At the back of its throat, a tiny glowing orange speck—the intake valve of its fire stomach—flickered weakly, sputtering like a candlewick drowning in wax.
Ethan released a single drop of hot, rich mutton broth directly onto the tongue.
The hot liquid trickled down. For two seconds, nothing happened.
Then, the creature’s tiny throat muscles convulsed. It swallowed.
Gulp.
A faint shudder ran through its small ribcage. The orange ember at the back of its throat flared with a tiny, microscopic spark, hungrily absorbing the hot animal fat.
"Good boy," Ethan whispered. "Now the powder."
He dipped his index finger into the yellow sulfur powder, coating his skin in the fine, powdery dust. Then he rubbed another generous pinch across the soft, pebbled scales of its cold underbelly, right over the position of the fire core.
Through his Firmware vision, Ethan watched the sulfur particles filter into the skin pores.
The sulfur acted like dry kindling tossed onto dying coals. The heat couldn't circulate; it was building up in a dangerous, localized knot that threatened to burst the tiny organ.
"Clear the lines," Ethan told himself.
He set down the dropper and laid the warm, bare pad of his thumb flat against the gecko's chest, right over the center of the core.
He closed his eyes.
He tapped into the quiet, steady current in his own chest—the aether he had used to coax the pocket watch and tune the belfry gear. But this wasn't cold iron or brass; this was flesh, blood, and living flame.
Ethan gentled his flow. He didn't push. He acted as a bridge, matching his own bio-current to the ragged, stumbling rhythm of the little gecko’s heartbeat.
Thump... thump... thump...
With his thumb acting as an external ground, Ethan reached into the tangled energy loop. He smoothed away the cold knots, guiding the surging warmth from the mutton broth and the raw spark from the sulfur outward through the four main vascular channels leading to its limbs and tail.
In his vision, the dying grey lines running down the lizard's legs flared into brilliant, molten orange.
The temperature beneath his thumb skyrocketed.
From stone cold, the little body warmed to lukewarm, then hot, then fiercely burning. The frost on its scales melted in seconds, turning to clear droplets of water that instantly sizzled and vanished into steam.
Ethan felt a sudden, sharp jolt of raw heat bite into his thumb.
He pulled his hand back with a gasp.
On the workbench, the little gecko’s body swelled outward, puffing up like a round black leather ball!
Its eyes snapped wide open—large, slit-pupiled and glowing molten gold, flecked with fiery copper. It opened its wide, toad-like mouth, sucking in a huge, frantic gulp of the warm workshop air.
Its ribs expanded. Its throat bulged.
"Wait—" Ethan blurted out.
HIC-BURP!
A sound like an exploding firecracker echoed through the room.
From the hatchling's open mouth shot a pencil-thin, blinding jet of bright blue flame, accompanied by a shower of crackling yellow sparks and a loud pop!
The flame jet crossed eighteen inches of empty air and struck Ethan dead in the center of his chest.
Zzzzt!
Ethan yelped, jumping backward off the three-legged stool. He slapped wildly at the front of his boiled-leather apron, beating out a cluster of glowing red embers that had bitten straight through the heavy hide.
When he looked down, there was a neat, circular, smoking black hole burned clean through the chest of his apron, smelling strongly of charred leather and ozone.
On the workbench, the little gecko slowly deflated back to its normal size.
It blinked its huge golden eyes at Ethan. Its rounded black head tilted forty-five degrees to the left, and its short, stubby tail gave two rapid, cheerful thumps against the wooden tabletop.
Chrr-chirp!
It was a sound like two river pebbles being struck together underwater, followed by a bubbling purr.
Ethan stood there, staring at the smoking hole in his apron, then looked down at the palm-sized black lizard.
"Did you just burp a plasma jet at me?" Ethan asked, his voice deadpan.
The gecko gave another cheerful chirp, scrambled onto all four legs, and shook itself from nose to tail, spraying droplets of water across the wood. Its scales were no longer dull and dusty; they gleamed with the polished luster of black volcanic glass, and the veins running down its flanks glowed with a healthy, steady orange ember.
It sniffed the wooden saucer of sulfur powder, buried its entire snout in the dust, and licked the saucer clean with three sweeps of a long, fork-tipped black tongue.
Then it smelled the mutton broth.
Its head snapped toward the tin cup on the bench. In a blur of black scales and scrambling claws, the hatchling darted across the wood, hauled itself over the rim of the tin cup, and dunked its face straight into the warm broth, lapping up the fat with noisy, frantic slurps.
Slurp. Slurp. Slurp.
"Hey, leave some for dinner," Ethan chuckled, walking back to the bench.
The gecko finished the broth, raised its head, and licked its chops. Its round little belly was distended like a ripe melon, swollen with warm fat and sulfur.
It waddled toward Ethan, its clawed feet clicking rapidly against the oak boards. When it reached the edge of the bench, it looked up at him, made a soft whuff sound, and launched itself forward.
It landed squarely on Ethan’s forearm.
Before Ethan could react, the little beast scurried up the sleeve of his rough wool shirt with the speed of an angry squirrel, its sharp little claws digging into the fabric for purchase. It reached the crook of his neck, turned around three times like a dog settling into a basket, and wedged its entire body beneath the warm, folded collar of his leather apron.
Its short, paddle-like tail wrapped around the back of Ethan's neck like a heated scarf.
The skin against Ethan’s throat was pleasantly, wonderfully warm—not burning, but a steady, radiating seventy degrees of dry heat, like a smooth river stone pulled from a campfire.
The gecko rested its blunt chin on Ethan’s collarbone, closed its golden eyes, and let out a deep, vibrating purr that resonated through Ethan’s entire chest.
Ethan reached up with one finger and gently scratched the soft scales beneath its chin.
The purring grew louder, sounding like a tiny spinning wheel.
"I guess you live here now," Ethan said softly.
The lizard didn't open its eyes. It just gave a contented little snort, puffing a tiny, harmless ring of blue smoke from its left nostril.
"You're a tiny thing," Ethan muttered, walking over to the hearth. "A pip of an ember. That's what you are. Pip."
Pip’s stubby tail gave a single, drowsy flick against the back of his neck in agreement.
Ethan took a seat by the stone fireplace.
The birch embers in the hearth were crackling softly, casting long, dancing orange shadows across the timber walls of the old shop. And on his collar sat a living, purring furnace that seemed determined to never leave his neck.
For the first time since waking up in this freezing world, Ethan felt a deep, quiet sense of safety settle into his bones.
He had tools. He had coin. He had food. He had an ally.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone hearth, listening to the muffled tick-tack of the watch from the drawer and the purr of the gecko against his throat.
Then the wind changed.
Without warning, the dull rumble of the storm outside shifted into a high, shrieking scream.
A sudden, violent downdraft slammed down the stone chimney flue, scattering grey ashes across the hearth stones and momentarily flattening the red birch coals. The temperature inside the workshop plunged five degrees in a matter of seconds, sending a sharp shiver through Ethan’s shoulders.
Pip’s eyes snapped open. The little gecko’s purr cut off instantly, its claws tightening against Ethan’s shirt, its neck craning toward the front window with a low, wary hiss.
Ethan stood up and walked to the street window.
He wiped the glass clear of fresh frost and looked out.
The blizzard had turned into a howling whiteout monster. Drifts were climbing halfway up the first-floor shutters, and icicles as thick as a man’s thigh were forming along the eaves.
The mercury in the wall barometer wasn't just low; it had bottomed out against the iron stop pin.
The temperature was dropping through the floor—thirty below, perhaps worse.
And then, carried through the shriek of the gale from the direction of the lower quarter down the hill, came a sound that made the blood in Ethan’s veins run cold.
It wasn't the howl of a winter wolf, and it wasn't the groaning of the mountain.
It was the thin, shattered scream of a woman.
The wail was high, cracked, and full of raw, helpless agony. It cut straight through the roaring storm, followed by the frantic banging of pots and the muffled, desperate shouts of neighbors in the snow.
“Help! God's blood, someone help! She’s cold—she’s not breathing! The baby won’t wake up!”
Ethan stood frozen at the window, his fingers digging into the sill.
Gerrick’s words from earlier echoed in his mind: “Barrow’s coal wagons haven't moved in two days. The bastard is holding out for higher prices. Half the lower district is burning their own furniture to stay warm. If this storm holds through tomorrow, people are going to start freezing in their beds.”
Down in the lower tenements, the coal had run out.
The storm was settling in for the kill, and three copper pennies a bucket wasn't enough to save a child when the merchant locked his gates.
On Ethan’s shoulder, Pip let out another low, anxious whine, pressing his warm snout against Ethan’s cheek.
Ethan stared out into the blinding white tempest, his jaw tightening until the muscles ached.
"We need heat," he whispered into the dark room. "Real heat. And not just for this shop."