The Train Beneath the World

The black train did not climb so much as remember how to fall.

It rose beneath the Alchemist Train with its wheels turning in empty air, a long iron shadow against the pale underside of the continent above. No lamps shone in its windows. No steam escaped its chimneys. Yet every time its engine beat, the rails beneath Oliver’s train trembled as if something enormous had struck them from below.

Oliver kept both hands on the controls. The fuel gauge had no needle now. It showed a black circle, perfect and depthless, where the measure of human feeling ought to have been.

“How far?” Nadia asked from behind him.

“Far enough.”

“That is not a distance.”

“It’s the one I have.”

The Horologist stood beside the firebox, his coat unmoved by the violent ascent. He held a pocket watch open in one hand. Its face contained no numbers, only a single narrow door painted blue.

“Do not look directly at the other train,” he said.

Nadia glanced through the cab window. “Why?”

“Because it is looking back.”

The black train gave a shrill whistle. The sound entered the engine cab without passing through the glass. Oliver felt it in his teeth. On the gauge, the black circle shivered, and a thought that did not belong to him brushed across his mind.

Let us pass.

He nearly released the brake.

Nadia seized his shoulder. “What did you hear?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a poor liar.”

“I’m an engineer.”

“Then engineer us away from it.”

Oliver pushed the throttle forward. The Alchemist Train surged upward, its carriages groaning behind them. Across the sky, fragments of a former mountain drifted like ships caught in a tide. The track ahead climbed toward the upper continent, but half its rails had already detached from the stone and hung unsupported over the blue abyss.

The black train matched their speed.

Its windows were not dark, Oliver realized. They were filled with scenes. A woman laughing beside a kitchen stove. A boy holding a paper crown. Two soldiers embracing before a battle. The images flickered past, each one bright with an emotion so sharp Oliver could almost taste it.

Then the scenes changed.

A funeral beneath red rain. A child calling for a mother who would not answer. A room where someone had waited years beside an unopened door.