**SCENE.** You pivot and raise your blade horizontal just as the Forge-Warden's meteor-hammer descends in a screaming arc. The impact detonates through your arms—steel meets iron with a sound like a cathedral bell struck by lightning—and the deflection sends the hammer crashing into the obsidian floor three feet to your left, where it punches a crater and sprays molten fragments across your boots. The Warden staggers, off-balance, furnace-breath wheezing through his visor. **BEAT.** But the parry costs you. Both chain-makers lunge in synchronized precision—one seizes your left arm in superheated iron fingers, flesh blistering instantly, while the other drives a red-hot fist into your ribs with bone-cracking force. You hear something crack inside your chest as pain floods white across your vision. The Warden wrenches his hammer free and turns, molten slag dripping from its face, already winding up for a killing blow while his puppets pin you in place. Your blade arm is still free—barely.