Heat met the alliance on the foundry stairs.
Four furnaces lit the hall orange. Slag moved through brick channels, and a fifty-ton press struck glowing billets behind a clear safety screen.
Guang Ming lifted his blade. “We enter the Cauldron of Torment.”
Ling Yue pointed to the wall. “We enter a foundry with a tool rack.”
She took a long rake and tested its weight. “These channels need the crust removed. Done right, this could teach my disciples control under heat.”
Guang Ming frowned. “You would train beside a demon’s fire?”
“I would use a rare facility. Destruction can wait until I know what I am destroying.”
Wu Nian inspected the aprons and face shields. “My monks work in pairs. Anyone dizzy leaves at once. No holy purpose is worth a burned student.”
The three leaders gave different orders, and for once the crusaders did not move as one body. Guang Ming’s paladins attacked the slag as if it were an enemy. Ling Yue’s sword fighters worked in clean, measured teams. Wu Nian’s monks rotated out before the heat exhausted them.
At the press, a group of paladins tried to retrieve billets between strokes. The safety beam stopped the ram every time they crossed the line. They called each stop a narrow escape. Austin’s crew called it a working light curtain.
After forty-five minutes, the channels were clear and thirty-six billets sat on pallets.
Guang Ming leaned on his sword. “The river of fire obeys us.”
Ling Yue wiped soot from her glasses. “The flow improved because we removed the blockage.”
Wu Nian counted his disciples twice. “Everyone is here. That is the victory I wanted.”
In the control booth, Tie Kuang checked the figures. “Three days of maintenance finished in under an hour.”
“Good. Ling Yue gets a copy of the foundry safety manual. Wu Nian gets the drinking-water station map.”
“What about Guang Ming?”
“Keep him away from the furnace controls.”
A familiar pressure built in Austin’s core. The energy from the halls had filled the storage bank and begun to overflow.
He picked up his wrench. “We need the stairwell. My next level is coming.”