The echoes of that roar seemed to freeze in the medical bay, thick with the smell of blood, herbs, and ruin. Liam held the cold form in his arms, his scalding tears—streaked with faint, dark red energy—sizzling as they fell upon the tear-tracks on her pale cheek. The sound was a faint, sharp elegy to helplessness.
That small, harsh noise grated against Liam's every nerve, stretched to its breaking point. The power he wielded—enough to shake mountains, fight fleets, steal a god's authority—was now, for the one he wanted most to protect, the cruelest source of harm. He couldn't even hold her properly without causing damage.
"I command you... don't you die... hear me... that's an order..." He buried his face in the cold, fragile hollow of her neck, his voice a muffled, hoarse rasp. It carried the iron weight of a king's decree, yet felt as fragile as ice against the unyielding reality before it.
In the corner, the elder shaman bowed his head, ancient prayers turning to silent sighs. A young apprentice turned away, suppressed sobs the only off-key note in this symphony of despair. Beyond the curtain, silent beast-kin warriors expressed their shared grief and powerlessness through lowered heads and white-knuckled grips on their weapons.
But extreme grief is the most potent catalyst. It shattered the precarious balance he had been maintaining within.
An unprecedented agony, born of both soul and flesh, exploded from the depths of his chest. It felt as if an invisible gear, studded with rusted spikes, was being hammered ruthlessly into his heart.
"Guh—aaah!"
His body convulsed violently, forcing him to release Elara. His hands clawed at his own chest. The grotesque tissue covering his left arm and part of his torso—composed of cooled magma and active, rusted metal—as if injected with a frenzied stimulant, began to proliferate and spread with terrifying speed and vigor.
The dark-brown rust was no longer mere patterning. It became a living, viscous tide, surging from his left shoulder blade, flooding his neck, crawling up his jaw with a cold, stubborn will. It launched a decisive assault toward his right chest, toward the heart that beat wildly under the influence of the Eternal Molten Core shard. His bones emitted sickening creaks and pops beneath his skin, as if countless tiny, rusted gears were forcibly remolding his very structure, intent on stripping him from the concept of "human" to remake him into a vessel of pure rust.
The Boiling Blood armor had long been annihilated by the Molten Core's power. Now, he was almost naked, with no buffer, enduring the most thorough backlash of this ancient, malicious curse.
"My King!" The elder shaman braved the repulsive energy field, trying to approach. But the faint green light from his totem stone dissipated instantly near the chaotic, violent aura surrounding Liam. The stone itself emitted a faint cracking sound, strained to its limit.
"Don't... come closer!" Liam snarled through gritted teeth, using the last shreds of his own will—Liam's will—to try and restrain the two forces warring inside him: the creative fire of the Eternal Molten Core and the destructive cold of the Rust-Curse. The muscles of his right arm bulged as he braced against the floor. His fully mutated left arm, encased in thick, rough rust-layers that flaked and instantly regrew, twisted and spasmed uncontrollably. His fingers curled like bizarre claws, the faint dark-red energy at their tips flickering wildly—sometimes bright as an erupting volcano, sometimes dim as cooling embers.
His vision distorted. Elara's pale, still face blurred and overlapped with the swaying, dim light of the medical bay, as if seen through thickening, rust-red frosted glass. In his ears, beyond the constant thunder of gunfire, the groaning metal of the Ashen Drake, and the volcano's low, grand roar of destruction, grew clearer the sound intrinsic to the curse itself—the endless turning of gears. Low, drawn-out, cold, filled with the absolute logic of machinery and the ultimate decay of death.
At this edge of sensory and willpower overload, his "sight" was dragged into a terrifying inner landscape.
His life was no longer a body of flesh and blood, but materialized as a giant, intricate, yet rust-blotched ancient clock. The mainspring, symbolizing his vitality, was being wound to insane tightness by an invisible rust-force, while simultaneously being corroded and consumed at a frantic pace, emitting a heart-stopping moan of imminent snap. A single, rusted, ominous hand moved with a constant, unstoppable rhythm. Tick. Tock. It marched with grim determination toward the black mark on the dial's edge—the symbol of complete rustification, consciousness erased, all returned to silence.
Seven days.
A cold, precise, emotionless number branded itself onto the core of his soul like a white-hot iron brand. Absolute authority.
This was no premonition, no guess. This was the final death notice issued by the new equilibrium (or rather, the activated countdown to annihilation) forged between the curse and the Molten Core shard within him. In seven days, when the hand reached its destination, his life, will, memories, emotions—everything that constituted "Liam"—would be utterly consumed by rust, reduced to cold, lifeless residue, perhaps even scattering to the wind like fully corroded metal.
"Seven days..." he rasped, his voice like two rusted irons scraping together. He jerked his head up. On his face, crisscrossed with rapidly deepening rust-webs and tear-tracks, his odd-colored pupils churned with grief, defiance, and rage. Then, as if plunged into an abyss of absolute zero, those emotions froze, compressed, and finally tempered into something almost inhuman: an abyssal coldness and resolve.
He could not die.
Not before Elara awoke. Not before he fulfilled the vow made at the volcano's rim—to destroy Elias, to stand against the Empire. Not before the title of "King of Rust Isle," newly gained and not yet fulfilled, crumbled to dust. Not before he led these beast-kin, who had entrusted him with their fate, out of this inferno.
This seven-day countdown was not a sentence of despair, but an ultimatum. It forced him, within this finite and rapidly draining time, to make the most insane, most extreme, most cost-be-damned choices.
He drew in a sharp breath. The air, mixed with the scents of blood, bitter herbs, and his own sulfur-and-rust ruin, seared his lungs. He forcefully summoned power from the Eternal Molten Core shard in his chest—a power so vast and wild that merely channeling a thread of it made his runaway rusted left arm stabilize momentarily. The spread was forcibly "regulated" and "suppressed" by a stronger, searing power.
But this was no cure. It was drinking poison to quench thirst. Using a more potent, kindred energy to temporarily "bind" and "direct" the rust's progression, constraining it within this precise seven-day countdown. Like cauterizing a festering wound with a hot iron—it brought brief closure and deeper suffering.
He shoved aside the shaman trying to steady him, staggering to his feet with unnatural firmness. His gaze fell one last, long time on Elara, lying on the surgical table, her breath faint, as if she might melt into the shadows. That look was complex beyond measure—bone-deep pain, ice-melting tenderness, but ultimately, it settled into a suffocating weight, as if he carried the entire world.
"Spare no cost. Keep her alive." He turned to the elder shaman. His voice was not loud, but it carried the absolute, unquestionable authority of a king. Each word was like a rivet hammered into the deck. "Use every healing herb, energy crystal, ancestral totem the tribe has in reserve. Divert the gentlest life-energy streams from the Ashen Drake's non-core energy matrix to sustain her vital cycle first. Until I find a way to reverse this... she must live."
The elder shaman felt the aura of mingled divinity and ruin emanating from Liam, sensed the unyielding will in his words. He prostrated himself deeply, forehead touching the floor. "By the oath of our forebears' spirits, we shall obey, my King! We will guard Lady Elara with our lives, to the last breath!"
Liam nodded. There was no time for lingering. He turned and strode from the medical bay, his steps unsteady from the internal war yet charged with formidable determination. As the curtain opened, the hellscape of the deck assaulted him.
The Ashen Drake pitched and groaned in violent air currents and sporadic shellfire. Beast-kin artisans labored frantically on the swaying deck, repairing damaged sections, sparks flying. Warriors shouted as they hauled the last stocks of ammunition and supplies, stumbling with each lurch. Steam pipes hissed like dying serpents, belching erratic plumes. In the distance, the Imperial fleet's fire grew denser, like sharks scenting blood, savagely tearing at this lone vessel struggling in the tide of ruin. Rust Isle itself was dying. The central crater had fully collapsed into a giant maw spewing dark-red lava. The sky was choked with thick volcanic ash, shot through with lightning and burning debris, dark red as blood—a true dusk of doom.
"My King!" Gareth, looking like a giant climbed from a furnace, covered in soot, blood, and singed fur, stumbled forward. He saw the shocking, seemingly writhing rust-webs on Liam's face, felt the soul-freezing cold in those eyes, the oppressive aura that made one's spirit tremble. His voice caught. "You... your body... Lady Elara, she..."
"She lives," Liam cut him off, his tone flat, as if stating an unrelated fact. "But my time... is short."
He raised his grotesque left arm—all dark magma and active rusted metal—and pointed. At the Imperial fleet, floating fortresses on the sea. At the lava flows slowly consuming Rust Isle. Finally, at the groaning Ashen Drake beneath them.
"Gareth, relay my commands."
His voice, not loud, cut strangely through all the explosions, shrieking metal, howling wind, and dying moans, imprinting itself on the soul of every beast-kin who heard.
"First: Abandon all defense and repair in non-essential areas. Concentrate every hand, every resource, on ensuring a one hundred percent stable connection and optimal output between the Drake's energy core—the Eternal Molten Core shard in my chest—and the ship's energy matrix. I want the Drake capable of sustained, stable, full-speed flight, clear of the eruption zone, within three hours! Anything or anyone hindering this goal is expendable!"
"Second: Scavenge. Use every means to gather anything on this island or in our holds that might contain potent life energy, pure beast-spirit essence, or anything that can temporarily stabilize or even suppress rust-energy. Be it legendary remnants of a Life-Spring, the vital essences of specifically mutated beasts, or... ancient relics holding special power." He paused. The rust-layers on his left arm grated faintly with his emotional spike. A near-cruel cold light flashed in his eyes. "I know the hope is slim. But this is an order. To fight the countdown inside me, we need a miracle. And miracles... we must seize by force!"
"Third: Scouts! Send out our swiftest, most loyal scouts. At any cost, penetrate the Imperial blockade and the volcanic smog. I need precise lava flow paths, the latest Imperial fleet dispositions and capital ship locations, and... find any possible, relatively safe route out of this sea! We must find that one path to life—and take it—before the volcano finishes this island and the Empire launches its final sweep!"
Gareth looked into Liam's eyes, which seemed to burn with dark hellfire, felt the rust-power writhing beneath his skin, threatening to burst forth. He understood the inhuman torment and trial his King endured. Without hesitation, like the sturdiest fortress, he hammered his scarred chest. His voice was hoarse but struck like iron. "It shall be done, my King! The Boiling Blood Legion vows to fulfill your will! Your will is our direction!"
The commands were like a spark thrown into boiling oil, instantly igniting the last dregs of fighting spirit and will to survive in the remaining beast-kin. Fear remained, but driven by Liam's uncompromising, self-immolating resolve, they all erupted with potential and efficiency beyond their limits. Chaos was replaced by a tragic-heroic, efficient order.
Liam paid no more mind to the din and bustle behind him. Alone, he walked across the heaving deck to the very front of the Drake's massive frame—the outer wall of the energy core chamber, the ship's "brow."
He gazed at the complex energy-conduction patterns on the bulkhead, glowing an unstable dark-red from the power of the Molten Core shard within. Slowly, he raised his right hand—the one still human-shaped, yet also covered in scars and grime.
Mind focused. He stirred the rotating sigil on his chest.
Hmmmm...
A sharp, soul-rending pain lanced through him, worse than before. Threads of more condensed, more wild dark-red energy—like blood forcibly drawn—seeped from the sigil on his chest. They gathered, compressed above his palm, forming an egg-sized orb of dark-red light that radiated a heart-palpitating energy pulse. A highly concentrated manifestation of the Molten Core's power.
Simultaneously, the rust on his left arm stirred like a disturbed serpent, the dark brown patterns writhing, launching another assault toward his heart. Even beneath the normal skin of his right side, faint rust-colored spots began to appear. He grunted, swallowing back the metallic-sweet taste of rust rising in his throat, pouring all his will into suppressing this internal and external rampage.
He could clearly "feel" it—the seven-day countdown, at this moment of reckless power-draw, seemed to... accelerate. Just a hair's breadth, but undeniably real.
Time. His most luxurious, most cruel enemy now.
He did not channel this condensed energy into the ship. Instead, he slowly pressed it against his own forehead, just above the Molten Core sigil.
"With my soul, I forge your eye."
He murmured the words, like an ancient covenant. The dark-red orb sank into his brow like water into a sponge.
For an instant, Liam's entire consciousness seemed ripped from his body, forced into a brief, deep fusion with the entire Ashen Drake and the raging elemental energies around them.
He "saw" the flow along every energy line in the ship's matrix.
He "heard" the keel's subtle groans and hums under the energy tide.
He "sensed" the power coalescing in the distant Imperial gun muzzles.
He even "touched" a faint thread of vitality—kindred to the Molten Core shard within him—hidden within the destructive energy of the volcano beneath...
The cost of this state was immense. The rust-webs on his face instantly deepened, like parched, cracking earth. Even his right eye's pupil briefly took on a dark-red metallic sheen.
A moment later, he severed the connection. His body swayed, and he caught himself on a nearby railing. Violent headache and churning internal energies nearly made him black out.
But he had gained what he sought:
*The Drake had roughly 17% output redundancy to squeeze out.
*The starboard secondary batteries of the Imperial battleship Unyielding were powering up, targeting the Drake's engine room.
*Southeast, about one hundred twenty nautical miles out, lay a zone of abnormally chaotic energy reactions. A storm, perhaps. Or... an opportunity.
He lifted his head, looking toward that southeastern sea, shrouded in smoke and strange clouds. All weakness and hesitation had burned away from his now-clear eyes. Only the cold of ten-thousand-year ice and the resolve of boiling magma—ready to burn everything, including himself—remained.
"Come on, then," he issued a silent challenge to that unknown chaos, to the relentlessly advancing Imperial fleet, to the mercilessly draining countdown within.
The rust's seven-day countdown had begun. And his will would burn fiercer than the Eternal Molten Core in these seven days. To incinerate his enemies. Or... to incinerate himself.