Steam, Ashen Bones, and a Crimson Bride

The steam dynasty is on the brink of collapse.

Su Tan stands atop the ruins, a blood-seeping bone shard in her palm: the construction order Pei Yan cut from her by his own hand.

The steam-powered iron cage that strangled her entire family ten years ago now coils around his waist. The sound of gears biting into flesh hurts more than her father's screams did back then.

“Break the blood pact,” he says, his bloodied hand gripping her embroidery frame. “Then you can be a free embroiderer of locks.”

But she presses the bone shard into the cage's core, and rust-red golden threads crawl along the mechanism's patterns to fill the sky.

“Master Pei,” she laughs amid the roar, “I never wanted freedom. I want to burn down these inhuman rules with you.”