Volume 2: Epilogue
The bell above the door of the General Store in the lower end of Z Town gave a tired, familiar ping.
Outside, Z Town was changing. The sky was still a bruised violet, but the "Crush-Grit" in the air had thinned. Word had traveled through the scrap-heaps and the steam-tunnels like a wildfire: the House of Terra had fallen. The "Anchor" had risen.
Bhy Khay didn't look up from the workbench. He was hunched over a pile of scorched Azure phase-cores, his golden eyes shielded by a pair of heavy, grease-stained welding goggles. He looked older, the lines around his mouth deeper, but his hands were as steady as the bedrock of the planet.
"We're closed for inventory," Bhy Khay grunted, his voice like gravel in a blender. "Unless you've got a Tier-4 heat-sink or a very good reason to be breathing my air, turn around."
"I don't have a heat-sink," a calm, resonant voice replied. "But I think I still have a tab."
Bhy Khay's hands froze. The soldering iron hissed as it touched a drop of cooling oil. Slowly, the old man pushed his goggles up onto his forehead and turned his stool around.
Kael stood in the doorway.
He wasn't the blood-stained scavenger who had stumbled in months ago. He stood taller, his presence filling the cramped, dusty shop until the walls seemed to push outward. The Sovereign Vanguard mantle was draped over his shoulders, its matte-black surface pulsing with a faint, amber-gold light—the unmistakable signature of a mastered Taurus Array.
Bhy Khay looked at Kael's platinum eyes, then at the silver-white runes glowing on his forearms. He let out a long, slow breath that turned into a chuckle.
"Well," Bhy Khay said, wiping his hands on a rag that was blacker than the floor. "I see you didn't just break the switch. You broke the whole damn clock."
Kael walked into the shop, his boots making no sound on the floor—a sign of his absolute control over his own kinetic weight. He reached out and touched a rusted hydraulic arm hanging from the ceiling. Under his touch, the rust didn't just fall off; it restructured, the metal turning into a polished, high-density alloy.
"You knew," Kael said, turning to the old merchant. "When you gave me the first suit. You knew what the Protocol would do to me."
"I knew what it could do," Bhy Khay corrected, standing up and walking over to a hidden cabinet behind the counter. He pulled out a bottle of amber liquid and two cracked glasses. "I've seen a lot of 'Heralds' come through these wastes, Kael. Most of them burn out like cheap fuses the moment they taste a little bit of star-fire. They think the Protocol is a weapon."
He poured the drinks, the liquid thick and smelling of fermented ozone.
"But you," Bhy Khay continued, handing a glass to Kael. "You treated it like a tool. And then you treated it like a responsibility. That's the only reason you're standing here instead of being a stain on Ghal's floor."
Kael took a sip. The liquid burned, but it felt grounded. Real. "The House of Gemini is moving, Bhy Khay. They think they can split the next Array. They want to turn the Protocol into a marketplace."
Bhy Khay's golden eyes sharpened. "The Twins. They were always the smartest of the bastards. Valerius used a hammer; Ghal used a mountain. But the Gemini? They use a mirror. They'll try to show you a version of yourself that you like better than the truth."
The old man reached into the Runic crate he had opened earlier—the one marked SOVEREIGN DEFENSE SYSTEMS. He pulled out a small, silver-tipped cylinder and slid it across the counter toward Kael.
"What's this?" Kael asked.
"A gift from the 'Old World' version of me," Bhy Khay said. "It's a Frequency-Nullifier. If the Gemini try to Phase-Shift your mind or split your resonance, you crack that open. It'll anchor your soul to the Aries-Taurus meridian for sixty seconds. In this world, sixty seconds is enough time to kill a god."
Kael picked up the cylinder. He felt the weight of it—not just physical weight, but the weight of history.
"Why help me this much?" Kael asked. "You could have sold this to the Spire and lived like a king for the rest of your days."
Bhy Khay leaned back against the counter, a faint, sad smile touching his lips. "I already lived like a king, kid. I sat on the boards, I signed the checks, and I watched the world burn because of it. I'm not helping a 'Sovereign.' I'm helping a boy from the gutters finish a job I was too cowardly to start."
He gestured to the door, where Jax and Rin were waiting in the shadows of the street.
"Go on. Get out of here," Bhy Khay grunted, turning back to his workbench. "And don't come back until you've cleared the Northern Tundra. My shop is getting too crowded with your legends."
Kael paused at the door. "Bhy Khay?"
"Yeah?"
"Keep the tab open. I'm going to need a lot more scrap before the ten years are up."
The old merchant didn't look back, but his shoulders shook with a silent laugh. "Get out of here, Emperor."
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