The Collapase Of The Trinity
Date: August 7, 980 GD Time: 15:00 Location: Neutral Zone (Former Logistics Transfer Station)
The meeting was held inside the wreckage of a cargo train car that had become a ruin. In the middle of the rusted room stood a round table made from a coil of industrial cables.
Three chairs. Three rat kings. One table full of lies.
Vance arrived in his wheelchair, its motor hissing softly. His face was deathly pale, his eyes darting wildly. In his jacket pocket, the letter of rejection from the Unravelers felt like it was burning his skin. He knew he was finished, but he had to keep up the act.
The Blind Prophet sat cross-legged on the table, not on a chair. His robes were soaked through with sweat and sewage. He muttered incessantly, his fingers tracing invisible patterns in the air.
And Forge-Mother Kora.
She was not sitting. She stood tall, her hydraulic Exoskeleton humming with anger. Her armor was still caked in red dust and flecks of blood—remnants of the slaughter at the Northern Gate.
"Explain," Kora growled. Her voice, modified by the voice-box in her neck, sounded like the grinding of coarse metal. "Now."
Vance swallowed. "Kora... listen. It's a misunderstanding. Wynter's broadcast was propaganda. I never ordered that suicide attack. Their Collars were hacked! Wynter drove them there to be blown up!"
"Hacked?" Kora laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "Do you think I'm stupid, Engineer? Those men were members of your Syndicate. They wore your sigils. And they moved in formations you taught them."
Kora slammed the table with her iron hand. It dented instantly.
"You used them as bait! You threw a hundred lives at the concrete wall just to test Wynter's defense sensors, while you told my men to conserve ammunition!"
"It was strategy!" Vance blurted out in panic, then quickly corrected himself. "I mean... no! I didn't do it!"
"You just admitted it," Kora hissed.
She stepped closer, her shadow swallowing Vance's small form in the wheelchair.
"You're a liar, Vance. You said the aid weapons would arrive today. Where are they? Where are the kinetic rifles? Where are the Anti-Mana rounds?"
Vance trembled. "Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow. The couriers..."
"There are no couriers," Kora cut him off coldly. "I have spies in the Sector 7G pipe route. That route is destroyed. You have nothing left but empty promises."
Kora picked up her combat helmet from the table.
"This alliance is dissolved. The Iron Eaters withdraw."
"You can't leave!" Vance shrieked hysterically. "If we break apart, Wynter will hunt us down one by one!"
Kora turned at the threshold of the gutted train car.
"He will hunt us, Vance. But at least in my forge, I can die holding a weapon. Not die as a firework in your stage play."
Kora left, her heavy footsteps shaking the floor.
Vance was left alone. His breathing grew rapid. He turned to his only remaining ally.
"Prophet?" Vance called desperately. "You... you're still with me, right? We still have your followers. We can still hold them off."
The Blind Prophet stopped muttering. He tilted his bandaged head, as if listening to a distant sound.
"The water..." whispered the Prophet, a mad smile spreading across his cracked lips. "The water calls me home, Engineer. The sky has closed its door. It is time for us to knock on Hell's gate."
The Prophet jumped down from the table with unnatural agility and ran out into the darkness, leaving Vance completely alone in the wreckage of his kingdom.
Date: August 7, 980 GD Time: 19:30 Location: The Sump (Territory of the Cult of The Drip) (Viewed Through Vianna's Spy Drone Feed)
This place was a cathedral of filth. A massive, damp cavern where thousands of sewage pipes converged into a single lake of thick, black waste.
On the main screen of the Command Center, Vianna's Stealth-Drone hovered silently among concrete stalactites.
There were no weapons. No threat of violence.
Only pure, religious despair.
Hundreds of followers of the Cult of The Drip knelt in the muck. They were gaunt, their lips cracked from extreme dehydration due to Silas's water blockade. They were not preparing for war; they were waiting for a miracle.
On a makeshift stage built from a tangle of rusted pipes, the Blind Prophet knelt.
His hands were empty. His palms were wide open, facing the dark, dripping cavern ceiling. He was not shouting in anger; he was weeping.
"Father of Water..." he whispered.
His voice was hoarse and weak, its tremble captured clearly by the drone's microphone, filling the Command Center with heart-wrenching sorrow.
"Look upon your children. Our tongues are dry. Our skin cracks. The sky has closed its door to us."
The Prophet prostrated himself, his forehead touching the dirty, rusty floor of the stage.
"We do not ask for gold. We do not ask for blood. We ask only for a drop... just a drop of Your mercy. Do not let us die in this thirst. Wash us. Purify us."
It was a deeply sincere prayer. The prayer of a shepherd watching his flock die, not knowing what else to do but beg.
In the Command Center, Rian looked down, unable to bear watching. "He... he's only asking for water."
"He is praying to the wrong god," I murmured coldly.
On the screen, the Prophet rose again. His face was wet with bloody tears. He tilted his head back, his dirty, bandaged eyes looking upward, toward the dry pipes.
"GIVE US A SIGN!" he suddenly cried out, his voice breaking into a hysterical scream. "IF YOU HEAR US, WASH US NOW!"
And the "God" answered.
But the answer came with a lethal overdose.
Suddenly, the Prophet fell silent. His mouth, open to continue the prayer, remained agape. But no sound came out.
His bandaged eyes widened. His hands, raised to the sky, suddenly dropped to clutch at his own throat.
"Hydro-logical sensors detect massive anomaly," reported Vianna, her voice trembling with disbelief. "There's... a fluid manifestation. Inside his lungs."
The Prophet staggered. He tried to draw a breath, but he choked.
GULP.
The sound was horrible in the cavern's silence. The sound of someone being force-fed.
Then, the prayer was answered.
GUSH.
The Prophet's mouth spewed forth water.
Not saliva. It was clear, crystalline, cold, pure water, gushing out in a torrent like a burst fire hydrant.
He fell to his knees, beating his own chest. He wanted air, but Silas gave him water. Liter after liter of pure water poured from his mouth, his nose, and his ears.
"Father..." the Prophet tried to speak between the gushes, but his voice was drowned.
The water kept coming. Soaking his dirty robes, washing the rusty stage until it shone.
His followers, who had been praying devoutly, now looked up in shock. At first, they thought it was a miracle.
"Water! He's producing water!" shouted one follower, running forward with cupped hands, wanting to drink from this holy 'source'.
But his steps faltered. He saw the agony on his Prophet's face.
The Prophet's body convulsed violently. He thrashed on the stage floor like a man drowning at the bottom of an ocean, even though he was on dry land. His chest heaved violently, his ribs seeming ready to break from the pressure of the increasing volume of water inside him.
He clawed at his own neck until the skin tore, trying to create a new breathing hole, but clear water also spurted from his self-inflicted wounds.
Finally, the body surrendered.
One final jerk. His back arched upward in a final spasm.
Then it fell.
The Blind Prophet lay dead. His mouth was still open, trickling the last of the small river of clear water that pooled on the stage.
Amidst the ironically holy puddle floated a single, beautiful white Moon-Lily petal—the subtle signature of the killer from the garden above.
Silence.
Then, screaming erupted.
"HE WAS REJECTED!" an elder of the cult shrieked, backing away in fear until he hit a wall. "HIS PRAYER WAS REJECTED! GOD DROWNED HIM FROM WITHIN!"
"IT'S A CURSE! DON'T TOUCH THE WATER!"
The once-devout mass turned into a panicked animal. They trampled over each other, running away from the wet corpse, afraid that this "water curse" would infect anyone who dared to ask for a drink.
On the monitor screen, only the corpse of the supplicant remained, dead because his prayer was answered too literally.
Date: August 7, 980 GD Time: 20:00 Location: Nexus Hall -- Command Center
The main screen went black. Yet, the image of the wet corpse floating in the holy puddle seemed etched onto my retina.
The silence in the Command Center was heavy, as if even the air in this room was holding its breath.
"Ugh..."
Rian, my usually stoic junior aide, covered his mouth. His face turned a pale green. Without excuse, he turned and ran out of the room. The sound of his panicked footsteps and the slamming door were the only human sounds left.
The rest was only the hum of machines.
"That was..." Vianna's voice broke the silence.
I turned. Vianna's holographic avatar, usually stable and sharp, now had static glitches at its edges—a sign her logic processor was struggling to process the irrational data just recorded.
"The probability of spontaneous death due to instant Hyper-Hydration is zero percent," Vianna whispered. "That wasn't just murder, Ash. That was... unnecessary cruelty. That was sadism."
"It wasn't," I corrected softly.
I stood up from the command chair, feeling my still-weak knees. I walked toward the water dispenser in the corner of the room and poured a glass of cold water.
I stared at the clear water in the glass. It trembled slightly.
"It wasn't sadism, Vianna. It was Art."
I put the glass down, suddenly losing my thirst.
"It was a message from Silas."
I walked over to the large window overlooking the night city. In the distance, I could see the peak of Aethelgard's tower glowing a soft green, surrounded by beautiful hanging gardens.
Titus kills you like a storm; he shatters your bones, topples your house. You know he's coming, and you die with honest pain.
But Silas?
Silas never lifts a sword. He doesn't dirty his hands with blood.
He kills you with kindness. He kills you with prayer.
You ask for water? He doesn't give you a glass. He gives you an ocean in your lungs. He drowns you with what you love most, in the place you feel safest.
He tucks a white lily petal into your dead mouth as a signature—a reminder that for Aethelgard, life and death are just matters of gardening. And we are all just weeds that need pruning.
That wasn't just magic. It was Divine arrogance. He just told the entire under-city: "Your god does not hear you. But I do."
I shivered. For the first time in this war, I felt afraid of my own ally.
"Vianna," I called. My voice was flat, suppressing the nausea in my stomach.
"Yes, Praetor."
"Play the narrative. Don't let this horror go to waste."
I turned, looking into the purple eyes of Vianna's hologram with an iron gaze.
"Broadcast it to every crack in the under-city. Tell them: 'The Blind Prophet was a False Prophet. He prayed for a sign, and the Heavens punished his arrogance. He drowned in his own lies.'"
"Do not mention Silas's name. Do not mention Aethelgard. Frame this as divine intervention."
"Make them believe that fighting the Senate is like fighting Fate itself."
Vianna nodded, her fingers moving swiftly to assemble the propaganda protocol. "Order executed."
I looked back at my reflection in the dark window glass. There, I saw the shadow of a young man holding the reins of these monsters.
But who is really holding the reins?
"One left," I whispered to my own reflection.
"Kora has run. The Prophet has been forcibly baptized."
"Vance is now truly alone in his iron box."
I gave a thin smirk, a smile that didn't reach my eyes.
"Tomorrow morning... we'll make sure the box becomes an oven."
Date: August 8, 980 GD Time: 10:00 AM (Day 3 of the Ultimatum)
Location: Interior of Vance's Main Bunker -- Layer -3 (200 Meters Deep)
Heat.
The air inside this bunker no longer felt like air. It felt like molten lead being forced into one's lungs.
Vance sat slumped in his wheelchair, surrounded by the monitor screens that were once the windows to his power. Once, these screens displayed green, stable pipeline flow charts.
Now, they displayed hell.
His expensive silk shirt was soaked through, clinging to his blistering skin like a too-tight shroud. But this physical heat was nothing compared to the cold that froze his heart as his eyes fixed on one object on his desk.
A sheet of black paper with silver ink.
The letter from The Unravelers.
"They discarded me..."
Vance's hand trembled as he picked up the letter, crumpling its edge.
"I thought we were partners. I thought I was their spearhead in this city. They were the ones who promised a new world without 'The Loom'. They were the ones who vowed to cut the Sovereign's threads of fate."
He read again the sentence that had haunted him since this morning: 'Your failure demonstrates managerial incompetence. We do not invest in leaky ships.'
Tears of frustration mixed with sweat dripped down his cheeks.
"Leaky ship? I held back this entire city for you! I blocked the pipes, I fought the Senate, I risked my life! And this is the repayment? You call me a 'Damaged Asset' and just leave?"
Vance threw the letter to the floor.
The feeling of abandonment tore at his ego. He realized that for that grand Anti-Loom organization, he was not a revolutionary hero. He was just a tool. A loose screw easier to discard than to tighten.
And without them... he had nothing.
Vance swiveled his chair to face the CCTV screen showing the conditions outside his bunker.
The sight there shattered what remained of his heart.
In the narrow corridors of Layer -3, his people—the ones he had sworn to protect—were dying.
He saw a mother wringing a dirty rag into the mouth of her dehydrated child, hoping for a single drop of water. He saw elderly people fainting from heatstroke, their skin gray and dry. He saw corpses beginning to pile up in a corner because no one had the strength to bury them.
The stench of death seeped in even through the bunker's sophisticated air filters.
"Look what I've done," Vance whispered, his voice cracking.
"I dragged them into this war. I promised them freedom. I promised them that 'Friends in the Shadows' would come with weapons and food."
"But those friends don't exist. They abandoned me. And I... I left my people trapped in this oven with me."
Guilt hit him like a sledgehammer.
This wasn't Wynter Ash's fault. This wasn't Titus's fault. It was his fault.
His stupidity. His arrogance.
He thought he could play chess with the Gods. He thought because he had connections with the Unravelers, he was untouchable.
"I was a fool. Such a fool."
Vance looked at the holographic map flashing red on the wall. Enemy positions.
He knew what was out there. Wynter was just "toying" with temperature and logistics. That was just the warm-up.
Behind Wynter, the real monsters were waiting their turn.
"If I stay stubborn... if I keep waiting for aid that will never come..."
"Valdor will grow bored of waiting and bring this ceiling down with his Titan Golems, burying us all alive."
"Aurum will freeze our assets until we eat each other like rats in a barrel."
"Aethelgard... Silas will send a plague worse than death."
Vance clutched his head. There was no way out.
Fight? With what? His elite troops had fled or died. The Unravelers had cut contact.
Escape? To where? The ratlines had been concreted over by Titus.
He was trapped in the coffin he had built himself, and he had forced 50,000 others in with him.
"Is this what I wanted? To be the king of a mass grave?"
"Did I let them die just because I was too ashamed to admit I was thrown away by my boss?"
Vance stared at his reflection in a dead monitor screen. He saw a pitiful old man. A failed manager trying to be a general.
"The recognition I wanted... the acknowledgment that we are equal to the Topsiders... it cannot be gained this way. Not without power. And I have no power."
"The fate of the weak who try to swim against the current is to drown. But I don't have to drag everyone down with me."
A strange, sorrowful calm descended upon him. The calm of one who has accepted total defeat.
"It's true what they say. In this situation, submission is more likely than total ruin. Surrender is the only way to save the lives of those left."
"Let history record me as the coward who surrendered. As long as the children out there can drink water again today."
Vance took a deep breath, inhaling the hot air for the last time as the "Governor".
He pressed the intercom button with a hand that was no longer trembling, but limp with resignation.
"Ready the truck," he ordered. His voice was hollow, emotionless. "And contact Titus at the Northern Gate."
"Sir?" the guard's voice sounded confused and fearful. "What are we going to do? Has the Unravelers' aid arrived?"
Vance laughed bitterly. A tear fell from the corner of his eye.
"There is no aid, son. There are no Unravelers. No Heroes."
"There's only us. And I'm ending this suffering now."