In the steel city where gears mesh, only "existence" is the most dangerous privilege.
Ulysses von Kroll, a graduate petroleum engineer at Wigmar College, lives a peaceful life accompanied by the steam formula. Until the "laboratory accident" that devoured his parents five years ago, until a breathing black fragment awakened in his hand - it was the "paradox fragment", the legendary broken original truth that can reshape reality and turn the city into ashes of logic.
"Existence precedes everything, including truth."
This is his "reason" - a supernatural power called [Preexistence Theory]. He can see the chain of existence behind all things, and he can also cut it with his own hands. But this talent made him the prey of all forces. In the thick smoke of the steam locomotive, under the light of reason, he will face an ultimate argument about existence:
Are you wiping out the relics your parents guarded with their lives to protect the city?
Or witness millions of people turn into nothingness in the flames of perfect logic?
"You ask me what truth is?" Ulysses raised the gear dagger and pointed at the burning gear tower in the night sky.
"The truth is tonight - who of us deserves to live until dawn."
