Puzzling

Steven stepped through the next doorway...

...and immediately stopped.

"What the..."

The room beyond looked as though a tornado had torn through it.

Tables had been flipped onto their sides.

Bookshelves lay splintered across the floor.

Thousands of pages were scattered everywhere, forming drifts of yellowed paper ankle-deep in some places.

Several brass cabinets had been ripped completely off the walls, their contents strewn across the room.

Broken gears, springs, shattered lenses, snapped tools, and twisted lengths of copper tubing littered every available surface.

One wall bore deep gouges that looked as though something enormous had clawed its way across solid steel.

The marks were far too large to have been made by any of the constructs Steven had fought so far.

"...That's... concerning."

He crouched beside one of the gouges.

The metal had been peeled backward like soft clay.

Whatever had done this...

Had been monstrously powerful.

Nearby lay the remains of several constructs.

Not inactive.

Destroyed.

One had been ripped cleanly in half.

Another's head had been crushed inward by a single tremendous impact.

A third had been embedded halfway into the opposite wall as though it had been thrown with impossible force.

Steven slowly stood.

"...They didn't stand a chance."

His eyes scanned the room carefully.

Unlike the workshop, this destruction wasn't caused by age.

The damage looked violent.

Chaotic.

Almost desperate.

As though a battle had erupted here.

Or...

Something had escaped.

The thought sent a chill down his spine.

He continued searching cautiously.

A toppled drafting table held dozens of torn blueprints.

Most had been ripped beyond recognition.

Others were stained with dark brown spots that looked suspiciously like dried blood.

"...Can constructs even bleed?"

He immediately realized how stupid that sounded.

"No..."

"But whoever built this place probably did."

On another workbench sat several smashed glass containers.

Whatever liquid had once filled them had long since evaporated, leaving only strange crystalline residue clinging to the bottoms.

One entire corner of the room had collapsed inward.

Behind the fallen stonework Steven could just barely make out another passageway.

Except...

Massive chunks of ceiling completely blocked it.

"No getting through there."

His attention shifted toward the far wall.

Unlike everything else...

One enormous circular vault door remained firmly shut.

Its surface was covered in interlocking rings of brass, each engraved with countless tiny runes.

The center featured six empty circular sockets, each about the size of a baseball.

Steven approached cautiously.

"No handle..."

"No hinges..."

"No keyhole..."

Just six empty sockets.

He frowned.

"...Another puzzle."

Running his hand across the cold metal, he couldn't even tell where the door ended and the surrounding wall began.

Whatever lay beyond it...

Its creator had gone to extraordinary lengths to protect it.

Steven stepped back and looked around the ruined chamber one last time.

A workshop.

A library.

A hidden armory.

Now...

A room that looked like the site of an ancient massacre.

He couldn't shake the feeling that he was slowly piecing together fragments of a much larger story.

"...What happened here?" he whispered into the silence.

The only reply was the distant, rhythmic ticking of unseen gears somewhere deeper within the Gate.