Blue light erupted from the depths of the core.
It raced along the circuits on the walls like water pouring into parched ditches, surging layer by layer out of the control room, over the outer walls of the relay tower, and down into the dense districts below Desh’ea.
In the control room, the countdown froze on its final few moments.
The red purge warning flashed twice, then went dark.
The scalding core was still smoking.
Coolant gushed from ruptured pipes, and white steam blanketed the floor.
The tech-slave knelt before the main console, drained of all strength, his hand still pressed against the confirmation key.
He did not dare let go just yet.
As if fearing that the moment he pulled his hand away, the collars would lock tight once more.
Angron stood behind him.
Bullet fragments were embedded in his back.
His chest still smoldered with a scorched scent.
His wounds were pushing out metal fragments, green blood mixing with coolant as it dripped onto the floor.
He did not move.
The gunfire outside the control room had ceased.
The bodies of the fallen defenders piled high at the threshold.
Karrus gripped his shock spear, leaning against the wall and gasping for breath.
The shaft was bent, and the electricity at its tip flickered erratically.
“Did we do it?” No one answered.
The tech-slave stared at the screen.
The red dots on the display remained.
Swaths of red.
A fraction of a second passed.
The first red dot turned grey.
Then the second.
The third.
The grey spread like fire eating into the edge of a piece of paper, rapidly sweeping across the map over streets, workshops, Transport Shafts, and dormitory zones.
The tech-slave’s lips trembled.
“They’re open.” His voice was barely a whisper.
As if afraid of disturbing something.
“The lower level clearances are open.” Karrus pushed himself upright against the wall.
“All of them?” “Everything we could unlock.” The tech-slave swallowed hard, his eyes rimmed with red.
“The outer fields, the Transport Shafts, the dormitories, the lower workshops, the estate slave quarters…
they’re all open.” Angron stared at the map.
The grey was still spreading.
Many areas still remained stubbornly red.
The capital’s master control had not fallen into their hands.
The Sky Throne still loomed above.
The High Riders were far from dead.
But what they had now was already enough to let many survive.
He turned and walked toward the outer wall of the control room.
During the battle, the outer wall had been torn open by heavy fire.
A hot wind gusted in from outside the tower, carrying the smell of smoke, soot, and distant voices from the lower city.
Angron stepped up to the breach.
Beneath him lay Desh’ea.
When the High Riders built this relay tower, they must have favored this height.
From here, the lower city resembled a greyish-black hive.
Pipes, bridges, workshop chimneys, slave dormitories, and Transport Shafts were stacked layer upon layer, with every road bending upward, as though dragged by the throat by an invisible hand.
Before, they looked down from this height.
And saw only labor, serial numbers, collar signals, and riot risks.
Angron looked down.
He heard the first sound.
It was very faint.
*Clink.* Like a metal ring dropping onto stone flags.
Then, a second.
A third.
Further away, the same sound echoed.
*Clink.* *Clink.* *Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink—* The sound grew denser, multiplying.
Starting from the Transport Shafts beneath the tower, it rolled outward along the streets.
In the lower dormitories, a rain of metal clattered against the ground.
It resounded in the outer workshops.
It echoed in the depths of the maintenance pipe networks.
And in the slave quarters of the noble estates.
Tens of thousands of collars slammed into the ground.
Like a long-overdue rain.
Karrus walked to Angron’s side, staring down.
The blood on his face was still wet, but his eyes were wide.
“Do you hear it?” Angron nodded.
Of course he heard it.
He also heard people coughing, people weeping, people screaming, and people violently hurling the metal from their necks onto the ground.
From one direction came a steady, rhythmic hammering.
*Thud.* *Thud.* Growing heavier and heavier.
Someone was likely bashing a wall with their collar.
Gunfire rang out in another district.
Sharp, brief.
Chaotic.
Then it was swallowed by a louder roar.
Karrus suddenly let out a brief, strangled laugh.
It was short, forced from his throat as if choked by blood.
“They’re awake.” Angron did not smile.
He looked down at the streets.
It was too far.
The crowds were as tiny as specks of black sand.
Yet he could picture them clearly.
Some would stand frozen, not daring to take the first step.
Some would feel their bare necks, wondering if they were still dreaming.
Some would pick up stones.
Some would charge the guards.
And some would shrink back into the corners at the first sound of gunfire.
Freedom did not grow blades on its own.
Someone had to hand them the blades first.
And someone had to tell them they could stand.
The tech-slave stumbled to the broadcast console.
A portion of the broadcast controls in the command room had been unlocked.
He glanced at the monitor and quickly turned around.
“We can broadcast to the lower city.” Karrus looked at Angron.
“What do we say?” Angron looked down at the city.
In his past life, he had despised those who stood on high ground delivering pretty speeches.
Across screens, microphones, and safe distances, their mouths spewed nothing but passion and sacrifice.
While those who actually bled were never the ones speaking.
Now, he was the one standing on high.
Beneath him were the people who had just shed their collars.
He could say a lot.
Tell them the High Riders would bleed.
Tell them the Bloody Sand Arena still stood.
Tell them their collars were gone.
Tell them they no longer had to kneel.
But if he spoke too much, he would become just like those politicians.
Angron walked over to the broadcast console.
The tech-slave pushed the receiver toward him.
The entire lower-city broadcast network lit up.
Static exploded first.
*Screeech—* Every functioning speaker in the lower depths of Desh’ea crackled with the same harsh feedback.
In the workshops, people looked up.
Beside the Transport Shafts, hands clutched discarded collars.
In the slave quarters, those who had just recovered from the suffocating threat gripped their bedframes, staring blankly at the speakers on the wall.
Angron leaned down to the microphone.
His voice rolled out.
Deep.
Raspy.
Cutting clean through the static of the entire tower.
“The Bloody Sand Arena still stands.” Below, countless people froze.
“Your collars are off.” Hands touched bare necks.
“They will bleed.” In a distant guard post, the gunfire suddenly became frantic.
“Do not kneel.” After those words echoed out, Angron paused.
He heard a sound rising from the lower city.
Disjointed and scattered at first, like wind squeezing through narrow vents.
Then, it grew louder.
“Do not kneel!” Someone repeated it.
“Do not kneel!” More joined the cry.
The chant traveled from the Transport Shafts to the dormitories, from the dormitories to the workshops, and from the workshops into the deepest alleys.
For years, the High Riders had used this relay tower to suppress the city.
Now, for the first time, the tower carried the voices of the slaves outward.
Angron looked toward the Bloody Sand Arena.
The battered arena was enclosed by high walls, its elevated turrets already turned outward toward the city boundaries.
White smoke still drifted along the walls.
There were wounded there, along with weapons, veteran gladiators, and Oenomaus.
Those who could stand needed somewhere to gather.
“Go to the Bloody Sand Arena,” Angron said.
“The gates are there.
There are weapons.
And there are people waiting for you.” The broadcast cut off.
He said no more.
It was enough.
The rest they would have to walk themselves.
Silence returned to the control room for a moment.
Karrus looked down and suddenly drew a sharp breath.
The lower streets were moving.
One street.
Two streets.
More.
Crowds poured out from the dormitory zones, surged from workshop entrances, and crawled up from the edges of the Transport Shafts.
They had no formation.
Many lacked even basic weapons.
Some held wrenches, others pipe cutters, while some still gripped the collars they had just ripped away.
Guard posts began opening fire.
Those at the very front fell.
The ones behind hesitated.
But then someone lunged forward, and a dozen hands dragged the guards down from their steps.
In the distance, the side gate of a noble estate was rammed open from within.
Several slaves dressed in grey rags rushed out.
Before they could run far, gunfire erupted from inside.
The foremost runner collapsed onto the street.
Angron’s gaze narrowed.
That particular estate was very close to the relay tower.
White stone walls.
Black iron gates.
The crest of House Talq hung upon the gatehouse.
The collars of the domestic slaves around the estate had been deactivated.
But there were far more trapped inside.
They were not coming out.
Angron saw the estate’s heavy gates beginning to close.
The massive panels ground shut.
Intensive gunfire crackled within.
Not directed outward.
But fired inward, at the people inside.
Karrus saw it too.
“They are slaughtering their own.” The tech-slave’s face drained of color.
He scanned the control monitors.
“There are over six hundred signals in that slave quarter.
The collars are offline, but the gate controls are still held by the estate itself!” Below, fire flared within the estate’s high walls.
Slaves tried to scale the walls, only to be flung back, scorched by the electrified fencing.
Gunfire rattled in waves.
Angron watched the closing gates.
He had just told everyone to head for the Bloody Sand Arena.
Yet the people inside could not even make it past their own threshold.
He could stay in the tower.
Take over more lines.
Wait for the tech-slave to slowly locate the gate override.
Wait for Karrus to lead forces down.
Wait for these cursed systems to open up paths for him bit by bit.
And let those six hundred lives become dead black dots on the screen.
Angron exhaled.
Hot breath hissed through his teeth.
“Hold the control room.” Karrus spun around immediately.
“Where are you going?” Angron took two steps back.
The wind from the breach in the outer wall whipped behind him, drying the blood upon his skin.
“To open the gates.” Karrus glanced at the breach, then down at the distant estate.
“This is dozens of stories high.” Angron looked down at him.
Karrus went silent.
Angron turned and stepped onto the edge of the breach.
The howling wind of the tower’s exterior buffeted him violently.
Desh’ea below resembled a massive black iron cauldron.
Fires were igniting at its bottom.
He saw the estate’s gate had only a sliver of space left.
Inside, a tiny figure tried to squeeze through the gap.
Only to be violently dragged back in.
The iron panels continued to shut.
A green light flared deep within Angron’s eyes.
He stepped forward.
And plummeted from the relay tower.
The wind tore at his eardrums.
The outer walls of the tower blurred upward beside him.
Down on the streets below, someone looked up and saw him.
A massive, dark-green silhouette falling from the sky, trailing smoke, blood, and sparks like a meteor hurtling toward the House Talq estate.
The guards atop the estate’s gatehouse had only just heard the rushing wind.
Before they could even lift their heads— *BOOM!* Angron slammed down right in front of the black iron gates.
The entire street shuddered.
The shockwave warped the iron gate panels inward.
The household guards behind the gates collapsed in a heap.
Angron stood up from the crater of shattered stone.
His knees and arms were already mending.
He looked up at the gatehouse.
A nobleman’s shrill voice screamed from within: “Close the gate!
Quickly, close the gate!” Angron strode toward the gate that had not yet fully shut.
He dug his fingers into the gap.
The black iron groaned in protest.
The men behind the gate desperately engaged the hydraulic locks.
Angron forced his arms outward.
The gap widened inch by inch.
The sound of shattering gears echoed from within.
Firelight spilled from the interior.
Along with the weeping and wailing of the slaves.
Angron growled low: “Do you hear that?” He threw his full weight and strength into it.
The entire black iron gate, frame and lock assembly included, was ripped away.
Dust and smoke cleared to reveal the estate’s inner courtyard.
Household guards, slaves, corpses strewn across the ground, and a white-robed noble clutching a cane upon the steps all turned their heads toward the threshold in unison.
Angron stepped inside the estate.
“The gates are open.”