The single, steady pulse from the Sun-Chaser's heart was a seismic event in Ironhaven. It was a vibration felt not in the ground, but in the soul of every Artificer. The silent, dead giant they had labored upon for generations had taken a breath. The news spread from the reactor chamber outwards in a wave of stunned whispers, then cheers, then a frantic, hopeful energy that crackled through the city's very wires.
Lin Feng and the Mantis emerged from the chamber into a silent gauntlet of staring faces. The looks were no longer merely curious or assessing. They were looks of reverence, of awe, and in some of the older Artificers like Goran, a deep, unsettled fear. They had not just performed a technical miracle; they had performed a spiritual one. They had communed with the ghost in the machine and convinced it to return.
Kaelen was waiting for them, her usual composure replaced by a bright, fierce intensity. "The heart beats," she said, her voice hushed. "You have done what centuries of our finest could not. The Assembly is convened. Now."
The atmosphere in the Anvil's plaza was electric. The entire population of Ironhaven seemed to have gathered, their faces illuminated by the pulsing work-lights, all turned towards the central dais. The Assembly stood, and Kaelen motioned for Lin Feng to join them. The Rust-Steel Mantis stood at the base of the dais, a silent, hulking monument to their achievement.
"People of Ironhaven!" Kaelen's voice, amplified by hidden vox-units, rang out across the plaza. "For generations, the Sun-Chaser has been our dream, our monument, our tomb. Today, it has become our future once more! The heart beats! And it was these two," she gestured to Lin Feng and the Mantis, "who awakened it not with force, but with understanding!"
A roar of approval erupted from the crowd. It was deafening.
"But with this hope comes a new reality!" Kaelen continued, her tone turning grave. "A sleeping giant makes no waves. A waking one changes the tides. The Sun-Chaser's reactor emits a signature, a beacon of immense power. We have been hidden here, safe in our sea of scrap. That safety is now over."
As if on cue, a strident alarm blared through the city, a different sound from the rhythmic Scrap-Song. It was a harsh, discordant wail of intrusion.
From the Mantis, a high-priority alert screamed through the neural-link. *[Priority Alert: High-Energy Spatial Rupture detected. Bearing: Zenith. Scale: Catastrophic. Signature Analysis: Purity Grade 9.5. Designation: Astral Judge.]*
Lin Feng's blood ran cold. Purity Grade 9.5. Yun Zhao had been an 8. This was something else entirely.
All eyes turned skyward. The perpetual, bruised twilight of the Wastes was tearing open. A rift of blinding white light split the heavens, and from it descended a being.
It was not a starship. It was a man. Or the shape of one. He was clad in armor of solidified light, ornate and severe, his face hidden behind a helm that was a single, featureless pane of crystal. He carried no visible weapon. He didn't need one. His mere presence was a pressure that forced the air from Lin Feng's lungs. The cacophonous noise of Ironhaven—the hammers, the generators, the voices—was smothered into a terrified hush. The Scrap-Song itself seemed to falter.
He hovered above the Anvil, and when he spoke, his voice was not sound, but a concept drilled directly into every mind.
I AM THE ASTRA JUDEX. HERESY HAS ACHIEVED CRITICAL MASS IN THIS SECTOR. THE ABOMINATION IN THE SUN-CORE HAS BEEN AWAKENED. THE SENTENCE IS OBLIVION.
This was not a disciple on a mission of purification. This was an executioner. A celestial functionary dispatched to erase a statistical anomaly that had grown too large to ignore.
Kaelen stepped forward, her back straight, her golden lens whirring frantically. "Astral Judge! We are Ironhaven! We seek only to rebuild, to find a new path after the Collision! We mean no defiance!"
The Judge's head turned minimally, the crystal helm focusing on her. YOUR INTENT IS IRRELEVANT. YOUR EXISTENCE IS THE DEFIANCE. THE FUSION OF SPIRIT AND MACHINE IS A CANCER UPON REALITY. THE CANCER HAS METASTASIZED. IT WILL BE CUT OUT.
He raised a hand. The air around him began to crystallize, forming intricate, deadly patterns of frozen light. The very laws of physics seemed to be rewriting themselves to suit his will.
"All defensive systems! Maximum output!" Bor roared, his amplified voice a desperate counterpoint to the Judge's silent authority.
Plasma turrets emerged from hidden panels on the Sun-Chaser's hull. Artificers activated personal shield generators and powered up weaponized tools. The air filled with the whine of charging energy cells. It was the defiant stand of a city of engineers against a god.
It was hopeless.
The Judge gestured. A single, shard of crystallized light, no larger than a needle, shot from his fingertip. It flew towards the most powerful plasma turret. Upon contact, the turret, its housing, and the ten meters of starship hull behind it did not explode. They un-existed. One moment they were there, the next, there was only a perfectly smooth, concave scar in reality.
Panic erupted.
Lin Feng stood frozen, the scale of the power on display rendering him numb. This was not a fight. This was pest control.
[Proposal: Symbiotic Overdrive.] The Mantis's thought was a desperate flare in his mind.
"No!" Lin Feng shot back mentally. "It nearly killed us last time, and that was against a disciple! This… this would atomize us!"
The Judge prepared another gesture, this one broader, aimed at the city's central power grid. The annihilation of Ironhaven was moments away.
In that absolute, terrifying silence before the end, Lin Feng heard it again. Not the Scrap-Song. The other song. The one from the Sun-Chaser's heart. It was a single, questioning note, a vibration of fear and nascent life. The core was awake, and it was afraid.
And he realized something. The Judge wasn't just here for them. He was here for the ship. The "abomination in the Sun-core." Their awakening of it had been the trigger.
They hadn't just awakened hope. They had painted a target on the entire city.
A new plan, insane and born of absolute desperation, formed in his mind. It wasn't a plan to fight. It was a plan to redirect.
"Kaelen!" he yelled over the rising panic. "The heart! We have to speak to it again! Now!"
Her eyes, wide with terror, met his. She understood the desperation, if not the method. She gave a sharp nod. "The Assembly will cover you! Go!"
As Bor and the other senior Artificers unleashed a volley of distracting, futile attacks—streams of plasma and disassembler fields that shattered against the Judge's crystalline aura—Lin Feng and the Mantis turned and sprinted back towards the reactor chamber.
The journey was a blur. They burst into the vast, spherical room. The core pulsed its soft, lonely light, the thrum of its heartbeat now laced with anxiety.
Lin Feng didn't bother with meditation. He ran to the edge of the central platform and slammed his hands against it, the Mantis placing its Luminal Claw beside them.
"He's here for you!" Lin Feng projected with all his might, pouring the image of the Astral Judge, his absolute power, his annihilating purpose, directly into the core's awakening consciousness. "He's going to destroy you! He's going to destroy everyone!"
The core's pulse faltered. The light dimmed. A wave of pure, primordial terror echoed back at them. It was the fear of dying before truly having lived.
"We can't stop him!" Lin Feng continued, his mental voice raw. "But you can hide! You have to go back to sleep! Not the old silence, a new one! A silence that sings! Mimic the Scrap-Song! Make him think you're just… more noise! Just more dead scrap!"
It was a gamble of astronomical proportions. They were asking a newly awakened cosmic entity to play dead, to cloak its immense power in the mundane harmony of the Wastes.
The core was silent. The terror was being replaced by something else… calculation. It was ancient. It had survived the Collision. It understood survival.
Outside, the sounds of battle intensified. A massive explosion shook the entire ship. They were running out of time.
The Mantis added its voice to the plea. It projected not the Song itself, but the principle of the Song—the way order could be hidden within chaos, how a powerful, unique signal could be broken down and lost in a chorus of simpler ones.
The core understood.
The soft, steady light at its center winked out.
The deep thrumming ceased.
For a heart-stopping moment, there was only the absolute, dead silence from before.
Then, a new sound began. It was the Scrap-Song. But it was the Scrap-Song sung by a master. The core began to broadcast a perfect, city-wide simulation of the harmless, rhythmic signal, weaving its own immense power signature into the countless other energy echoes of the Scrap-Song Sea. It wasn't hiding its power; it was diffusing it, scattering it into a trillion meaningless fragments.
Up on the surface, the Astral Judge, his hand raised to deliver the final blow, paused. His featureless helm scanned the city, then the surrounding sea of wreckage. The brilliant, heretical beacon of the Sun-Core had vanished. In its place was only the mundane, chaotic static he expected from this blighted world. The critical-mass heresy had… subsided. The data no longer met the threshold for orbital purification.
He lowered his hand. The crushing pressure of his presence lessened by a fraction.
THE ANOMALY HAS CORRECTED ITSELF. THE SENTENCE IS SUSPENDED. VIGILANCE WILL BE MAINTAINED.
Without another word, the rift of light reopened in the sky. The Astral Judge ascended into it, and the heavens sealed shut, leaving behind only the ringing silence and the smell of ozone and terror.
On the reactor chamber floor, Lin Feng slumped against the Mantis, his body trembling with spent adrenaline. They had done it. They had saved the city not by fighting, but by teaching a star to hide.
The core remained dark and silent, its song now a perfect camouflage woven into the fabric of the Wastes. It was asleep, but it was dreaming. And its dream was the Song of Ironhaven.
They had averted annihilation, but the cost was the very hope they had ignited. The Sun-Chaser's heart was silent once more, a king hiding in a pauper's clothes. And somewhere in the cold mathematics of the heavens, their existence was now a suspended sentence, a tick in a column on a celestial ledger. The Astral Judge was gone, but his shadow would forever loom over them. The path of the Starfall Tamer had just attracted the attention of the universe's janitors, and Lin Feng knew, with a cold certainty, that their next mistake would be their last.