The Scrapyard of the Gods did not end abruptly; it decayed. The mountains of rusted iron slowly gave way to hills of pulverized metal dust, which eventually flattened into a desolate, vitrified plain.
They called it the Glass Waste.
Here, the ground wasn't sand or soil. It was a seamless, ripple-less sheet of fused silica, created centuries ago when a massive Aether detonation had turned the desert into a mirror.
Julian walked with his head down, watching his reflection distort in the grey glass beneath his boots.
He felt... heavy.
The Black-Iron ring on his finger was small, a simple band of matte metal, yet it felt like he was dragging an anchor. The constant, throbbing ache in his crystal arm was gone, yes. The maddening roar of the city's machinery was a distant memory. But so was everything else.
He couldn't feel the hum of the earth. He couldn't sense the static charge in the air before a lightning strike. He couldn't hear the structural integrity of the glass he was walking on.
He was deaf.
"You're dragging your feet," Lyra called out. She was ten paces ahead, her boots wrapped in strips of cloth to find traction on the slick surface.
"I can't... I can't feel the ground," Julian muttered, catching up to her. "With the ring on, everything is just dead matter. I don't know if the glass is six inches thick or six miles."
Lyra stopped. She looked at him, her expression softening. "It's called being human, Vane. Welcome back to the club. We have to trust our eyes, not our vibes."
"It's not just that," Julian rubbed his chest. "It feels like the ring is drinking me. Not my energy, but my... volume. I feel muted."
"Better muted than exploding," Lyra said, adjusting her pack. "Brother Cadence said the Titan's Grave is full of 'Echo-Storms'. If you didn't have that ring, your brain would liquify before we even saw the entrance."
She pointed to the horizon.
A wall of dense, swirling grey fog stretched across the world, rising from the ground to the clouds. It wasn't natural mist; it moved with a sluggish, oily intent.
"The Fog," Lyra whispered. "The Titan's Grave is inside that."
They made camp at the edge of the Glass Waste, using the hollowed-out shell of a solitary, ancient tank as a windbreak. The sun was setting, casting long, bloody streaks across the mirror-flat ground.
Lyra sparked a small fire using blocks of solid fuel she'd scavenged. The chemical flame was blue and smokeless.
"Here," she tossed Julian a ration bar. It tasted like sawdust and dried fruit, but it was calories.
Julian chewed slowly, twisting the black ring on his finger.
"Tell me about the Resistance," Julian said, breaking the silence. "Real talk. Not the propaganda. If we actually destroy the Empire... what happens?"
Lyra poked the fire with her knife. "Chaos," she admitted. "The trains stop. The heat goes off in the Upper City. The food synthesis plants shut down. A lot of people will die, Julian. Starvation. Riots. The cold."
"Then why do it?"
Lyra looked up, the firelight dancing in her grey eyes.
"Because they're already dead," she said softly. "They just don't know it yet. The Empire isn't sustaining humanity; it's pickling it. We're slowly turning into fuel. If we burn it all down... maybe the survivors can build something that runs on sweat instead of souls."
She looked at Julian's hand. The blue crystal was dull, suffocated by the ring.
"My brother," she continued, her voice barely a whisper. "Before they took him... he used to draw. He drew birds. Trees. Things he'd never seen. He had a soul, Julian. And they turned him into a guidance system for a dredge."
She stabbed the knife into the dirt.
"I don't care about the politics. I just want to break the machine that ate him."
Julian nodded. He understood. He looked at the ring. It was a shackle, but it was also a weapon. It allowed him to get close enough to the heart to strike.
"Get some sleep," Lyra said, rolling out her blanket. "I'll take first watch. The glass carries sound for miles. If anything comes, I'll hear it."
Julian slept fitfully. Without the connection to the Resonance, his dreams were dark and empty. No visions of the blue ocean. No screaming faces. Just a void.
He woke up to a hand clamping over his mouth.
"Shhh," Lyra hissed in his ear. "Don't move."
Julian froze. The fire was dead. The wasteland was bathed in the ghostly silver light of the moon reflecting off the glass.
Click-click. Click-click.
The sound was faint, coming from the north.
Julian strained his senses. He tried to reach out with his Resonance, to feel the vibration of the footsteps, to identify the mass and material of the intruder.
Nothing. The ring blocked him. He was blind.
"What is it?" he mouthed against her hand.
"Glass-Walkers," Lyra whispered, terrified. "Scavengers who hunt on the waste. They wear mirrored suits to blend in."
She pointed.
Fifty yards away, a figure was moving across the glass. It was almost invisible, a shifting shimmer of reflection. Only the dark outline of a long rifle gave it away. Then another figure. And another.
Three of them. They were spreading out, moving toward the tank shell.
"They saw our heat signature before the fire died," Lyra murmured, drawing her pistol. "They want our water. And your hand."
"I can take them," Julian whispered, reaching for the ring. "If I take it off—"
"No!" Lyra grabbed his wrist. "If you take it off, the flare of energy will light us up like a beacon. Every monster in the wasteland will see us. We have to do this the quiet way."
"The quiet way?"
"Distraction," Lyra said. She handed him a small metal canister. "This is a flash-pellet. Count to three. Throw it to the left, as far as you can. Then cover your eyes."
"What about you?"
"I'm going to introduce them to the ground."
Julian nodded. He took the pellet. His heart hammered against his ribs—a frantic, lonely sound in his silenced body.
"One... two... three."
He threw the canister. It skittered across the glass. Clink-clink-clink.
The shimmering figures froze, turning toward the sound.
FLASH.
A blinding burst of magnesium white light erupted.
The Glass-Walkers cried out, blinded by the reflection of the flare on the mirror-floor.
Lyra moved. She didn't run; she skated. She had attached smooth metal plates to her knees. She slid out from behind the tank, low to the ground, a shadow moving across the light.
Bang. Bang.
Two shots rang out. Two shimmering figures dropped, their mirrored suits shattering.
The third Walker, larger than the others, recovered his vision. He raised a heavy jagged spear. He lunged at Lyra as she slid past.
"Lyra!" Julian shouted.
He forgot the ring. He forgot the plan. He just reacted.
He scrambled out of the tank, grabbing a handful of the vitrified glass dust from the ground. He charged the Walker.
The Walker turned, swinging the spear at Julian.
Julian ducked, sliding on the slick surface. He didn't use Resonance. He used dirt. He threw the handful of glass dust directly into the Walker's eyes.
"Argh!" The man stumbled back, clawing at his face.
Lyra was there in a second. She swept his legs out from under him. He hit the glass hard. Before he could rise, Lyra's pistol was pressed against his mirrored visor.
"Stay down," she hissed.
The Walker froze.
"We're leaving," Lyra commanded, backing away, keeping the gun trained on him. "If you follow us, the next shot won't be a warning."
She grabbed Julian's collar. "Move. Now."
They ran across the glass, slipping and sliding, until the tank and the groaning scavenger were lost in the silver gloom.
An hour later, they stopped to breathe. The Fog Wall was close now—a towering cliff of swirling grey vapor.
"You did good," Lyra said, holstering her gun. She looked at Julian. "You didn't use the hand."
"I used dirt," Julian smiled weakly. "Low-tech."
"Low-tech keeps you alive," Lyra said. She turned to face the Fog. "Okay. This is it. The Titan's Grave."
She looked at Julian.
"The ring stays on, Julian. Once we go in there... the laws of physics get weird. If you open your mind to that storm, you might never close it again."
Julian looked at the black band on his finger. It was heavy. It was silent. But it had forced him to fight as a man, not a machine.
"Lead the way," Julian said.
They stepped into the Fog. The world dissolved into grey. The silence of the ring was replaced by a new sound—a low, rhythmic thumping that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The heartbeat of the Titan.