The Azure Spire did not handle silence well. Its architecture was designed for the hum of commerce and the vibration of power, but as the news of the Static-Pulse at the Second Array reached the upper tiers, the building seemed to groan under the weight of a sudden, chilling realization.
High Patriarch Valerius sat in the Inner Sanctum, his liquid-silver eyes fixed on a holographic replay of the Barrens. He had watched Malakai, a man he once considered a useful—if volatile—tool, be stripped of his divinity by a single word.
"He didn't just defeat the Herald," Valerius murmured, his friction-field flickering with his agitation. "He rewrote the laws of the encounter. He treated a Year 3 Protocol user like a child playing with matches."
The heavy, reinforced doors of the sanctum hissed open. Lady Elena Azure entered, but she was not alone. Behind her walked a man who seemed to swallow the light of the room. He was clad in robes of heavy, shifting obsidian glass that rattled like a snake's tail with every step.
This was Patriarch Vorian, the head of the House of Obsidian. His skin was the color of charcoal, and his eyes were twin emeralds—the same toxic green that had once belonged to Malakai.
"Your 'Frictionless Blade' is a heap of scrap, and my 'Herald' is a vegetable," Vorian said, his voice a jagged rasp that ignored the pleasantries of diplomacy. He stood at the edge of Valerius's friction-field, the obsidian glass of his robes grinding against the invisible barrier. "The scavenger has the Scorpio Key. He has the Second Array. And he has locked us out of our own territory with a Static-Pulse that our engineers say will take weeks to penetrate."
Valerius stood up, the air in the room warping. "He is no longer a scavenger, Vorian. He is the Aries Sovereign. And if he completes the Year 5 download, he will have the authority to de-register our Bloodlines from the planetary grid. We won't just lose our power; we will lose our right to exist."
Elena stepped between the two titans, holding up a data-pad. "The satellite feeds show he has established a 10-mile dead-zone. But the energy he used to create that pulse was borrowed. He consumed the Frost-Weaver heart and Malakai's own core to do it. He is vulnerable now—not in power, but in time."
"The Dead Man's Switch," Vorian noted, his emerald eyes narrowing. "He has less than four hours remaining. He must come out eventually to reset the switch at a physical uplink, or he will be erased by his own Protocol."
"He won't come out as the same man," Valerius warned. "The Second Array contains the Digital Afterlife archives. He is learning the truth about the Fracture. He is learning that we didn't just survive the end of the world—we facilitated it."
The two Patriarchs looked at each other. For centuries, the House of Azure and the House of Obsidian had been locked in a cold war of friction versus corrosion. But the rise of the Sovereign had created a new math.
"I propose the Golgotha Protocol," Valerius stated, his voice dropping into a tone of finality.
Vorian froze. The Golgotha Protocol was a scorched-earth directive. It involved the merging of Azure friction-emitters with Obsidian corrosive warheads—a combination so unstable it had been banned since the First Calamity.
"You want to combine our essences?" Vorian asked. "The resonance could tear the sector apart."
"The scavenger is already tearing the world apart," Valerius replied. "If we do not combine our strengths, we will be forced to kneel before a king from the gutters. I would rather see Z Town and the Barrens turned into a sea of glass than see the Director's 'Great Hope' take my Spire."
Elena watched as the two most powerful men on the planet reached across the table. When their hands met, the friction-field and the corrosive-aura clashed, creating a violent spark of violet light that shattered every piece of glass in the room.
"It is done," Valerius said, blood trickling from his hand where Vorian's obsidian robes had cut him. "Mobilize the Unified Circle. We don't go to the Array to capture him anymore. We go to bury the mountain."
As they began the process of merging their armies, a small, unnoticed terminal in the corner of the room flickered. It was the "Silent Link" Bhy Khay had installed years ago. In the sub-cellar of the General Store, the old merchant watched the two Patriarchs shake hands.
"They're scared," Bhy Khay whispered, reaching for a heavy, ancient-looking Runic crate. "They're so scared they're going to break the world just to stop one boy."
He opened the crate. Inside sat a single, silver-tipped missile, marked with a logo that had been dead for a decade: SOVEREIGN DEFENSE SYSTEMS.
"Hold on, Kael," the old man said, his golden eyes glowing with a fierce, paternal fire. "The cavalry is coming. It's just a little bit older than you expected."