The air in Jax's workshop didn't just smell of smoke; it tasted of history. Every scrap of metal hanging from the rafters had a story—a piece of a fallen kingdom, a fragment of a failed dream.
While the automated hammers of the forge began the grueling process of hammering Null-Iron plates into the shape of the Silver-Wing's hull, Jax led Kaelen and Nova into a smaller, pressurized side-chamber. This was his personal "kitchen"—a place where he didn't just cook food, but where he refined the very essence of Aetheric energy.
"Sit," Jax commanded, pointing to a stool made from the piston of a steam-engine.
Kaelen sat, his breath hitching as a sharp spasm of indigo light rippled across his chest. The "Burn" was getting aggressive; the skin around his sternum was beginning to look translucent, revealing the jagged, rotating star-shard beneath.
"You're using the Void-Core like a blunt instrument, Crow," Jax said, his bionic arm whirring as he adjusted a series of valves on a massive brass boiler. "You strip the friction away to move fast, to cut deep. But you're leaving a vacuum behind in your own soul. That's why you're burning out. Nature hates a vacuum, and it's trying to fill your heart with its own heat."
Jax pulled a heavy, cast-iron skillet onto a blue-flame burner. He didn't use oil. He threw in a handful of dull, gray peppercorns that hummed with a low frequency.
"The Consensus taught you that power is a command," Jax continued, tossing the peppercorns. The smell was sharp, like ozone and cloves. "They're wrong. Power is a recipe. It's about the balance of ingredients."
He grabbed Kaelen's glowing right arm with his massive, warm organic hand.
"Your Void-Style is 'Zero-Friction.' It's the absence of resistance. But look at this girl," he nodded toward Nova, who was watching the peppercorns with intense curiosity. "She is a Living Core. She doesn't just erase laws; she rewrites them. She creates density, gravity, pressure. She is the salt that brings out the flavor of the world."
Jax looked Kaelen dead in the eye. "If you want to live long enough to see my son again, you need to learn to Absorb resistance, not just delete it. You need to learn the Void-Style: High-Pressure Singularity."
"Sounds complicated," Kaelen wheezed, the indigo light under his skin pulsing.
"It's like making a reduction sauce," Jax grinned, his single eye sparkling. "You take all that heat, all that friction you're stripping away from the world, and instead of throwing it into the wind, you compress it. You fold it back into the blade."
Jax suddenly swung his heavy ladle—which was actually a weighted combat mace—at Kaelen's head.
Instinctively, Kaelen reached for his Void power to slip the blow.
"No!" Jax roared. "Don't slide! Catch it!"
Kaelen froze. He didn't erase the friction. Instead, he visualized his Void-Core not as a vacuum, but as a sponge. As the ladle swung toward him, he focused on the air between them, pulling all the heat and resistance of the swing into a tiny, pinpoint spot on his palm.
The ladle hit his hand. There was no sound of impact. The momentum simply... stopped.
Kaelen's palm turned a blinding, angry white. The energy of Jax's massive swing was trapped in a marble-sized sphere of compressed space.
"Now," Jax whispered. "Give it back."
Kaelen flicked his hand toward a heavy iron test-dummy in the corner. The tiny sphere of energy expanded instantly. There was no explosion, just a silent pop. The iron dummy didn't break; it was compressed into a ball the size of an apple, its molecular density forced inward.
Kaelen gasped, falling back against the stool. The indigo glow in his chest had dimmed. The pain was gone, replaced by a strange, heavy warmth.
"You didn't burn any life-force for that," Jax noted, returning to his cooking. "You used my energy against my dummy. That's how you're going to survive the Work-Colony. Because at Colony 9, the air itself is a weapon."
"Colony 9," Lyra's voice came from the doorway. She looked pale. "That's the Iron Lung. It's built inside a giant floating bellows that pumps air to the High Spires. The pressure there is so high it can crush a normal man's skull."
"Which is why," Jax said, plating a dish of steaming, spicy noodles and handing them to Kaelen, "you're going to need more than a new hull. You're going to need a crew that knows how to handle the pressure."
He untied his grease-stained apron and tossed it onto the workbench. Underneath, he wore a combat vest lined with spice-pouches and thermal grenades.
"I'm coming with you," Jax stated. "I'm the only one who knows the layout of the Lung. Besides, the Silver-Wing needs a cook. You lot look like you haven't eaten a decent meal since the world broke."
Kaelen took a bite of the noodles. The heat was intense, but for the first time in months, he felt truly alive. He looked at Lyra, then at Nova, then at the massive man with the bionic arm.
"Welcome to the crew, Jax," Kaelen said, standing up. "Now, how do we break into a prison that's designed to be un-breakable?"
"Simple," Jax smirked, checking the pressure gauge on his arm. "We don't break in. We get sucked in. The Lung takes in a massive intake of air every twelve hours. We just have to make sure we're the most indigestible thing it's ever swallowed."
Suddenly, the ground shook. A muffled explosion echoed from the upper docks of Scrap-City.
"The Red Gale," Lyra hissed, her blindfolded head snapping toward the ceiling. "They're here. And they didn't come to trade."