The doors to the Throne Room didn't creak. They slid open with a whisper of displaced air, revealing the sanctum of the man who owned the world.
Julian expected a fortress. He expected guards, turrets, and walls of weapons.
Instead, he stepped into a void.
The Throne Room was a massive, spherical chamber made entirely of transparent hyper-glass. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floor—only a thin, invisible walkway suspended in the center of the sphere.
Surrounding them was the universe. Below, the curve of the Earth, blue and fragile. Above, the infinite, unblinking stars.
And in the center of the walkway sat a simple chair.
It wasn't a golden throne. It was a medical chair, surrounded by a halo of floating holographic screens.
Sitting in it was Emperor Valerius.
He wasn't the giant who piloted the Avatar. He was a small, withered man. His skin was translucent like parchment, revealing a web of blue veins beneath. Tubes of golden fluid ran from the ceiling directly into his spine. He didn't look like a god. He looked like a patient on life support.
"You took your time," Valerius whispered. His voice wasn't amplified. It was frail, dry as dust.
"It's a long walk," Julian said, stepping onto the glass bridge. His nanite arm hummed, sensing the immense Aetheric energy radiating from the old man.
Marcus stopped ten feet back. He looked at the Emperor—the man he had served for twenty years—with a mixture of fear and pity.
"Your Eminence," Marcus bowed his head slightly. "The city... you tried to destroy it."
"I tried to prune a dead branch, Marcus," Valerius didn't turn around. He kept watching the Earth below. "To save the tree."
The History of Rust
"There is no tree," Julian walked closer. "Just you. And a ship built on blood."
Valerius tapped a key on his armrest. The holographic screens around him shifted. They showed images—not of the Empire, but of the Pre-Collapse Era.
"Do you know why the world broke, Julian?" Valerius asked.
"The Dissonance," Julian said. "A frequency from space."
"A scream," Valerius corrected. "From a dying star system. It hit Earth a thousand years ago. It didn't destroy buildings. It destroyed minds. It turned men into animals. It made the air itself vibrate with madness."
He gestured to the Earth.
"The Harmonic Ascendancy built the Titans to sing a counter-song. A shield. But it wasn't enough. The shield is failing. The Dissonance is returning. I can hear it."
He touched his temple.
"It is getting louder. In a year? Maybe two? Everyone on that planet will be screaming and tearing their own eyes out."
"So you decided to leave," Lyra accused, her hand on her pistol.
"I decided to preserve the species," Valerius said. "Titan 07 is not a station. It is an Ark. It can hold fifty thousand people in stasis. The best minds. The best genes. We will drift in the void until we find a quiet world."
"And the rest?" Julian asked. "The billions down there?"
Valerius finally turned his chair. His eyes were milky white—blind, but seeing everything.
"They are already dead," Valerius said softly. "They are the fuel. I harvest the Earth Titans to power the Ark's engines. It is a necessary sacrifice. One death to save the future."
The Offer
Valerius looked at Julian. He looked at the nanite arm.
"You are a Conductor," Valerius said. "Like your father. Like me."
"I'm nothing like you."
"Aren't you?" Valerius smiled, a thin, cruel expression. "You break things to fix them. You sacrifice the few to save the many. You killed the Prime to save yourself. You are pragmatic, Julian. That is why I let you live."
The tubes in his spine pulsed.
"I am dying," Valerius admitted. "My body cannot hold the Resonance anymore. The Ark needs a pilot. A Conductor to sing the stars to sleep."
He extended a trembling hand.
"Take the Throne, Julian. Join me. Let Marcus manage the systems. Let the girl lead the guard. Be the Captain of the last ship of humanity."
"And let the Earth burn?"
"The Earth is a corpse," Valerius spat. "Let it rot."
Julian looked down at the planet. He saw the green patch of the jungle. He saw the clouds moving. It wasn't a corpse. It was fighting.
"No," Julian said.
He raised his black metal fist.
"I don't want your chair. I want your key."
The Golden Echo
Valerius sighed. It was a sound of profound disappointment.
"Then you are just another dissonant note," he whispered. "And you must be silenced."
The tubes disconnected from his spine with a wet pop.
Valerius stood up.
As he stood, he changed.
The frailty vanished. The wrinkles smoothed out. His skin began to glow with an inner golden light. He wasn't using technology. He was Aether.
He floated a few inches off the ground.
"You use Resonance to vibrate matter," Valerius said, his voice echoing from everywhere at once. "I use Harmony to stop it."
He raised a finger.
STASIS.
Julian lunged, firing a Sonic Lance.
The beam hit an invisible wall ten feet from the Emperor. It didn't explode. It froze. The sound wave hung in the air, a suspended ripple of blue light.
"What?" Julian gasped.
Valerius flicked his finger.
The frozen sound wave shattered like glass.
"Marcus! Lyra! Move!" Julian yelled.
Valerius looked at Lyra. He clenched his fist.
STOP.
Lyra froze mid-stride. She couldn't move. Her heart stopped beating. Her lungs stopped drawing air. She was trapped in a bubble of absolute time-stop.
"Lyra!" Julian screamed.
"She is paused," Valerius said calmly. "I control the flow. Entropy. Kinetic energy. Time. In this room, I am the Constant."
He turned to Marcus.
"And you, my architect. You built this room. Did you leave a back door?"
Marcus raised his pistol, his hands shaking. "I... I resigned, Valerius."
Valerius looked at him with pity.
"Then you are fired."
He waved his hand.
The gravity under Marcus reversed.
Marcus screamed as he was flung upward, smashing into the invisible ceiling of the sphere. He pinned there, unable to move.
"Now," Valerius floated toward Julian. "Just us."
The Conductor vs. The Constant
Julian charged his nanite arm to maximum. The blue veins turned white.
"You can stop time?" Julian gritted his teeth. "Let's see you stop a mountain."
He punched the ground.
Focus: Seismic Wave.
He sent a vibration through the glass bridge. The bridge shattered.
Julian fell.
Valerius floated, unbothered.
"Gravity is a suggestion," Valerius said.
Julian activated his mag-boots, latching onto a floating debris plate. He used it as a surfboard, engaging his thrusters to rocket toward the Emperor.
He threw a punch.
Valerius caught Julian's nanite fist with his bare, withered hand.
CLANG.
The impact was absolute. Julian felt like he had punched a black hole. There was no give. No recoil. Just... stop.
"Crude," Valerius whispered.
He touched Julian's chest.
PUSH.
He didn't use force. He simply rewrote the vector of Julian's momentum.
Julian was blasted backward at mach speed. He smashed through three layers of holographic screens and hit the far wall of the sphere.
His nanite arm flickered.
"You fight with anger," Valerius glided closer. "Anger is chaotic. Power requires order."
He raised both hands.
The debris in the room—the glass shards, the metal plates—stopped moving. They arranged themselves into a perfect geometric pattern. A mandala of razor-sharp shrapnel.
"Execution Pattern Alpha," Valerius commanded.
The shrapnel flew at Julian.
The Signal
Julian raised a shield of acoustic force, deflecting the glass shards. They cut his face, his coat, his legs.
He was losing. He couldn't hit what he couldn't touch.
Suddenly, Skid's voice crackled in his ear.
"Julian! We're at the Kinetic Driver! We can't stop the launch sequence! The mechanism is... it's biological! It's fused with the station!"
"Jam it!" Julian yelled, ducking a flying metal plate.
"We can't! But... Isolde says if we can't stop the gun, maybe we can move the target!"
"Move the target?"
"The station has maneuvering thrusters! If we fire them, we can tilt the Spire! But we need access to the Main Gyroscope in the Throne Room!"
Julian looked at the Emperor's chair. Underneath it was a massive rotating sphere. The Master Gyro.
"I see it!" Julian shouted. "But the Emperor is guarding it!"
"You have to move him, Julian! Just for a second! Isolde needs a clear signal!"
Julian looked at Valerius. The old man was floating in front of the chair, an immovable object.
I can't push him, Julian realized. He controls vectors. He controls force.
But he controls Harmony. Order. Perfection.
What does a perfectionist hate most?
Noise.
Julian stood up. He wiped the blood from his mouth.
He didn't charge his arm for a punch. He charged it for a Scream.
He switched the frequency to The Dissonance. The same chaotic, maddening sound he had heard in the mask. The sound of the Rust.
"Hey, Your Highness!" Julian yelled.
Valerius paused.
"I have a song for you."
Julian unleashed the chaos.