The King didn't have a weapon. He held a small, golden orb—a frantic whirl of clockwork.
"You call it a lie," Aurelius said, his voice terrifyingly calm in the silent square. "I call it a bargain."
Kael stopped at the foot of the throne. Behind him, the Army of the Ash stood ready.
"You fed thousands of men to a machine," Kael said. "You turned the suffering of the world into fuel."
"Suffering?" Aurelius laughed gently. "Do you know what is out there, Kael?"
The King pointed to the sky.
"The Void isn't just a place. It's a stomach. It's filled with things older than time. Things that eat realities like apples. The Deep Ones."
Kael tightened his grip on the Void-ring. "I've seen them."
"You've seen their shadows," Aurelius corrected. "If a Deep One truly looked at this world... we would cease to exist. We would be unmade."
The King stepped forward.
"The Spire is a lullaby, Kael. It emits a frequency that keeps them asleep. It masks our world's soul-signature. But the machine is hungry. It needs high-density bio-ether to function. It needs Knights."
"So you farm us," Kael said, disgusted.
"We prune the garden so the tree may live," Aurelius said. "The First Sword understood. He knew that one man's eternity of pain was worth a world of peace."
"Peace?" Kael pointed his Obsidian arm at the starving, ash-covered soldiers behind him. "Is this peace? A world divided into gods and rats?"
"It is survival," Aurelius said. "If you turn off the Spire... the Deep Ones will wake up. And everyone you saved will die."
Kael looked at the Spire. He felt the hum of it in his bones. It wasn't a lullaby. It was a scream, stretched out over centuries.
"We don't sleep anymore," Kael said.
He stepped past the King.
"What are you doing?" Aurelius whispered.
"I'm waking the world up," Kael said. "If the Deep Ones come... we'll fight them. But we won't feed them our children."
He walked toward the massive golden doors of the Spire.
"Stop him!" Aurelius ordered the Royal Guard.
But the Guard didn't move. They looked at the Broken Branch. They looked at the Ring on Kael's hand.
They sheathed their swords.
Aurelius slumped on the steps, a king without a kingdom.
"You doom us all," he wept.
"Maybe," Kael said, pushing the doors open. "But at least we'll die free."