Reborn

The furnace had been cold for twenty years when the body arrived. No name, no pulse, no record of who dragged it through the ash district and laid it on the iron conveyor. Then the machinery restarted. Rusted pistons struck. Chains pulled the corpse beneath the furnace mouth, where old industrial fire poured over bone, skin, and shattered steel. The system did not heal what had been lost. It replaced it with whatever the factory still remembered how to build. By the time the conveyor reached the far end, the figure stood beneath a storm of sparks, its lungs pulling smoke instead of air. Every scar glowed from within. Every step left a black footprint in the ash. It had been stripped down to nothing, burned clean, and assembled again by a machine that had forgotten mercy.