The white rain continued to fall over the Silent Sands, washing the purple gore of the Dissonance Mother into the earth.
Julian walked alone toward the smoking crater where the Sovereign's Will had detonated.
There was no ship left. The warp-core explosion had vaporized the dreadnought. All that remained were twisted shards of black metal fused with the glassed sand.
Julian walked to the center of the impact zone. He fell to his knees.
He didn't cry. His eyes were dry, stinging from the chemical fumes. He reached into the ash and pulled out a piece of metal. It was a scorched fragment of the ship's helm—the control yoke Marcus had used to club the Knight, and then to steer them into history.
"You built walls," Julian whispered to the ash. "But you broke the biggest one."
He gripped the metal until his nanite hand creaked.
"Rest now, brother. I'll finish the renovation."
The Black Box
Lyra and Skid approached him cautiously. Skid was holding a heavy, black metallic cube—the object they had seen glinting in the Herald's wreckage.
"Julian," Skid said softly. "We retrieved the transmitter. It's... it's not Dissonance tech."
Julian stood up, slipping the piece of the helm into his coat. He looked at the cube.
"It's Imperial," Julian said. "It has the Royal Crest."
"It's a Seed Unit," Skid explained. "When the Spire was destroyed, this unit was launched from the wreckage. It landed here with the Herald. It was meant to guide something."
"Guide what?"
"The Seventh," Skid said. "I decrypted the logs. Titan 07 wasn't the station. The station was just a shell to hide it."
She projected a hologram from the cube.
It showed a schematic. A small, dense sphere of self-replicating nanites. An Autoforge.
"Titan 07 is a World-Eater," Skid said, her voice shaking. "It doesn't have a body. It builds one from whatever debris is nearby. Its directive is 'Absolute Defense'."
"And where is it now?"
Skid pointed up.
"In orbit. It's eating the debris field of the destroyed Spire. And... it found a pilot."
The hologram zoomed in on a grainy image taken by the Seed's long-range sensors before it crashed.
Floating in the vacuum, amidst the wreckage of the Spire, was Emperor Valerius. He wasn't dead. His golden Aether form was glowing.
And the debris was swirling around him. The nanites of Titan 07 were latching onto him, fusing with his energy.
"He didn't merge with a machine," Julian realized. "He became the heart of one."
The Iron Star
They returned to the bridge of Titan 00 (Chronos-Keeper).
The main screen showed the orbital view.
Where the Spire used to be, there was now a Star.
It was a jagged, ugly thing. A sphere of compressed scrap metal, ceramic, and glass, held together by a core of blinding gold light. It was growing, pulling in satellites, debris, and even asteroids.
"It's the Iron Star," Marcus's voice seemed to echo in Julian's mind. The final fortress.
"He's building a new body," Zephyr said, staring at the screen. "One that cannot be broken by sound."
"He's charging," Isolde pointed to the energy readings. "He's not just sitting there. He's drawing Aether from the atmosphere. He's preparing to fire the Sky-Hammer again. But this time, he doesn't need a tungsten rod. He's going to fire himself."
"If that thing impacts Earth," Skid calculated, "it's an extinction event. Dinosaur level."
"How do we stop it?" Lyra asked. "We have no ships. The Raven is grounded. The Sovereign is gone. The Space Elevator is snapped."
Julian looked at the six Titans hovering outside the window.
"We don't need a ship," Julian said.
He looked at the schematic of Titan 07. It was an Autoforge. It combined things.
"The Harmonic Ascendancy," Julian murmured. "They built seven Titans. Seven notes in a scale."
He turned to Skid.
"What happens when you play all seven notes at once?"
"A mess," Skid said. "Unless..."
"Unless they are in harmony," Julian finished. "The Grand Symphony."
He placed his hand on the Chronos console.
"We aren't going to fly a ship up there. We're going to combine."
The Proposition
Julian projected his voice to the Titans.
Brothers. Sisters. The enemy is in the sky. He wears the face of your maker, but he has no soul.
The Titans listened. The King. The Leviathan. The Strider. The Warden. The Breaker. The Keeper.
We cannot fly to him alone, Julian thought. We are too heavy. Gravity binds us.
But if we become One...
Titan 01 (Gold): I am the Frame.
Titan 02 (Water): I am the Coolant.
Titan 03 (Fire): I am the Reactor.
Titan 04 (Wind): I am the Thruster.
Titan 05 (Ice): I am the Shield.
Titan 00 (Time): I am the Core.
The agreement was instant. It wasn't a choice; it was destiny. They were built for this.
"Evacuate the non-essential personnel," Julian ordered. "Zephyr, Lyra, Isolde, Skid. You're with me in the Core. Everyone else... get to the ground."
"What are we doing?" Isolde asked.
"We're building a god," Julian said.
The Fusion
The six Titans moved into formation over the Silent Sands.
Titan 00 (The Hourglass) positioned itself in the center.
Titan 01 (The King) disassembled. Its massive golden limbs detached and clamped onto the Hourglass, forming a torso and legs.
Titan 03 (The Magma Strider) curled up and locked into the back, its lava core igniting to become a massive fusion engine.
Titan 04 (The Gale-Warden) split its rings, attaching them to the shoulders to act as stabilizers and thrusters.
Titan 02 (The Leviathan) wrapped around the limbs, its water-pipes turning into hydraulic systems.
Titan 05 (The Frost-Breaker) shattered into armor plates, coating the entire structure in diamond-hard ice.
It was a chaotic, terrifying transformation. Metal screamed. Aether flashed.
When the dust settled, a single entity stood on the desert floor.
It was colossal. Taller than the clouds. A humanoid knight made of gold, ice, and black stone, with a burning engine on its back and spinning rings on its shoulders.
Inside the cockpit (formerly the Chronos control room), Julian strapped into the pilot's chair.
He connected his nanite arm.
The feedback was immense. He felt six minds merge with his own.
SYSTEM: OMEGA TITAN - ONLINE.
DESIGNATION: THE HARMONIC PRIME.
Julian opened his eyes. They glowed with the light of six elements.
"All systems green," Skid reported, her voice trembling with awe. "Power output is... infinite."
Julian looked up at the Iron Star in the sky.
"Zephyr," Julian said. "Give us a tailwind."
Zephyr spun his staff. "The wind obeys."
"Isolde, monitor the heat."
"Coolant flowing."
"Lyra, target lock."
"Locked on the Emperor."
Julian grabbed the controls.
"Let's go to space."
The Launch
Titan 03 fired its main engine.
BOOOOOOM.
The earth cracked. A shockwave leveled the dunes for fifty miles.
The Harmonic Prime launched.
It didn't climb slowly. It shot upward like a bullet.
It punched through the atmosphere in ten seconds. The sky turned from blue to black instantly.
They were in space.
Floating ahead of them was the Iron Star. A jagged moon of scrap metal, pulsing with golden malice.
The Emperor's voice echoed in their minds, broadcast from the Star.
"You persist. You stack rocks and call it a tower."
The Iron Star shifted. The debris formed a massive face—Valerius's face.
"Come then, Julian. Let us see whose gravity is stronger."
Julian raised the Titan's massive fist.
"I'm done with gravity," Julian said.
The Omega Titan ignited its beam sabers—one made of Magma, one made of Ice.
"Let's dance."