The Smouldering Symphony of The Forgotten

The air of the midnight Undercity was thick with the smell of smoke and metal, the burning factories that raged above in the Surface City rained molten slag fragments on the hastily evacuated workers. Frightened eyes stared at the blazing sun that suffocated the black sky, utterly astonished at the raging infernos that was once their prison, factory floors once crowded with malnourished and sleep deprived workers were now graves for factory security officers and law enforcement, buried under a melting mountain of molten steel and slag.

The perpetrators of this act of war barely escaped the fire, two brothers supporting a barely alive half orc upon their shoulders, their faces covered in sweat, dust and blood. Their ramshackle armor barely remained, having been cleaved and blasted apart. Patches of their skin were burned from the slag and they had numerous cuts peppering their able bodied frames. The half orc being carried by them was barely conscious, his lungs wrecked by smoke and his mechanical arm ripped clean from its socket. His legs were crushed beyond repair, dragging limply underneath his beaten and broken frame. His previously glistening armor became steel scraps that barely clung onto his lacerated skin. His glassy eyes were unfocused, barely seeing the present as his head swayed with each step the brothers took. The younger brother, Leonel gritted his teeth as they trudged onward back to the Lying Knight, the only sanctuary they could turn to.

“Just hold on Johan! We’re gonna get you back and get you fixed up good as new! I swear!”

Julian grumbled taking on the brunt of Johan’s limp body, his chest tight with anxiety and regret. 

“I should’ve never told you where Hargrave’s largest factory was… This was a suicide mission…”

Johan didn’t have the strength to reply and his mind drifted as the brothers carried him, fragments of memory bleeding through the haze of pain and exhaustion. The factory… the heart of Hargrave’s warforged empire. He remembered the labyrinthine halls, the suffocating heat, and the unyielding hum of machinery.

And the core—the center of the hivemind. A massive construct of glowing, pulsating energy that controlled Hargrave’s legions. Deep within, Johan had found something unexpected: a sealed compartment, holding a fragment that flickered erratically. At first, he thought it was a malfunction. But as he studied it, even through the chaos of the battle raging around him, something about it felt… alive.

He had no time to fully understand it, but his instincts told him it was vital. A flaw in the hivemind? A corruption? Whatever it was, Johan knew it couldn’t stay there. Using Phos, his trusted automaton companion, as a vessel, he had extracted the fragment. The transfer was violent, sparks flying as the fragment fought against containment. Phos’s small frame shuddered, its eyes flickering briefly before stabilizing. Johan had no idea what he had just done, only that the fragment pulsed now with an energy he couldn’t explain.

The extraction triggered an immediate response from the hivemind. Alarms blared, and Hargrave’s warforged converged on him. Johan fought desperately, pushing himself far beyond his limits. He remembered the sound of his arm being torn away, the sickening crunch as his legs were crushed under a warforged’s weight. He had screamed for Phos to escape, to get the fragment out, even as his body gave out beneath the relentless assault.

Through the chaos, he could still see Phos darting away, its small form carrying the fragment into the inferno. His vision blurred, his strength failing. That was when the brothers had arrived, cutting through the warforged to drag him from the battlefield.

Johan’s body finally gave out as the darkness claimed his vision.

The Fysher brothers managed to slink their way back to The Lying Knight, Bart nearly had a heart attack seeing his nephew mutilated. He practically jumped over the counter to rush to them as they dragged Johan through the front door.

“Good Gods!!! What happened?!”

Julian spoke first, his words heavy with shame. “We destroyed Hargrave’s main factory. Shut it down completely. But Johan… he took the brunt of it.”

Leonel chimed in, forcing a hollow grin. “We crippled his warforged production. Hargrave will feel this one for a long time.”

As the midnight patrons cheered for their victory, Bart took Johan into his arms, his nephew was barely breathing as he felt unnervingly light for someone his size.

“My boy…”

He took his nephew into the back room of the tavern and did what he could to save his only remaining family member. 

The days that followed were a blur of pain and silence. Johan drifted in and out of consciousness, his thoughts fractured and chaotic. The memories of the factory and the fragment haunted him, each flash filling him with unease.

When he finally woke fully, he found himself in a dim room, his body wrapped in bandages. The first thing he noticed was the absence—the empty space where his legs should have been. He stared at the bandaged stumps, his breath catching in his throat. His mechanical arm was gone too, leaving only the hollow ache of what had been torn away.

Leonel and Julian were the first to see him awake. Leonel’s face lit up with forced optimism. “You’re alive!” he exclaimed.

Johan’s gaze remained fixed on his missing limbs. His voice was quiet, hollow. “Alive? Is this what you call living?”

The brothers exchanged uneasy glances, unsure how to respond. Leonel spoke again, his tone desperate. “We’ll fix you up, Johan. Prosthetics, a new arm, whatever you need. You’ll be back to normal.”

“Normal?” Johan let out a bitter laugh. “I can’t fight. I can’t help. What good am I like this?”

Neither brother could find the words to comfort him. Julian’s guilt was etched into every line of his face, while Leonel’s attempts to lift Johan’s spirits only deepened the silence that followed.

Weeks passed, and Johan’s despair grew. He remained confined to the back room of the Lying Knight, helpless and powerless as the world continued without him. Bart, the brothers, and even the tavern’s regulars tried to cheer him up, but their efforts only deepened his bitterness.

Phos remained by his side, its small form a constant reminder of the fragment he had taken from the factory. Its eyes glowed faintly, almost as if watching him. Sometimes, in the dead of night, Johan thought he could feel the fragment pulsing—an echo of life, or something close to it.

“What are you?” he murmured one night, his voice barely audible. “Why were you locked away?”

Phos didn’t respond, but the fragment’s faint glow seemed to intensify, as though acknowledging his question.

The breaking point came on a sleepless night. Johan sat in the silence of the room, staring at the remnants of his body. The memories of the factory haunted him—the core, the fragment, the screams of workers fleeing for their lives. And Hargrave. Hargrave would rebuild. The factory might be gone, but the hivemind would return. And Johan? He would remain here, useless, while others fought and bled for the cause.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered to the darkness. “I can’t stay like this.”

The thought of the warforged they had salvaged—the cold, lifeless shell—loomed large in his mind. The fragment inside Phos had given it life. Could it do the same for him?

The next morning, Johan called the brothers to his room. His voice was hoarse but steady. “Julian. Do you still have that stolen warforged?”

“Johan… You’re not-”

“I am. There’s only one possible way for me to really make a difference. Otherwise all of this, all of our struggling will be for nothing.”

The brothers looked at each other in horror. But they quietly came to the realization that despite the sheer insanity of Johan’s plan, he was ultimately right.

Protests fell upon deaf ears as hours later, Johan was hooked up to the stolen cutting edge warforged, wires lodged into his temples, staring down at the machine that would be the vessel of his rebirth, the vessel of his liberation.

The charge was set, and the taboo procedure was set in motion.

Johan’s mind was pulled from its foundation of broken organics and into a blindingly bright system of what looked to be stars. Millions of small flickering lights blinded him as he felt his soul being pulled apart in millions of different directions.

Raw archaic magic seeped into every synapse, and ruthlessly pulled apart the half orc’s sense of self. He could see everything and nothing all at once. He could witness the daily suffering of millions of untold vagrants, he could see the creation of his new body, not forged by skilled craftsmen who have poured their life into their craft, the steel he was becoming was forged by nameless corporate slaves that laid the foundations for the so called “artisans” to paint over.

Iron was his skin, its luster painted on by the blood of thousands.

Every atom of magic could be heard, and they were all screaming.

The world is a symphony of suffering, and Johan could finally listen to its hauntingly dreadful melodies.

Just as his senses were stretched to their limits, just as he felt himself about to disintegrate into the deafening roar of overwhelming suffering, he found himself staring at a young boy in his father’s workshop. 

This young boy had a small metal sphere in his hands, he held it gently and whispered its name, hoping to finally have a friend after all this time.

“Phos… Phos can you hear me?”

The sphere blinked to life, the boy was elated!

The boy soon became a man. And that man had found a new family.

Family that fought alongside him for freedom, people from all walks of life that saw him as one of their own. 

People who in spite of everything, in spite of all the suffering fight for the possibility of having a better tomorrow.

He remembered why he’s even here in the first place.

Johan vowed to see his family again, and just as he vowed to his family he could feel the billions of quiet promises amongst the masses, the thousands upon thousands of untold families who fight everyday just to survive.

Just like his parents did, just like his friends do. 

Just like he needs to do.

Fight for the forgotten.

Everything coelesed into one infinitely dense point, and a sudden seize of control.

The warforged snapped to life, rising to the shock and terror of the brothers.

“J-Johan?…” Leonel barely stammered out.

Before Johan could respond, his gaze was drawn to Phos, still perched nearby. The faint, flickering glow in Phos’s eyes began to shift, cycling through hues of soft blues and greens, each pulse growing steadier, more alive. It was as if Phos itself was awakening, its presence suddenly vibrant and undeniable.

Johan’s senses sharpened as his soul fully anchored within his new form. Then, a voice broke the silence—soft, filled with wonder and a tinge of hope, emanating from Phos.

“Johan… Johan, can you hear me?”

The question hung in the air, joined by Leonel’s trembling voice as he tried to make sense of what stood before him. “Is it… really you?”

The warforged shifted, its green eyes glowing with quiet intensity as it regarded both the brothers and the small automaton. For a moment, there was only stillness. Then, Johan’s voice resonated from the steel shell, powerful and steady, carrying the weight of his conviction.

“It’s me,” he began, his gaze sweeping between the brothers and Phos. “Though officially, recognize me as Ferrum from now on. Johan was the name of a man bound by flesh and failure. Ferrum is who I need to be—strong, unbroken, and forged for the people.”

The light in Phos’s eyes pulsed brighter, the voice returning with elation. “Yes! Yes, we’re fighting for them! Together, Ferrum!”

Leonel let out a shaky breath, his shock giving way to a glimmer of hope. The machine’s glowing gaze turned upward, toward the future, as Ferrum took his first step into a new life—both human and machine, united in purpose.