The "vision" faded like smoke in a gale.
Kenji blinked, his boots slamming back onto the deck of the Scrap-Venture. The iridescent gray glow in his eyes receded, leaving him gasping for air. Elara caught him before he hit the deck, her hands cold but steady.
"Kenji! You went dark for nearly a minute," she whispered, her face etched with worry. "Your core... it was outputting white noise. What did you see?"
Kenji looked up at the sky. The High Council fleet was indeed retreating, but they weren't burning suns. They were moving in perfect, clinical formation, their golden shields shimmering with a cold, renewed light. The "World-Eater" beam hadn't been fired yet, it was still charging, a terrifying sun hanging in the clouds.
"I saw... a way out," Kenji panted, clutching the locket at his neck. "But it's not today. We didn't win, Elara. We just survived the introduction."
[SYSTEM ALERT: TEMPORAL ANOMALY DETECTED]
[USER: KENJI TANAKA - CORE SYNC: 92%]
[STATUS: PEAK VETERAN - EVOLUTION PAUSED]
Commander Kael marched onto the deck, her cybernetic eye glowing a fierce red. "The Council didn't retreat because they were beaten. They retreated because the Glacial Eye is destabilizing. The entire Northern Tundra is about to become a localized Void-Zone. If we don't get out of this airspace in three minutes, we'll be frozen in time along with the Volkovs."
"Where's the rest of the team?" Kenji asked, standing up on shaky legs.
"Zola and Bjorn are securing the internal scrap-vaults," Kael reported. "Mateo is trying to jam the Council's long-range trackers, but they're using a frequency we've never seen. It's not magic, Kenji. It's... pure math."
Kenji looked back at the ruins of the Volkov Citadel. He could still feel Viktor Volkov's frozen core down there. He had shown mercy, but he knew the System wouldn't. The Central Authority would likely send a "Cleanup Crew" to erase the evidence of a Grand Master's defeat.
"We head for the Iron Graveyard," Kenji commanded.
"The Graveyard?" Kael blinked. "That's in the Neutral Territories. It's a Rank 1 wasteland. There's nothing there but rust and ghosts."
"Exactly," Kenji said. "The Council expects us to run to an Insurgency stronghold. They expect us to seek protection. We're going somewhere where the System's 'Order' is at its weakest. I need to build something, Kael. Something that doesn't rely on the Stars."
The Scrap-Venture dove into the cloud layer, pushing its engines to the breaking point. Behind them, the Glacial Eye finally collapsed. A silent, violet shockwave rippled across the tundra, turning the jagged ice into a perfectly smooth, mirror-like surface. Everything within fifty miles monsters, ruins, and the remaining Volkov Justiciars was turned into a static image, frozen forever.
Inside the ship's hold, the team gathered around a heavy iron table.
"We have two Stars," Kenji said, placing the Abyssal Heart (contained in a lead-glass sphere) and the Stasis Diamond on the table. The room's temperature plummeted instantly, and shadows began to stretch toward the artifacts.
"And there are five more out there," Priya added, her eyes scanning the data on her tablet. "The Council has three in their possession. The Scrap of Eternal Hunger, the Scrap of Blinding Truth, and the Scrap of Absolute Gravity."
"Wait," Mateo interrupted. "That leaves one. The seventh Star. Where is it?"
Kenji looked at the holographic map. "The System calls it the Scrap of Infinite Recursion. But unlike the others, it doesn't have a fixed location. It's a 'Traveling Star.' It appears wherever the density of failed Ranks is highest."
"The Iron Graveyard," Elara realized. "It's a dump site for every broken automaton and failed weapon from the last three Great Wars. It's the ultimate 'Failed Rank' zone."
"If we can get to the Recursion Star before the Council's trackers lock onto it," Kenji said, "we can bridge the gap between our Void and Stasis. We can create a self-sustaining core."
[NEW MISSION: THE RECURSIVE SOUL]
Objective: Navigate the Iron Graveyard.
Threat Level: Rank S (Environmental)
Warning: The Graveyard is home to the 'Rust-Eaters' automatons that have evolved past their original programming.
"We're Rank 5s and 6s going into an S-Rank environmental zone," Bjorn grunted, sharpening his axe. "Sounds like a Tuesday for us at this point."
"It's different this time, Bjorn," Kenji warned. "In the Graveyard, the metal remembers. My Scrapsmith powers will be amplified, but so will the spirits of the machines I'm trying to command. I might lose control."
As the ship crossed the border into the Neutral Territories, the sky turned a dull, sickly orange. Below them, miles of twisted metal, skeletal frames of giant war-machines, and mountains of discarded armor plating stretched as far as the eye could see. This was the graveyard of the world's ambition.
Suddenly, the Scrap-Venture groaned. The hull didn't just vibrate; it started to scream.
"Kenji! The metal!" Mateo yelled, clutching his ears. "The ship's plating... it's trying to detach itself!"
[ALERT: RUST-WAVE DETECTED]
[METALLIC DECOMPOSITION: 12% Per Minute]
Kenji slammed his hands onto the floor of the deck. He didn't use a shield. He used his Master-level Resonance.
"STAY. DOWN."
He forced his energy into the ship's molecular structure, fighting the "hunger" of the Graveyard below. But as he did, he felt a presence. Something massive was stirring beneath the mountains of rust.
It wasn't a monster. It was a consciousness.
A voice, made of grinding gears and static, echoed in Kenji's mind.
"...A new smith... with the heart of a void... come to feed the furnace...?"
"We're being hunted," Kenji whispered, his eyes flaring violet. "Not by the Authority. By the Graveyard itself."
The ship's engines failed as a massive, rusted tentacle made of thousands of fused swords reached out from a pile of debris and snagged the Scrap-Venture's tail.
The "Iron Graveyard" arc had begun.