The Audience

"Gold is heavy. That is its only virtue. It drags everything down to the bottom—kings, mountains, and souls." —Zalim, to the Stone King (Unrecorded)

The Audience

Zalim - The Deepest Dark / The Golden Keep

It was a trap. Zalim knew this the moment the first alarm howled. Traps were boring, but effective.

The Gold-Guard automaton Aga had charged did not fall easily. It caught the woodsman’s sword in a spinning, brass-clawed hand, the impact ringing like a temple bell.

"Disappointing," Zalim murmured.

He raised the black scimitar. The blade shivered against his palm, eager.

"Eat," he whispered.

Zalim flowed past Aga. He didn't hack; he surgically removed the automaton’s gyroscope with a single, precise thrust through the plating of its hip. The machine listed, stumbled, and crashed into a pile of slag.

But then the wall behind them opened.

It was a deployment bay.

Twenty more Gold-Guard stepped out. They moved in perfect synchronization, a phalanx of ticking, whirring death. Their chest furnaces glowed green. Their arm-cannons spun up with a high-pitched whine.

"Too many," Gaidan shouted over the din, pressing his back against a rock pillar, his dagger drawn in his good hand. "We need a choke point!"

"There is no choke point," Zalim noted calmly. He deflected a bolt of superheated steam with the flat of his blade. "They are not attacking to kill. They are herding us."

"Let them try," Aga snarled, ready to charge the entire line.

Zalim caught Aga’s shoulder. It was like gripping a tree trunk, but Zalim’s fingers were steel.

"Do not be a fool, woodsman," Zalim said, his voice cutting through the noise. "Look at their firing lines. They are aiming for our legs. They want us alive."

"Why?"

"Because the surgeon is ready for his patient," Zalim said.

He stepped forward, sheathing his black blade with an exaggerated click. He raised his hands.

"We surrender," Zalim announced to the wall of machines.

The Gold-Guard stopped. The steam-cannons lowered, but the barrels kept spinning.

"Zalim!" Aga hissed, betrayed.

"We came here to find the King and the Surgeon," Zalim whispered, not looking back. "They are offering us an escort. It would be rude to refuse."

The Golden Keep

The elevator ride up from the mines was long and silent, save for the rhythmic clanking of the chains. They were surrounded by twelve automatons, their weapons trained on everyone’s chest.

They were stripped of their weapons. Aga’s sword, Gaidan’s dagger, and even the small knife Aga kept in his boot were tossed into a pile.

But when the machines reached for the black scimitar, the blade hissed. A visible arc of black lightning snapped at the metal fingers of the guard. The automaton recoiled, its brass plating corroded instantly where the magic had touched it.

"It is... temperamental," Zalim apologized to the machine. "I would advise letting me carry it. Unless you want to lose the hand."

The machines paused, processing the threat. Then, a voice crackled over the intercom system.

"Let him keep it. He will need it shortly."

It was Root’s voice. Smooth. Clinical. Amused.

The elevator doors opened - they appeared to be in a vault.

The Throne Room of King Aurum was blinding. Every surface—walls, floor, ceiling—was plated in gold. Pillars of diamond-studded platinum held up the roof. It was a display of wealth so excessive it induced nausea.

But the air smelled of rot.

In the center of the room, atop a dais made of raw emerald, sat the King.

"Tower take me now," Gaidan whispered, horrified.

King Aurum was no longer a dwarf. He was a tumor made of gold.

He had consumed so much of the Stone King’s "essence"—the liquid gold tapped from the god’s veins—that his biology had warped. He was twelve feet tall, bloated and immobile. His skin had hardened into gold plating. His beard was a cascade of wire and gems. He didn't sit on the throne; he was fused to it, his legs merged with the metal of the chair.

He was drooling molten gold.

"Guests!" King Aurum bellowed, his voice a grinding landslide. "More guests for the ascension! Have you come to witness? Have you come to pray?"

"We came to stop the bleeding," Aga said, stepping forward, his hands balled into fists.

"Bleeding?" Aurum laughed, a sound like coins falling down a well. "We are not bleeding! We are becoming! The Earth speaks to me! It says... MORE."

"He is quite enthusiastic," a calm voice said from the shadows behind the throne.

Master Root stepped into the light.

He had changed since the pier. He wore the crimson robes of the Sanguine, but they were tailored now, regal. His mask of polished bone was gone, revealing the scarred, ruined face that once belonged to Shimura Kaito.

But it was his left arm that drew the eye.

The limb he had lost in the Old Wars, the limb he had replaced with a spectral blood-hand in Seda, was now a masterpiece of dark engineering. It was a mechanical arm made of black iron, piston-driven and etched with glowing red runes. It whirred softly as he flexed the articulated fingers.

"Aga," Root said, nodding politely. "And the soldier. And... ah. The Edge."

He looked at Zalim.

"You look well," Zalim said, his tone conversational. "New arm. Dwarf tech?"

"Improved upon," Root said, raising the iron hand. "Powered by the Sanguine Rite. It is... stronger."

"What do you want with my boy?" Aga shouted, ignoring the pleasantries. "You smell of the Abyss. You smell of him!"

Root sighed. "Still with the boy. I told you, Hunter, I do not care about your son. I care about the lock."

"Lock?" Gaidan asked.

"The Stone King," Root gestured to the floor beneath them. "Greed. He is awake, yes. He is pumping power, yes. But he is still bound. The Empty King placed seals on his brethren to keep them from consuming the world too quickly. Seals that require a specific... frequency to break."

Root walked down the steps of the dais, stopping a few feet from Zalim.

"I tried to break a seal with the refinery explosion," Root admitted, sounding like a man discussing a failed recipe. "Massive Etheric trauma. It cracked the shell, but the core holds. I needed something sharper. Something ancient. Something forged from the Empty King’s own regret."

He pointed a metal finger at the black scimitar at Zalim’s hip.

"I needed the brother to kill the brother."

Zalim went very still. The playfulness vanished from his face.

"You brought us here," Zalim realized. "The trail. The 'scouts' in the mountains. You weren't hunting us. You were guiding us."

"I am a surgeon," Root said, smiling his terrible, thin smile. "I position my tools before I cut."

"I am not a tool," Aga roared. He lunged, tackling Root.

It hit Root like a battering ram. But Root didn't fall.

His mechanical arm shot out, catching Aga by the throat. The servos whined. With shocking, impossible strength, Root lifted the giant woodsman into the air one-handed.

"You are a scalpel's handle, Hunter," Root said, squeezing. Aga choked, kicking at the air. "Necessary, but dull."

Root threw Aga across the room. He crashed into a pile of gold coins, sliding to a halt near Gaidan.

"Now," Root said, turning back to Zalim. "Let us finish the procedure."

King Aurum began to scream.

It wasn't a scream of pain. It was a scream of birthing. The floor of the throne room—directly above the excavation site—began to crack. Violet light poured through the fissures.

"The final seal is directly below us," Root said, his voice rising over the rumble. "The Stone King’s heart. It is encased in a diamond shell that no drill can pierce."

Root raised his iron hand. The red runes flared. He wasn't casting a spell on Zalim. He was casting it on the sword.

"Wake up," Root commanded the blade.

The black scimitar shrieked.

It tore itself from Zalim’s belt, flying into the air. It spun, vibrating with a hunger that made the gold on the walls tarnish instantly.

"No!" Zalim shouted, reaching for it. "Do not listen to him!"

"He has no loyalty, Twice-Born," Root laughed. "It only has hunger. And I am offering it a god to eat."

Root gestured downward.

The sword turned, point down. It hovered over the center of the cracking floor.

"Cut," Root commanded.

The blade dropped.