Where the Gears Wake

An eerie silence pressed against the walls of the workshop, broken only by the slow pop of cooling metal. Dust hung in the air like faint smoke, drifting through narrow beams of light that spilled from the high windows. The smell of hot brass and burnt oil clung to the wooden beams, as if the room itself had been steeped in years of labor. Every wall was adorned with gadgets—some small, some towering, all intricate, all seemingly alive with turning cogs. One object caught his eye: a finely stitched fedora with a spyglass mounted at its front. At its rear, an emblem was engraved—a skull with wings. He looked away, then glanced back. The emblem had vanished. A small window slammed shut behind where the fedora had been. His senses felt fragile, faltering. He shook his head in denial.

“Something the matter?” A low voice questioned him.

“N-No… Just looking around”

“Good. Now sit down, boy.”

Heart pounding, he grabbed the pocket watch he had found earlier and shuffled to a chair in front of a cluttered desk. Fidgeting, he avoided eye contact, simply wanting to evade trouble. In a world he didn’t understand, anything could go wrong in an instant.

“Why’d ya steal that pocket watch ya have there? Ya poor? Need a bit of coin?”

“I… I didn’t ste—”

“A word of advice,” the man interrupted, voice deep but sharp. “Lying gets ya nowhere in this world, better off saying the truth from the get go…”

He shifted his hand slowly towards his left eye, gently touching below it. An eye that was soulless, hollow, sheltered by a wide scar faded by time.

“Trust me… It ain’t worth a dime…”

The man cleared his throat and adjusted a layered monocle over his right eye, blinking with deliberate slowness. His hands stroked a long, grey beard, lost in thought. His bald head glistened, surrounded by saturated hairs, the last of which he had left. Then he sat. His leather apron molded over his chubby figure as he adjusted his seat, and he planted his hands on the desk.

“What’s ya name, boy?”

He didn’t expect a question like that, and sat there motionless. His already pale skin continued to get whiter as the seconds ticked by, awaiting his response.

Why does time have to be so cruel…

Thoughts racing in his head, he had to reply soon. He gulped, opened his mouth, but closed it again.

He won’t believe me if I say I don’t know, he’s just going to think I’m trying to get away with stealing something I never stole!

He looked intently at the pocket watch, flipping it around and reading the words etched closely.

Lumen huh…

“Ya just gonna ignore your elders—”

“Lumen… My name’s Lumen.”

The man across from him raised an eyebrow. Doubt flashed across his face, but he remained silent, stroking his beard again.

“…Lumen, eh? A unique name, I must say.”

“W-What about you… Sir.”

The man laughed, low and rough. “Heh. I don’t go by names, boy. I go by titles. They call me ‘The Artificer’. Ya would do well to do the same.”

Lumen nodded, unnervingly compliant. Not obeying felt dangerous.

“Glad we got that out of the way. Now, a proposal: buy that watch from me, and I’ll let ya go. What say you? Not like ya got much choice.”

His body ached, he felt ashamed, belittled for a crime he didn't even commit. It was a lose-lose situation. Lumen knew he had no money to give nor the skills required to escape a master craftsman called ‘The Artificer’. But what choice did he have? It’s either that, or a potential worse consequence he wasn’t willing to find out.

“I-I don’t have any money…”

“Ah, well that’s a shame. Ya know, rare to see one of ya hybrids out here on this island. Quite a crafty arm and eye ya got there… Sure they’d go for a hefty price!”

The Artificer grinned, his eyes laser focused on the brass limb Lumen had on his left. Steam vented from his exposed shoulder, containing twisted pipes tinted bronze. A large cog at the base of his metallic forearm puppeteered his fingers, with wooden chippings at the tips moving independently. Lumen swallowed, unsure whether to laugh or panic as the Artificer kept glancing between his left eye, that zoomed in and out of focus, and his left arm, which had a soul of its own. Both connected via steel pipes burrowed in his skin.

“I could put them to good use ya know.”

Met with an awkward pause, Lumen waited for the punchline. But was instead given a sincere stare.

He’s dead serious… Surely there must be another way!

“...L-Listen… What if I were to… Work for you… To pay off the debt?” Lumen offered, forcing a shaky smile.

“HAH! Ya think ya got the skills to work for me? A master craftsman? Don’t make me laugh! Even with an arm like that ya would need years of work just to be worthy of even approaching me!”

Lumen’s cheeks burned. He dropped his gaze, staring at a crack in the floorboards, wishing the room would swallow him whole.

The Artificer threw his head back and laughed, the sound bouncing off the walls. His hand smacked the desk, rattling the gadgets. The laughter broke into a rough cough, his frame shuddering. Lumen stepped forward to help, but the old man raised a palm, stopping him like a wall.

For a heartbeat, there was something in the Artificer’s eyes — guilt, maybe, or an old memory — before it vanished. He sighed, “Why even suggest such a thing? This type of work ain’t for the faint hearted.”

Lumen hesitated, his fingers brushing the frayed edge of his scarf. “Because… it feels like I’ve been given a fresh start,” he said at last. “No… past, no… Well…” he smiled faintly, “I guess some debt now…” He looked up to the ceiling, “...I just… have this gut feeling that I should take this chance to live quietly.”

The old man’s brow twitched, but he said nothing. Instead, he reached under the desk, and set a half-dismantled gadget between them.

“...Tools can rebuild a body,” he murmured, tapping the warped frame, “but they can’t breathe life into it.” He clicked a gear into place. “The trick ain't just fixing what’s broken… it’s guiding it back to what it was meant to be. Every creation remembers its purpose. Forget that, and all ya have built is a corpse that moves.”

His gaze lifted, catching Lumen’s. “Same with people, boy. Forget what ya were, and ya might move, but ya will never truly live.”

Lumen blinked, unsure if the words were meant for him or the mangled device.

“I… suppose that makes sense,” he said, the words coming out flatter than he intended. His gaze drifted to the window, anywhere but the old man’s eyes.

But the sentence stuck, lodged in his chest like a splinter.

The Artificer let the silence hang for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, pushing the half-repaired gadget toward him, “if ya so eager for a fresh start, here’s ya first step.

He slid a small tin of tools across the desk. “Finish bringing this creation back to life. If ya succeed…” His smile was faint but sharp. “…I’ll consider letting ya work off that debt.”

Lumen’s fingers hovered over the tin. His first instinct was to snatch it up before the old man could change his mind — but the weight of the challenge pressed down harder than the tin itself.

Bring it back to life? His stomach twisted. He wasn’t a craftsman. And yet… if the alternative was losing an arm, an eye — or worse — then he’d have to try.

Lumen exhaled, readying himself. He gulped aggressively, and his mechanical arm was steady and prepared, awaiting the input of data collected from his eye. It examined the gadget closely. Flaps allowed steam to escape, and gears inside were slightly misaligned, revealing their polished metal. Pipes, sliced in half and barely hanging on, were bolted to the top of what looked less like a machine and more like a child’s toy puppet. The arm exhausted steam from its shoulder and began to move. It went ahead of Lumen, jerking him forward. The pipes at the top of the puppets head were bolted together, providing stability and allowing it to stand tall. The insides, where gears spewed out, were snapped into place with careful precision and sewn shut in the belly of the puppet, still letting some gears show from its sides for aesthetic purposes. The flaps on its arms were extended ever so slightly to allow for steam to escape. And before they knew it, steam hissed. A perfectly balanced puppet of string and wool, cogs and pipes, sat upright and tilted its head ever so slightly, a tiny marvel of engineering and life.

Lumen’s heart hammered in his chest. Sweat ran down his temple. His brass hand twitched nervously, unsure if it had just done this, or if the puppet had willed itself alive.

What… how… is this even possible? Did I—did my arm just do this on its own?

Lumen continued to look puzzled at his own being, repeatedly opening and closing his brass hand.

“Well I’ll be damned…”

The Artificer stood up, and approached Lumen. Unsure of what was to come, he readied himself for the worst. The old man raised his arm to his head, shooting it in front of him. Lumen flinched, eyes shut, protecting his face with both arms.

“Ya start tomorrow,” he said, voice firm but not unkind. “Spare room at the back. Don’t make a mess, ya hear me?”

Numb, Lumen shook his hand, still trying to process what had just happened.

“I SAID DO YA HEAR ME!”

“Uh… uh… y-Yes, Artificer Sir!”

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The next morning, the workshop was a hive of clinks, hisses, and the smell of burnt oil. The Artificer shoved a rolled blueprint into Lumen’s chest.

“Got a request from the Cogsworth Manor. Their ‘piano’—” he said the word like it tasted sour, “—isn’t breathing right. Go fix it. And don’t touch anything else.”

Lumen glanced at the sketch. It wasn’t a piano. Not really. A forest of brass pipes curled where strings should be, its keys inlaid with tiny pressure valves. It looked like an organ and a locomotive had an argument and decided to live together.

“I-I don’t really know my way around this place… Where is this… Manor?”

The Artificer froze mid-step, eyebrows climbing. “Ya don’t know where Cogsworth Manor is? Hah! Guess they really scraped the bottom o’ the barrel with ya. It’s up on the ridge — just follow the main road ‘til ya out of breath, then look for the biggest pile of stone that thinks it’s better than ya. Can’t miss it.”

Outside, steam curled from grates in the cobblestones, coiling around his boots. Gears whirred behind shop shutters as merchants cranked open their stalls. A clockwork bird hopped along a gutter, chirping in a tinny imitation of a sparrow. Lumen kept his head down, aware of the curious glances at his brass arm and mechanical eye as he followed the directions given by the Artificer.

The streets narrowed as he climbed the ridge, market chatter fading into the hiss of wind between slate roofs. Then Cogsworth Manor came into view — a towering structure of dark stone and narrow windows, its brass fixtures glinting faintly in the fog.

Cogsworth Manor… This has to be it. Looks… bigger up close.

A wrought-iron gate loomed before him, its hinges whispering with the faint sigh of steam. Beyond it, a grand fountain dominated the front garden — a tiered sculpture of interlocked gears and leaping brass fish, its jets sending warm plumes of vapor into the cool morning.

The air here was still. Too still. As his knuckles touched the door, it swung open on its own with a low, mechanical sigh.