Between the iron portcullis grate where Jon Hale stood and the central pedestal where Marshal Ors waited with his three men, twenty paces of flooded granite floor hissed and bubbled like a shallow cauldron. Every rivet along the outer jacket of the Crown Furnace was weeping scalding condensation, and three paces to Jon’s right—bolted directly into the granite pier supporting the main intake manifold—hung the auxiliary bronze bypass box that governed the mechanical linkage between the three thermal pressure rings and the cellar spike above.
When Alden Bram and Jon had inspected this chamber in the eleventh and twelfth cycles, Bram had traced the copper governor rods running from that square bronze box up the masonry shaft to the base of the Hearth Nail. So long as the internal brass shear-pins inside that box remained intact, the furnace’s mechanical governor could still physically couple its spinning mercury rings to the spike—meaning that anyone who seized the stone bowl or forced the bypass lever could attempt to jam the rewind gear back into engagement before the water boiled dry.
Still hovering at the upper edge of Jon’s vision, pulsing in urgent sapphire block letters against the steam, the system prompt repeated its final bureaucratic plea:
