The "Deep-Stack" was less of a room and more of a crypt for dead data. Located three floors below the Baron's throne room, it was a refrigerated chamber filled with humming server towers that rose like monoliths in the dark. The air was frigid, kept at near-freezing temperatures to prevent the overclocked processors from melting down.
Baron Grasberg didn't come down here often. He stood by the blast door, his mechanical eye whirring as it adjusted to the low light. "You have access to the primary node," he grunted, gesturing to a terminal that looked like an altar of cables and screens. "This system is air-gapped. It has no connection to the Dominion Grid. If you trip an alarm, it rings here, not in the Empress's palace."
Ken nodded, stepping up to the console. He placed the toolkit on the metal desk and opened it. The Aegis Heart pulsed softly, its violet light reflecting off the dark screens.
"Maya, watch the door," Ken ordered, not looking back. "If the energy spikes, the cooling vents might open. Don't get sucked in."
Maya took up a position near the entrance, her pistol drawn. She looked uneasy. "Just crack the code, Ken. I don't like being this close to the brain of the operation."
Elara Vance walked freely around the room, trailing her hand along the server racks. She stopped behind Ken, peering over his shoulder. "The encryption on a Royal Artifact is adaptive," she warned, her voice low. "It learns from the person trying to break it. It won't just ask for a password. It will try to stop you physically."
"I know," Ken said. He reached into the toolkit and pulled out a heavy data-coupling cable. He jammed one end into the terminal and the other into the port on the Aegis Heart.
The screens exploded into life.
Columns of red code cascaded down the monitors, moving so fast they blurred into solid lines. The hum of the servers rose to a scream. The Aegis Heart began to vibrate, rattling against the metal desk.
"Access denied," the terminal's synthetic voice droned. "Bio-metric mismatch. Mana-signature not recognized. Initiating Counter-Measure: Protocol 4."
"Ken, pull the plug!" Maya shouted, shielding her eyes as the room was bathed in blinding white light.
"No!" Ken yelled back, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard. "I have to force the handshake! If I disconnect now, it wipes the data!"
The white light didn't fade. It coalesced. It gathered in the center of the room, swirling into a dense, humanoid shape. The air crackled with the smell of ozone and burning dust. The hard-light projectors in the ceiling—part of the Baron's own security system—had been hijacked by the Heart.
The light solidified. Color bled into the form. Gold armor. Blonde hair. A sneer that Ken knew better than his own face.
Dorian Vaelstron stood in the center of the server room.
It wasn't a recording. It was a hard-light construct, solid enough to punch through steel, powered by the immense mana reserves of the Heart. The construct turned its head, the golden eyes locking onto Ken.
"Stealing from Mother?" the Dorian-construct spoke. The voice was perfect—arrogant, smooth, and layered with contempt. "You always were a parasite, Ken."
"It's a psychological defense," Elara observed coolly, stepping back into the shadows. "The Heart scans your memories for the figure of authority you fear most. It manifests them to drive you away."
"Shoot it!" Ken commanded, not taking his hands off the keyboard. "I need thirty seconds to bypass the firewall!"
Maya didn't hesitate. She leveled her pistol and fired three rounds into the construct's chest.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The bullets sparked against the golden breastplate and flattened, falling uselessly to the floor. The construct didn't even flinch. It raised a hand, and a sword of pure, condensed light materialized in its grip.
"Pathetic," the construct sneered. It moved with unnatural speed, a blur of gold and white.
Maya dove to the side as the sword cleaved the air where she had been standing, slicing through a thick bundle of server cables like they were cobwebs. Sparks showered the room.
"Ken! Bullets don't work on mana-ghosts!" Maya yelled, scrambling to her feet and reloading. "Do something!"
"I'm busy!" Ken gritted his teeth. The code on the screen was fighting him, rewriting itself every time he found a loophole. The Heart was smart. It was trying to kill him while he worked.
The Dorian-construct ignored Maya and turned toward the terminal. It strode forward, raising the sword for a killing blow.
"You are unauthorized," the construct boomed. "Termination is mandatory."
Ken looked up. The sword was coming down. He couldn't dodge it and keep the connection live. He had to choose: run and lose the map, or stay and die.
He chose neither.
Ken took his left hand off the keyboard and thrust it upward, directly into the path of the falling blade.
"Ken!" Maya screamed.
The blade hit his palm. But it didn't cut.
Ken triggered his Null-Core. He didn't try to block the energy; he accepted it. He opened the void inside his cells, creating a vacuum of existence right in the center of his hand.
The hard-light sword hit his skin and unraveled. The solidified mana was sucked into the emptiness of Ken's Null-signature. The blade dissolved into harmless motes of light that spiraled into his palm like water down a drain.
The construct froze. Its programming couldn't process what had happened. It pushed harder, trying to regenerate the blade, but Ken just fed on the energy, his eyes turning a deep, hollow black.
"You're not Dorian," Ken said, his voice echoing with a strange, distorted duality. "Dorian burns. You're just a battery."
Ken stood up, his hand still gripping the dissolving blade. He walked around the console, stepping right up to the construct. The golden knight towered over him, but Ken looked unimpressed.
He placed his other hand on the construct's chest plate.
"Delete," Ken whispered.
He pulsed the Void.
The reaction was violent. The Dorian-construct didn't just fade; it shattered. The hard-light matrix collapsed instantly, exploding outward in a shockwave of harmless wind. The golden armor, the sneer, the sword—it all vanished, leaving only the smell of ozone.
The room fell silent. The terminal beeped.
"Access Granted," the synthetic voice announced. "Bio-metric override accepted. Welcome, User: Null."
Ken slumped against the desk, exhaling a breath he felt like he'd been holding for a year. The blackness faded from his eyes.
Maya lowered her gun, staring at the empty space where the invincible knight had stood. She looked at Ken with a mix of fear and awe. "You ate it," she whispered. "You just ate a Tier-4 combat spell."
"It was just light," Ken muttered, turning back to the screen. "It had no mass. Once I broke the mana-tether, it fell apart."
"Don't downplay it," Elara said, stepping out from behind a server rack. She was tapping her ocular visor, reviewing the recording. "That was a high-level dissipation technique. You didn't just break the spell; you metabolized the energy. You're a living anti-magic field, Ken."
The Baron stepped forward from the doorway, his heavy boots clanking on the metal floor. He looked at the terminal. "The show is over. What did you find?"
Ken pointed to the main monitor. The cascading red code had been replaced by a static, green wireframe map. It was a projection of the world, but it looked wrong. The continents were distorted, and there were massive black zones where no data existed.
In the center of the largest black zone—a region of the ocean that simply didn't exist on official Dominion maps—a single red light blinked.
"That's the Blind Spot," Ken said, tracing the coordinate. "Sector Zero. It's located in the Static Sea, three hundred miles past the storm wall."
"The Static Sea is impassable," the Baron growled. "The magnetic interference there crashes ships instantly. No navigation computer works."
"That's why the Source Code is there," Ken replied. "The Empress can't send her fleets because the Architect can't render the terrain. It's a glitch in the reality engine."
He tapped a key, and a string of numbers appeared below the map.
"These are the frequency modulation codes for the planetary shield," Ken said. He pulled the data-cable out of the Heart and removed a small memory chip from the terminal. He tossed the chip to the Baron. "Your payment. Use those, and you can smuggle anything in or out of the atmosphere without the Spire seeing you."
The Baron caught the chip. He scrutinized it with his mechanical eye, then grinned—a horrific expression of greed. "A pleasure doing business, Prince. You have your map. But how do you intend to cross the Static Sea without a ship?"
"I don't need a ship," Ken said, closing the toolkit. "I need a pilot who knows how to fly without a computer. Someone who can navigate by sight and instinct."
He turned to look at Maya.
Maya holstered her gun and crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. "Oh, no. Don't look at me. I drive scrap-haulers in the tunnels. I don't fly suicide missions into the glitch-zone."
"You said you wanted to know how I did it," Ken said, picking up the toolkit. "You said you wanted to see the truth. That map leads to the controls of the entire world, Maya. If we get there, we don't just survive. We win."
Maya looked at the map, then at the Baron, and finally at Ken. She saw the challenge in his eyes.
"I need a bird," Maya sighed, defeated by her own curiosity. "A Vulture-Class stealth hopper. And I need the limiters removed from the engines."
"Done," the Baron said, clutching the chip. "Take the prototype in Hangar 4. Consider it a parting gift."
Suddenly, the red emergency lights in the server room began to strobe. A low, grinding alarm echoed through the bunker.
"Perimeter breach!" a guard's voice crackled over the intercom. "Sector 7 blast doors are compromising! Something is cutting through the hull!"
Elara tilted her head, listening to something only she could hear. "She didn't wait," Elara whispered. "The Empress didn't send the Guards. She sent the Hounds."
Ken stiffened. "Hounds?"
"Royal Assassins," Maya cursed, drawing her weapon again. "Cybernetic trackers. They don't arrest, Ken. They liquidate."
End of Chapter 18