"The gravity constantly redirects itself across these structures." Torix anchored his bladed legs into the stone to stabilize his massive frame.

"The magical output required to sustain this dimension is completely beyond a mortal king," Syra muttered.

Iron-Scale drew his star-iron daggers to inspect the closest drifting corpse. The lifeless face bore the sunken features of a drained battery. "Aethelgard harvests their own people to fuel these engines."

Syra crouched near a fragmented staircase leading sideways into a floating library. She pointed her shadow blade at a massive concentration of violet crystals pulsing in the far distance. The chaotic geometry spiraled inward toward that central point.

"The core operates from that junction." Syra traced the shifting architecture with her free hand. "The structural layout converges around it."

"We swing across the debris." Iron-Scale fired his clockwork grappling spools into a passing upside-down corridor.

Iron-Scale swung across the inverted architecture and landed on a floating platform. Syra and Torix dropped from the shadows directly behind him. A massive cluster of violet crystals grew around a central containment sphere.

Inside the transparent barrier rested a desiccated human corpse.

Glowing tethers pierced the withered flesh to pump power up toward the moving citadel. Iron-Scale drew his star-iron daggers and approached the crystalline sphere. He raised his blades to sever the primary energy lines.

’Stop.’ Red projected the command. Iron-Scale halted his advance and looked up at the fractured ceiling. He pointed his weapons at the suspended corpse.

"The containment powers the fortress." Iron-Scale tapped his communication crystal. "This vessel acts as the root of the magical anomaly. Shall I destroy the source?"

Red stayed silent inside his orbital sanctuary. He stared at the primary monitor displaying the withered husk. The visual feed zoomed in on the hollow cheeks and the frail ribs. The royal mages had stripped the life from that exact frame to fuel his classmates.

It was his body.

The frail structure had endured sixteen years of starvation in an apartment reeking of mold. Those hands had held rejection letters from corporate recruiters who evicted him upon seeing his background file.

That face had borne the sneering mockery of his peers and the brutal brand of a terrorist’s son.

Every ounce of poverty and isolation he had ever suffered was permanently etched into those brittle bones. The ruling class of his old world had looked at his features and decided he was an unwanted liability.

The reunited classmates had voted to erase him from existence simply to secure their own survival.

The King of Aethelgard had deemed his flesh entirely worthless. They tossed his drained remains into the disposal pit like common garbage.

Yet the corpse still anchored the entire mechanical nightmare tearing across the sky above them. The broken shell trapped inside the crystal sphere was him.

Red remained completely silent inside his orbital sanctuary. He stared at the primary monitor projecting the withered corpse suspended inside the crystalline sphere.

Iron-Scale gripped his star-iron daggers tightly. Syra adjusted her hold on her shadow blade. They all stood at the edge of the floating platform to watch the violet energy pump through the desiccated veins of the human husk.

The tactical reality of the situation clicked into place across Red’s interface. He had explicitly instructed Iron-Scale to deliver a specific message to King Voranthar through the captured communication array.

He wanted the monarch to know the exact identity of the god dismantling the Fourth Continent. He wanted the ruling class of Aethelgard to realize the sacrifice they threw into the abyss had returned to burn their kingdom to bedrock. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Voranthar had received the message and mobilized his remaining mages. They scoured the depths of the disposal pit to locate Red’s discarded remains. The brittle bones and dried flesh held absolutely zero inherent magical value.

The King wired the ruined corpse into the biological citadel to send a response. It was a calculated, personal strike meant to unnerve the sovereign of the Spiral.

Red gripped the edge of his console. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the digital stone under his spectral fingers.

The visual feed zoomed in on the hollow eye sockets and the cracked ribs of his former vessel. The frail body had endured a lifetime of starvation and abuse before enduring the royal mages’ extraction spell. Now it dangled like a morbid puppet in the center of a corrupted dimension.

The psychological counterattack landed flawlessly. Red glared at the screen, analyzing the glowing tethers piercing the dead flesh.

Iron-Scale shifted his weight on the obsidian platform. "Sovereign. The magical output is destabilizing the surrounding architecture. We await your directive."

Iron-Scale lowered his star-iron daggers and looked up at the fractured ceiling of the abyssal chamber. He tilted his head, waiting for a follow-up command from the Sovereign.

The sudden halt contradicted their usual standing orders of absolute destruction. Syra stepped out of a nearby shadow to stand beside him.

"Why do we hold our blades?" Iron-Scale kept his eyes locked on the dark expanse above. "If this machine powers the flying fortress, breaking the core achieves our objective."

’Sever the tethers without damaging the flesh inside the glass,’ Red projected his voice directly into the minds of the Vanguard commanders. ’I want that vessel extracted perfectly intact.’

Iron-Scale turned his attention back to the crystalline sphere. He scratched the side of his scaled head with a claw. The glowing magical lines pulsed with unfamiliar energy, tying the withered corpse to the surrounding architecture.

He possessed absolutely no understanding of Aethelgard arcane machinery.

"This requires surgical extraction." Iron-Scale stepped back from the containment unit and pointed a claw toward the massive Arachne commander. "Torix. You understand web structures and intersecting lines. Disconnect this dead thing."

Torix clattered his mandibles in acknowledgment. The six-eyed beast crawled forward on his bladed legs to inspect the base of the crystal sphere. Syra crouched beside him, tracing the flow of violet magic running through the tethers.

They needed to find the primary anchor points to unweave the complex spell.

Iron-Scale left the specialists to their task. He turned away from the central platform and walked toward the edge of the floating obsidian slab. Drawing a dagger, he fired a pneumatic spool into a passing corridor.

The steel wire yanked him across the void. He landed on a crumbling stone staircase jutting out sideways from the darkness.

He marched upward along the inverted architecture to scout the surrounding area. Thousands of drained human husks drifted past him in the endless expanse.

He kicked a piece of floating debris out of his path. The abyss stretched endlessly in every direction, hiding countless secrets among the discarded bodies. Iron-Scale kept his draconic eyes focused on the shifting masonry, eager to find what else the royal mages had thrown into the pit.