The bridge was silent.
A world devoid of the noise that had haunted my ears for ten years.
There were no screams of wind tearing through scrap heaps, no hiss of welding torches erupting from the darkness, no anxious groans of steel shuddering beneath my feet.
Only a low, steady thrum, delivered from the ship's very heart, enveloped me in a silence thick with centuries of settled dust.
It wasn't the noise of a machine. It was the heartbeat of a vast, living thing.
I reached out for the controls.
I had expected cold metal. Instead, my palm met a surface as smooth as ivory, and warm to the touch.
As if in response, crystal pillars inside the bridge began to glow with a faint, blue light.
This light was qualitatively different from the murky twilight of Rust Haven. It was the clear, deep light of the open sea.
Motes of dust danced in the beams, like sprites waking from a sleep of centuries.
This wasn't just a cockpit. It was a sanctuary.
If 'the Nest', my fortress for ten years, had merely hidden me from the world, this place... this was a refuge that embraced my very soul.
The only place I could shed the false identity of the 'Ghost of Rust Haven' and breathe as what I truly was: the last survivor of Arkelos .
I sank deep into the pilot's seat and closed my eyes, wishing the quiet could last forever.
That was when it happened.
Beyond the massive bridge window, the gray sky tore apart. Silently.
Tearing through Rust Haven's eternal twilight, a perfect, geometric shadow fell across the scrap continent.
I opened my eyes. It was the Imperial fleet.
Sleek hulls of platinum and white alloy, boasting the same emotionless, mechanical perfection as the Aegis Guardians I'd seen at The Clatter Market.
Without sound, without warning, they dominated the sky, as if they had always been there.
Against the jagged, chaotic landscape of Rust Haven, their presence was a form of clean, orderly violence.
Silent arbiters, descended to correct the chaos.
Their inhuman presence pressed down on my heart, heavier than any physical roar.
The massive Aether pulse that had erupted when I awoke this ship yesterday—it had summoned them.
I gripped the controls instinctively.
Beneath my palm, I felt the ship's heart quicken its beat, just slightly.
*
The first attack came as streaks of light.
From the undersides of the Imperial fleet, dozens of red flashes burst forth silently.
A moment later, all of Rust Haven screamed.
With an earth-shattering roar, the colossal scrap mountain cradling this ship trembled violently from its very roots.
This was not a 'Scrap-Quake.' It was not the familiar groan of steel.
It was the death throe of a living continent being systematically murdered.
I watched, stunned, as the scene unfolded outside the window.
The red beams pierced through Rust Haven's massive scrap mountains.
The mountains didn't just collapse; they exploded, as if being disemboweled.
Twisted fragments of scrap, piled up for centuries, rained down, and the old wires and creaking iron bridges connecting the Junkers' dwellings snapped helplessly.
The small shacks perched on them, full of life, vanished like tiny dots into the distant sea of clouds below. Their screams didn't reach this high.
The Imperial commander would have used 'flushing out illegal squatters' as their justification.
But I knew. Their true target was this ship, the 'Lumina Rip'.
And to achieve that goal, they would not hesitate to turn every life here into a handful of dust.
Just as they had done to 'Arkelos,' ten years ago.
The fleet's bombardment moved toward the city center. The Clatter Market, where I had played the 'cheerful madness' and tricked the con artists. That place, once so full of noise and life, was now engulfed in a massive inferno.
And... oh, no!
My gaze locked onto one place. Old Man Barney's junk shop. The place I had protected from those 'Iron Fang' bastards. The place belonging to that gruff old man who, despite feeding me the worst soup in the world, was the only one who ever worried about me.
A red flash lanced down upon that very spot.
With a colossal explosion, the place where the old man's shop had stood was simply gone—replaced by a giant, blazing crater.
The connection I had protected, the small warmth that had made this place my 'second home,' evaporated in an instant.
In that moment, all the sound in the world faded away.
The blazing inferno before my eyes merged perfectly with the scene from that day, ten years ago.
The bridge window was no longer a window.
It became the small, crumpled viewport of an escape pod, through which an eight-year-old girl stared in terror.
Red flashes. The Imperial-red bombardment that endlessly painted the sky. The mechanical footsteps that tore through the beautiful melody of the crystal harp. The sensation of the blue 'Star-Cluster Jellyfish' that adorned the night sky, bursting apart like splatters of blood.
The vision of Arkelos's crystal spires shattering to pieces overlapped with the sight of Rust Haven's scrap towers collapsing.
The screams of Junkers plummeting into the abyss became one with the shrieks of my neighbors I had heard that night.
My body wouldn't move. I couldn't lift a single finger.
Absolute terror paralyzed every nerve in my body.
The bridge, which moments ago had been a sanctuary, now became a cold coffin that trapped me.
Just like ten years ago, when I'd hidden my breath beneath the rubble of my burning home. Just like last night, crushed by the steel walls of 'the Nest' in my nightmare.
I was once again that helpless eight-year-old child, watching powerlessly as my world burned for the second time.
"······."
I couldn't breathe. It felt like my lungs were shriveling. My vision blurred, and a ringing filled my ears.
In all that chaos, only one voice pierced my mind like a fragment.
"Don't forget... the truth."
My mother's last whisper. The curse that had kept me alive for ten years, and the shackle that bound me to the past.
That's right, I hadn't forgotten. I couldn't forget. And that's why, right now, I was losing everything all over again.
That's when it happened.
One of the Imperial cruisers turned its bow toward us.
Their true target.
The port of its massive main cannon opened, and an ominous, red light began to swirl with energy.
It was aiming directly at me. And at this ship.
Death.
Ten years ago, a pile of rubble had hidden me. But not now.
That colossal spear of light would vaporize this entire scrap mountain, disintegrating me and this ship into a handful of atoms.
'Am I going to die like this? Just like then... helpless.'
Helplessness washed over me. But at the very bottom of that despair, a tiny spark began to ignite.
It was rage.
'Don't forget the truth? I didn't forget! I have nightmares every night! I remember it so clearly that I can't even breathe when I see that red light! But what's the use of any of it! All I do is remember, and I'm being destroyed all over again! Is this what you wanted, Mom? To die helplessly, clutching the truth?'
I screamed at myself. For the past ten years, 'remembering' had been my duty.
But that memory wasn't what pushed me forward. It was a prison, locking me forever in the nightmares of the past.
The way I honored my mother's last words was wrong.
To not forget the truth didn't mean to just suffer by endlessly reliving the past.
It meant to fight so that truth would not be repeated.
It meant to seize the future with my own hands, so it could never be stolen again.
It meant to defy it with my own will, instead of being helplessly destroyed as I was in the past.
"No."
A low groan escaped my lips.
"Not again."
At that moment, a blue flame erupted in my left eye.
Blood began to flow through my paralyzed body. My icy fingers moved.
I gripped the controls.
The texture that had felt soft and warm now felt searingly hot, as if it were drawing in all my rage and will.
I poured all my sorrow and anger, my guilt for Old Man Barney, and all the emotions I had suppressed for ten years into this ship.
"GET UP!"
At my shout, the Lumina Rip roared.
The sound of the ship, which had been one with the scrap mountain for centuries, tearing its massive body free, shook all of Rust Haven.
KRRRRRRDDDDDK—!
With the shriek of tearing steel, the rusted debris that had shackled the ship exploded and rained down below.
I didn't need to look at the instruments. I had never learned how to fly. But I knew. This ship was a part of my body. It was steel flesh that moved to my will.
The next moment, immense gravity crushed my body.
The red flash bursting from the Imperial cruiser's main cannon and the Lumina Rip blasting upward, tearing diagonally through the scrap mountain, happened almost simultaneously.
The shockwave from the massive explosion that swallowed the spot where we had been violently shook the scrap mountain, but the Lumina Rip soared up, and up, without faltering.
Breaking through the curtain of flame and black smoke, we rose above the burning sky.
Outside the bridge window, the full view of the world I had lived in for ten years unfolded.
Down below, the entire scrap continent was burning.
The endless mountains of scrap, the precarious iron bridges that connected them, the maze-like alleys, the welding sparks that flashed day and night.
That whole scene, which I once considered a wretched prison, was now blazing, a massive funeral pyre.
The lives of nameless Junkers, who had drifted to the very bottom of the sky, each with their own story, were vanishing into that ash.
I burned the sight into my eyes. This sorrow, this rage, this loss. To never, ever forget.
Just then, the bridge's warning lights flashed red, blaring a sharp alarm.
On the rear screen, small, sharp, blade-shaped fighters launched from the Imperial fleet appeared, closing in on us at furious speed.
They were the Empire's 'Glaive-class' interceptors.
"About time!"
I shoved the controls forward violently. The Lumina Rip let out a heavy groan and pointed its nose downward. Back into the heart of the burning Rust Haven.
"This is my playground, you tin cans!"
I drove the massive ship straight into the 'Rusted Heart's Maze'—a labyrinth I had navigated on foot for ten years.
As the Lumina Rip grazed perilously through the canyon formed from the wreckage of colossal ships, the pursuing Glaive squadron faltered and reduced their speed.
But they quickly reformed their ranks and followed into the narrow canyon, starting to fire bursts of red energy.
I wrenched the controls, sending the ship into a sharp bank.
The massive hull scraped against 'The Weeping Wall' with a horrific grinding sound, but it didn't matter.
Every path, every trap of this maze was drawn in my mind.
I deliberately headed for 'The Grinder' —the sector where the most unstable structures were entangled.
Just as I expected, the shockwaves from our flight and the Empire's bombardment caused the giant scrap mountain to scream once more.
It was a 'Scrap-Quake.' This was the moment I had been waiting for.
"Now!"
I pushed the engine thrust to maximum, scraping just beneath a giant turbine structure as it began to collapse.
One of the pursuing Glaives couldn't evade in time and was struck directly by the cascading debris, exploding in a massive fireball.
The remaining interceptors broke off their pursuit and pulled back.
I didn't waste the opening. I pointed the Lumina Rip's nose back toward the sky.
Piercing through the murky atmosphere of the lower levels, we finally rose above the ashen skies of Rust Haven.
There, spread out before me, was the real sky, which I hadn't seen in ten years.
A boundless, blue expanse, without a single cloud.
I left the burning past behind me and pushed the controls toward the unknown future.
The ghost of the scrap heap was dead. Now, I am the last daughter of Arkelos, Jayn Rumor. My journey was just beginning.