The interior of the Bastion was a claustrophobic nightmare of heavy stone and low-hanging steam pipes. Unlike the airy, high-tech corridors of the Azure Spire, the Terra Sector was built for one thing: survival through density. Every building was reinforced with iron ribs, and the streets were narrow, shadowed canyons where the 3x gravity made the air feel as thick as soup.
Kael led his team through the "Lower End"—a district known as the Sump. Here, the gravity was most unstable, leaking from the Array deep below. This was where the "Tunnel-Rats" lived—the miners and engineers whose bodies had been broken by the House of Terra and then tossed aside when their Genetic stability failed.
"Keep your hoods up," Sia whispered, her light-filaments retracted to a dull hum. "The Terra-Sentinels don't police the Sump, but the Iron-Gilders do. They're a syndicate of scavengers who work for the Overlord. They take a 'gravity tax' from anyone who wants to breathe down here."
Kael didn't respond. He was watching the people. He saw children with bowed legs from the pressure, and old men with Runic respirators that wheezed like dying animals. His Sovereign Ego pulsed with a cold, focused intent. This wasn't just a district; it was a factory of human suffering.
They reached a massive cavern that smelled of sulfur and fried grease: The Sovereign Market. It was a chaotic hub of illegal Runic trade. Discarded Bloodline warriors with rusted cybernetics bartered for "Gravity-Dampeners" and "Synthetic Marrow." In the center of the cavern, a man stood on a pile of scrap metal. He had a prosthetic arm made of a hydraulic piston and a face scarred by acid.
"Step up! Step up!" the man barked, his voice amplified by a cracked megaphone. "Today we have a Tier-2 Thermal Core, harvested fresh from an Azure scout! Or perhaps you need 'Marrow-Glue' to keep your bones from snapping under the Overlord's next 'Crush-Day'?"
Jax let out a low growl in his chest-bellows. "That's Hark. He used to be a foreman in the Deep Mines. Now he sells the very scrap that used to be his crew's equipment."
Kael stepped forward, his platinum eyes scanning the crowd. He didn't look for the strongest warriors; he looked for the ones with the most hate in their eyes.
[SOVEREIGN STAR PROTOCOL: ANALYZING BIOMETRICS] [TARGETS FOUND: 128 "DISCARDED" VETERANS] [POTENTIAL LEVIATHAN-CLASS INFANTRY]
"I need your attention," Kael said.
He didn't shout. He didn't use the megaphone. He used the Aries Resonance. His voice carried a vibration that caused every piece of metal in the market to ring in a perfect, harmonic C-major.
The market went dead silent. Hark, the merchant, squinted down at Kael. "You're a long way from the Spire, pretty boy. We don't like Azure colors down here. What are you buying? Or are you just lost?"
Kael reached into his obsidian cloak and pulled out a small, pulsating violet crystal: a Calamity-Shard from the Frost-Weaver. The market gasped. A single shard like that could power the entire Sump's oxygen scrubbers for a year.
"I'm not buying scrap," Kael said, his voice a steady, heavy weight. "I'm buying your loyalty."
Hark laughed, a dry, hacking sound. "Loyalty? Loyalty doesn't keep the gravity from crushing your ribs, kid. We follow the Overlord because he has the Array. What do you have besides a shiny rock and a fancy coat?"
Kael didn't answer with words. He stepped onto the liquid glass floor of the market and released a fraction of Absolute Inertia.
Suddenly, the 3x gravity in the cavern vanished.
For the first time in their lives, the people in the Sump felt weightless. Old men stood up straight, their spines popping as the pressure was deleted. Scraps of metal began to float like autumn leaves. The silence was absolute.
"I have the Protocol," Kael said, looking directly at the veterans in the crowd. "I have the 10-Year Vision. And in my world, the ground doesn't own you. You own the ground."
Hark fell off his scrap-pile, floating helplessly in the air. "Who... what are you?"
"I am the Aries," Kael said. He flicked his hand, and the gravity returned, but not at 3x. He set it to a perfect 1.0x—the gravity of the Old World. "And I'm looking for 100 men who are tired of crawling."
A woman with a missing eye and a Runic rifle stepped forward. She was a Terra-Gen veteran, her armor held together by Sia's light-filaments. She looked at Kael with a mixture of terror and hope. "The Overlord has an army of ten thousand. Even with your magic, we're just rats in a hole."
"Then we stop being rats," Kael said. He tossed the Calamity-Shard to Sia. "Sia, open the Mobile Forge. We're going to turn this scrap-pile into a Sovereign Armory."
[NEW OBJECTIVE: RECRUIT THE 'SUMP-LEGION' — 1/100] [ZODIAC SYNC: 9.1%]
Suddenly, the cavern's entrance exploded. A squad of Iron-Gilders—the Overlord's tax-collectors—burst in, riding high-gravity hover-bikes. Their leader, a brute with a Runic mace, looked at the floating debris and the glowing Kael.
"Unsanctioned gravity manipulation!" the leader roared. "By order of the High Overlord, this district is under—"
He didn't finish.
Kael didn't even look at him. He simply made a downward motion with his finger.
"100x."
The leader and his hover-bike didn't just fall; they were driven into the floor with the force of a hydraulic press. The bike flattened into a sheet of metal an inch thick, and the leader vanished into a crater of crushed stone.
Kael looked back at the veterans. "I'm not asking again. Who wants to stand?"
One by one, the Tunnel-Rats began to rise.
[DEAD MAN'S SWITCH: 08:45:10] [STATUS: RECRUITING]