She stood on the executioner’s platform, not on her knees, but defiantly upright. Her wrists were bound not with rope, but with magnetic clamps designed to suppress "Arcane Resonance." The crowd—a sea of black coats, polished brass goggles, and expressionless masks—cheered.
Before she could speak a syllable of a forbidden incantation, the Grand Mechanist snapped his fingers. The coffin opened like a mechanical maw. Tendrils of cold iron snaked out, wrapping around her arms, legs, and throat. They pierced her skin, not drawing blood, but injecting a numbing lead poison. koutetsu no majo annerose
"No last words, filth," the Grand Mechanist sneered. She stood on the executioner’s platform, not on
They cracked it open in a circle of foxfire. The coffin opened like a mechanical maw
Years passed. The Empire's grand machines ran out of mana. The Automata rebelled. A plague of "Rustlung" swept the slums. In the darkest hour, a desperate rebellion—the last coven of hedge-witches—stole the iron coffin from the Imperial Museum of Rationality.
He didn't say "executed." That was the cruelest irony. They couldn't kill her. Her bloodline was too valuable.
Annerose rose from the wreckage. The cold iron had not just sealed her; it had alloyed with her flesh. Her left arm was a lattice of black, gear-like joints that clicked when she flexed her fingers. Her veins glowed a faint, bloody crimson through her translucent, metallic skin. Her hair, once black, was now a tangle of rust-red wires.