Across the ridge, the remaining Allied landships saw the signal. They didn't retreat. Instead, they steered into one another, interlocking their iron plating and welding their hulls together in a desperate, makeshift wall of steel.

But for every machine the Allies downed, two more marched out of the haze. This was the horror of the Iron Storm: an endless assembly line of destruction.

The engagement began not with a bang, but with a rhythmic, mechanical thrum that vibrated in the marrow of Thorne’s bones. The Leviathan’s forward batteries—massive 400mm cannons—thundered in unison.

"Pressure at eighty percent, Captain!" the engineer shouted through a brass speaking tube. "The boilers are screaming!"

By 1912, the European front was a mangled graveyard of scorched earth and twisted metal. They called the latest offensive the . The Vanguard of Rust