The heavy, armor-piercing round fired from Mariya Oktyabrskaya's Soviet revolver did not travel toward Tsar Nikolai's indestructible heart. It traveled in a steep, upward trajectory, cutting through the superheated, sulfurous air of the subterranean cavern, aiming directly for the massive, structural retaining pin of the Firebird's primary containment gear.
The pin was a cylinder of forged Giza iron, thick as an ancient oak tree. Under normal circumstances, a simple ballistic bullet would have flattened uselessly against it. But these were not normal circumstances. Amani had forcefully disconnected the engine from the Tsar's digital leash. The Firebird was in a state of catastrophic thermal overdrive, the internal temperature of the machine rapidly approaching the melting point of its own components. The retaining pin was already glowing a bright, sickly yellow, severely weakened by the unregulated heat and the violent vibrations of the runaway engine.
Mariya's bullet struck the exact, mathematically perfect stress point of the glowing iron.
CRACK.
The sound was sharper than a thunderclap, a high-pitched metallic shriek that briefly overpowered the deafening roar of the magma lake below.
Tsar Nikolai, his golden hand still clamped like a steel vise around Amani's crushed throat, froze. The Unbreaking Man's burning golden eyes shifted upward. For the first time since he had crashed through the ceiling of the earth, the expression on the Emperor's flawless, marble face shifted from absolute arrogance to genuine, sudden realization.
Mariya hadn't aimed for his indestructible skin. She had aimed for the environment.
The heavy retaining pin shattered into a thousand glowing pieces.
Freed from its heavy structural mooring, the fifty-ton golden containment gear violently detached from the cavern wall. It did not simply fall; it was still actively spinning at over four thousand revolutions per minute, driven by the colossal kinetic energy of the Firebird. It plummeted toward the central iron platform like a falling, white-hot circular saw the size of a three-story building.
"Look up, Your Highness," Mariya whispered, lowering her smoking gun.
Nikolai had exactly one-tenth of a second to react. He knew his cellular structure, empowered by the Gold Fragment, was entirely indestructible. He would not be crushed. He would not be sliced in half. But even the Tsar of Russia was still subject to the inescapable laws of kinetic mass and gravity.
To brace for the fifty-ton impact, Nikolai was forced to open his hand.
He dropped Amani to the iron grating and crossed his massive, golden arms over his head just as the spinning, superheated gear crashed down upon him.
The collision was apocalyptic.
The sheer, unfathomable kinetic momentum of fifty tons of spinning, white-hot metal meeting an immovable, indestructible object created a shockwave that completely vaporized the surrounding air. The massive gear slammed into Nikolai's crossed arms. Sparks the size of campfires violently erupted into the air as the spinning teeth of the heavy machinery ground furiously against the Tsar's impenetrable, marble-like skin.
Nikolai's boots instantly punched straight through the thick, black iron of the platform. The grating screamed and tore apart like wet tissue paper under the combined, localized weight.
With a deafening crash of tearing metal, the center of the platform entirely gave way. Tsar Nikolai, still locked in a desperate, violent stalemate against the crushing weight of the spinning fifty-ton gear, plummeted through the floor. He vanished into the dense, swirling clouds of volcanic ash and superheated steam directly beneath the platform, falling toward the churning lake of magma three hundred feet below.
Amani hit the surviving edge of the iron grating hard, gasping desperately for air. His trachea felt completely bruised, his lungs burning as they greedily pulled in the toxic, sulfurous air of the cavern. He coughed up a dark splatter of blood, his vision swimming with dark spots.
"Amani!"
Upepo was there in a flash of blue light, ignoring the agonizing pain of his own shattered wrist. The speedster grabbed his twin brother by the collar of his heavy winter coat and violently dragged him backward, away from the massive, gaping hole in the center of the platform.
The cavern was tearing itself apart.
Without the primary containment gear to regulate the internal tectonic pressure, the Firebird engine was beginning to visibly bleed. Massive, pressurized jets of liquid magma burst from the ruptured golden conduits lining the cavern walls. The colossal, wing-like thermal sinks that plunged into the earth were vibrating so violently they were fracturing the surrounding obsidian cliffs. The entire subterranean chamber was collapsing.
"We need to move!" General Volkov roared, her mechanical optic spinning frantically as it calculated the structural integrity of the cavern. "The ambient temperature is spiking! The magma lake is rising! If the engine breaches its core containment, this entire mountain will become an active volcano!"
Across the violently shaking platform, Sia was kneeling over Chacha's massive, broken body. The giant Swahili warrior was unconscious, his chest severely caved in from the Tsar's single, brutal punch. The bright emerald light of Sia's Staff of Life was pouring into his chest, frantically working to keep his heart beating and his lungs inflated.
"I can't move him!" Sia cried out, tears streaming down her face, instantly evaporating in the blistering heat. "His spine is fractured! If we drag him, he'll die!"
Viktor the Wolf, who had been cowering near the edge of the threshold, suddenly sprinted across the buckling iron grating. He didn't run toward the exit; he ran directly toward the Swahili Pack.
"Out of the way, little witch!" Viktor barked, pushing Sia aside.
The crime lord reached down, his heavy muscles straining as he grabbed Chacha by the thick straps of his tactical harness. With a roar of exertion, Viktor hauled the eight-foot-tall, unconscious Swahili giant onto his own back, his knees visibly buckling under the immense weight.
"I owe you for the train, Fate Changer!" Viktor yelled to Amani over the deafening roar of the dying engine. "But I don't carry dead weight for long! Get us out of this hellhole!"
Amani staggered to his feet, leaning heavily against Upepo. His throat throbbed with every heartbeat, bearing the dark, bruised handprint of the Tsar. He reached into his coat and gripped the Space Shard.
The crystal was burning hot to the touch, overflowing with the chaotic, ambient energy of the collapsing cavern.
"Mariya!" Amani shouted, his voice hoarse and ragged.
The widow was still standing near the edge of the massive hole in the platform, staring down into the swirling ash and steam where the Tsar had fallen. She didn't look triumphant. She looked incredibly, coldly focused.
"He isn't dead," Mariya stated, her voice carrying an eerie, absolute certainty.
As if answering her, a blinding, solar-flare eruption of pure golden light pierced through the thick clouds of steam beneath the platform.
The fifty-ton containment gear, which had fallen into the abyss, suddenly shot straight back up through the hole in the floor. It didn't bounce; it was violently thrown. The massive chunk of superheated metal flew over their heads, crashing heavily into the far obsidian wall of the cavern and shattering into a thousand glowing pieces of shrapnel.
From the churning, fiery depths of the magma lake, a figure began to slowly ascend.
Tsar Nikolai floated upward, defying gravity entirely through the sheer, unadulterated power of the Gold Fragment. His black Void-metal trousers were singed, but his flawless, marble skin remained completely unblemished. The liquid golden veins spider-webbing across his body were pulsing with a terrifying, blinding brilliance. The Unbreaking Man was no longer just arrogant; he was radiating a silent, apocalyptic fury.
"Open the door, Amani!" Volkov screamed, raising her plasma rifle and firing a completely useless volley of suppressive fire at the ascending god.
Amani didn't need to be told twice. He raised the Space Shard, his eyes burning with violent, neon-violet light. He didn't have the time or the oxygen to carefully calculate a safe, stable spatial fold back to the surface. He simply grabbed the fabric of reality with his mind and tore it violently open.
A massive, jagged portal of swirling violet energy ripped open in the superheated air directly behind them, showcasing the dim, amber emergency lights and rusted concrete of the Iron Nest's upper hangar.
"Go! Through the rift!" Amani commanded.
Viktor the Wolf charged through the portal first, carrying the massive, unconscious weight of Chacha on his back. Sia followed closely on his heels, her staff glowing brightly to keep the giant stabilized during the spatial transition. General Volkov provided covering fire until she reached the threshold, diving backward through the violet rift.
Upepo grabbed Amani's shoulder. "Come on, bro! Let's go!"
"Get Mariya!" Amani yelled, holding his hands out, his entire body trembling violently as he forcefully maintained the tearing edges of the unstable spatial portal against the chaotic gravitational anomalies of the dying Firebird engine.
Upepo moved in a blur. He sprinted to the edge of the crater, wrapping his good arm around Mariya's waist, and forcefully hauled the widow away from the edge just as Tsar Nikolai crested the level of the platform. Upepo carried her through the portal in a flash of blue kinetic light.
Amani was the last one left on the collapsing iron grating.
He stood alone, facing the Emperor of Russia.
Nikolai floated over the jagged edge of the torn metal, his feet touching down lightly on the groaning platform. The Tsar looked directly at Amani, the burning golden light of his eyes completely piercing the smoke and ash.
"You can run back to the surface, little thief," Nikolai's voice boomed, completely devoid of its previous aristocratic calm. It was a roar of pure, godly wrath. "But you have broken my engine. You have struck my crown. There is not a single cavern deep enough, nor a continent far enough, to hide you from my Vanguard now. I will boil the oceans to find you."
Amani looked at the indestructible god. He felt the intense, dark urging of the Void Hunger begging him to collapse the portal and try to consume the Tsar, to eat the Gold Fragment right out of his chest.
Amani forced the Hunger down, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the hot iron.
"Then come find me," Amani rasped, his violet eyes locking with the golden ones. "We'll be waiting."
Amani fell backward, letting gravity pull him directly through the swirling violet rift.
The instant he passed the threshold, Amani completely released his mental grip on the Space Shard. The spatial portal violently snapped shut with a sound like a cracking whip, sealing the pathway just a fraction of a second before a massive, golden beam of kinetic energy erupted from Tsar Nikolai's chest, completely obliterating the empty space where Amani had just been standing.
Amani hit the cold, hard, cracked concrete of the Iron Nest's upper hangar, rolling violently across the floor.
The sudden transition from the hundred-and-forty-degree, sulfurous heat of the earth's mantle to the stale, freezing air of the Soviet bunker was incredibly jarring. Amani lay on his back, staring up at the rusted iron rafters, gasping for breath. The air felt thin, but it was cold, and it didn't burn his lungs.
"He's through! The portal is closed!" Volkov's mechanical voice echoed in the hangar.
Amani slowly sat up, his body aching with a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. He looked around.
The massive underground hangar was in a state of sheer panic. The five thousand prisoners they had freed from the gulag were scrambling, seeking cover beneath heavy transport trucks and rusted iron beams. The entire Soviet bunker was violently shaking. Heavy dust fell from the ceiling like grey snow. The destruction of the Firebird engine miles below them was actively triggering localized, high-magnitude earthquakes across the Black-Ice Barrens.
Viktor the Wolf had carefully laid Chacha down on a makeshift cot. Sia was immediately back at the giant's side, her face pale with magical exhaustion as she poured every ounce of her remaining healing energy into his shattered chest.
Upepo sat on a nearby crate, his broken wrist hastily splinted with scavenged metal and torn cloth. He offered Amani a weak, exhausted smirk. "So. We poked the bear. Then we dropped a fifty-ton gear on the bear. What's the plan now, Chief?"
Amani heavily pulled himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming pain in his neck. He looked toward the center of the shaking hangar.
Mariya Oktyabrskaya was standing near the heavy steel blast doors that led out into the freezing Siberian wastes. She had her back to the group, staring out at the heavy, rusted metal. She held the heavy Soviet revolver in her hand, slowly and methodically reloading the empty chamber.
Amani walked over to her, his boots echoing over the rumbling of the earth.
"You didn't miss," Amani said quietly.
Mariya didn't turn around. She snapped the cylinder of the revolver shut with a sharp flick of her wrist.
"I never miss, Amani," Mariya replied, her voice completely stripped of emotion. "I knew the bullet wouldn't pierce his skin. But my husband taught me that if you cannot break a man, you must break the foundation he stands on."
She finally turned to look at him. Her indigo eyes were incredibly cold, matching the frozen wasteland that lay just beyond the bunker doors.
"We did not kill him," Mariya stated, stating the tactical reality. "But we severely wounded his Empire. The Firebird is officially destabilized. Tsar Nikolai has lost his primary source of infinite geothermal power. The golden lights in his Citadel will begin to flicker tonight."
"And when they do," General Volkov said, limping over to join them, her plasma rifle slung over her shoulder. "He will send the full, unbridled might of the Oprichnina Vanguard to wipe us off the face of the earth. We are no longer a simple prison riot, Amani. We are an existential threat to the Crown."
Amani looked at his Swahili Pack—battered, broken, but alive. He looked at the five thousand freezing, desperate Russian souls who were now looking to him for salvation. He touched the Space Shard in his pocket, feeling its heavy, cosmic resonance.
They had survived the mantle of the earth. They had looked the Unbreaking Man in the eye and lived.
"Let them come," Amani said, his voice echoing with the dark, heavy gravity of his power. "The Tsar thinks he rules the ice. We are going to teach him how to bleed in it."