Chapter 17: The Golden Catastrophe
The walk was a hundred paces. It felt like a thousand.
With every step Kairo took, the suffocating silence of the Great Hall was replaced by a rising tide of whispers. The sound washed over him, a sea of hushed, cutting words.
"Is that him? He's even smaller than I remember."
"The Archduke must be mortified. To have his own blood be a dud."
"Poor Lady Lyra, having to stand there and watch this train wreck again."
"This is just cruel. They should have let him claim illness."
Kairo heard it all. Through his Aether-Sense, he could feel it all. The scorn was a thousand sharp, prickly echoes. The pity was a soft, cloying rot. He walked through the storm of judgment, his face a mask of placid indifference. The silver circlet on his brow felt cool against his skin, a silent promise he had made to his mother. His eyes, the abyss-black mirrors that hid his new world, were fixed forward on the dais.
His mother's Aether signature was a warm, fragile light behind him, a beacon of trembling hope in a cold sea. He focused on it. That was the only judgment that mattered. That was the reason for the inferno he was about to unleash.
He did not shuffle. He did not hesitate. His posture was ramrod straight, his steps measured and even. He was performing the part of a proud Akashi son, even as they all expected him to be the family's jester.
He reached the steps of the obsidian dais. He ascended, each step taking him higher, placing him on display for the entire kingdom. He could feel the weight of their collective gaze, a physical pressure. The wireframe of Tiberius was a burning knot of smug contempt. Leo Jukai's was a steady, golden light of polite curiosity, tinged with a hint of pity. The Arbiter's, from his high seat, was a vast, unreadable ocean of calm power, watching, waiting.
Finally, he stood before the Heartstone.
To his Aether-Sense, it was magnificent. It was not a simple sphere of quartz. It was a massive, perfectly ordered crystal lattice, humming with a deep, ancient power. It felt like a sleeping consciousness, a dormant god of pure Aether. It was beautiful.
He lifted his hand. It was small, pale, and steady. The memory of his first Rite flashed through his mind with the clarity of a fresh wound. The same smooth, cold feel of the stone. The suffocating silence. And then, the result: a pathetic, apologetic flicker of gold, lasting less than a second before dying completely. It was followed by a wave of snickers that had echoed in his nightmares for years. He remembered the phantom pain of his father's disappointment, a blow more potent than any physical strike.
A cold, sharp edge of rage, pure and clean, sliced through him. This was not a test. This was an execution. An execution of the weak, pathetic boy he had once been.
He placed his hand flat against the Heartstone.
The stone was cold. The hall was silent.
For one second. Two.
Nothing happened.
A few nervous coughs broke the silence from the balconies. A disappointed sigh. Tiberius let out a low, audible chuckle. Lady Lyra's warm Aether signature flickered with a spike of heart-wrenching fear.
Then, it began.
It wasn't a pillar of light. It wasn't a flash.
It was a sound.
A low, resonant hum resonated from the Heartstone, a deep, pure tone that had not been heard in living memory. It vibrated through the dais, through the marble floor, traveling up the bones of every person in the hall. The whispers stopped. The chuckles died. Every head leaned forward.
On the surface of the stone, directly under Kairo's palm, a single, tiny spark appeared. It was not the chaotic crimson of Tiberius's display, nor the gentle green of Leo's. It was a point of impossibly pure, brilliant gold, as bright and clean as a newborn star.
The veteran noble on the balcony, the one with the trained eye, shot to his feet. "What is that frequency?" he gasped. "The purity... it's perfect."
The Arbiter, who had been leaning back in his throne, sat up straight. A flicker of profound shock, the first crack in his mask of kingly calm, flashed in his forest-green eyes.
The single spark of gold did not erupt. It did not explode.
It began to spread.
Intricate, razor-thin lines of golden light, like cracks in reality, began to race across the surface of the milky quartz. They were not random. They formed complex, geometric patterns, an arcane script that no one had ever seen before. The hum grew, the single pure tone splitting into a complex, harmonious chord that made the very air feel alive.
The patterns of light spread, faster and faster, enveloping the entire Heartstone in a breathtaking web of liquid gold.
And Kairo opened the floodgates.
"No," Archduke Arion whispered from his private viewing box, his voice a choked sound of disbelief. He stood, his knuckles white where he gripped the railing.
The hum became a roar. The web of golden light, having covered every inch of the Heartstone's surface, turned inward.
And detonated.
It was not a pillar of light. It was a sun.
A blinding, explosive sphere of pure, incandescent gold erupted from the Heartstone, swallowing the dais and Kairo whole. The roar of power was no longer just a sound; it was a physical force, a shockwave of pure Aether that slammed into the chests of everyone in the Great Hall. It was not hot or destructive. It was a wave of pure, overwhelming pressure and authority.
The nobles on the lower balconies cried out, shielding their eyes. The great tapestries billowed as if struck by a hurricane. The preservation runes on the walls flickered and shorted out, their own Aether overwhelmed. The very air, thick with the scent of incense, was scoured clean, replaced by the sharp, electric tang of raw, unrestrained power.
This wasn't a firework. It was a nova.
"IMPOSSIBLE!" Tiberius bellowed, his voice a mixture of fury and disbelief. He took an involuntary step back, his smug expression shattered, replaced by a mask of raw shock. His own violent display just moments before now seemed like a child's sputtering candle next to this raging inferno.
Leo Jukai, the Golden Prince, stared, his mouth agape. The power he was feeling wasn't just strong; it was fundamentally different. His own Aether was like a deep, flowing river. This was like the heart of a forge, a place where reality itself was being unmade and reforged.
On the dais, The Arbiter Daiki Jukai was on his feet, his hands gripping the arms of his throne. The mask of a king was gone, revealing the face of a master Conduit staring at a power that defied all known laws. "The purity... the sheer Output..." he murmured, his voice lost in the roaring gale of Aether. "This is not an awakening. This is a..."
He didn't finish the sentence. The word was unthinkable.
From her place in the procession, Lady Lyra had fallen to her knees, her hands pressed to her mouth. Tears streamed down her face, but they were not tears of fear or shame. They were tears of violent, explosive, earth-shattering pride. She was watching her son, her failed son, hold a star in his hand.
Inside the sphere of light, Kairo was at the center of the storm. He felt nothing but the glorious, deafening roar of his own power, unleashed for the first time. The Aether he had so carefully cultivated over the past year, the well of power he had dug in the dark, was now a geyser erupting into the world. He poured everything he had into the Heartstone. His AET stat plummeted.
AET: 150 -> 120 -> 90 -> 60…
The stone, for all its ancient power, could not handle the sheer, focused intensity. It was designed to measure a stream, a river at most. Kairo was trying to channel an ocean through it. The geometric patterns on its surface, the ones that had mesmerized the crowd, began to break down, the lines cracking and splintering under the strain.
[Quest Updated: The Mother's Aegis]
[Sub-Objective Complete: You have achieved a 'Grand Display'. Public opinion is shattered. Your mother's pride is absolute.]
[Reward: 20 Bonus Stat Points awarded.]
The sphere of golden light pulsed one last time, reaching a crescendo of impossible brightness.
Then, with a sound like a giant bell cracking, it collapsed.
The light, the sound, the pressure—it all vanished in an instant, plunging the Great Hall into a stunned, ringing silence.
Smoke, not from fire but from vaporized Aether, coiled off the surface of the Heartstone. And in the center of the dais stood Kairo. Untouched. Unmoved. His small hand was still resting on the stone.
He stood there for a moment, then calmly removed his hand and turned to face the silent, awestruck crowd. His face was pale, his expression serene. The silver circlet his mother had given him was now glowing with a faint, residual light, and the obsidian stone at its center seemed to drink the very shadows around it.
His dark eyes swept across the room, but no one who met his gaze saw a child. They saw the calm at the eye of a hurricane.
Then, with a quiet grace that was terrifying in its control, his legs buckled beneath him. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled to the floor of the dais, his small body in the white silk tunic looking like a broken doll cast aside after a violent game.
The feigned collapse was the final, perfect move in his symphony of deception. He had shown them impossible power, and then, he had shown them impossible weakness. He had created a paradox, a myth. The Miracle Prodigy. The Glass Cannon.
The Great Hall remained silent for a beat longer, a collective, frozen moment of disbelief.
Then, chaos erupted.
Nobles shouted from the balconies. Guards surged towards the dais. But one voice cut through the noise, a voice not of panic, but of absolute command.
"SILENCE!"
Arbiter Daiki Jukai's voice, amplified by his own immense Aether, boomed through the hall, a physical command that settled over the terrified crowd like a weighted blanket.
All eyes turned to him. He stood, his face grim, his forest-green eyes fixed not on the panicked crowd, but on the small, unmoving form of Kairo on the dais. He saw the overloaded Heartstone, which was now faintly smoking, a network of hairline fractures marring its once-perfect surface.
And in that moment, Kairo, with his eyes closed and his senses open, felt it. A new gaze. A new assessment. It was not the pity of his mother, the scorn of Tiberius, or the curiosity of the crowd. It was the sharp, calculating, and suddenly very dangerous interest of a king who had just seen an unknown, world-altering weapon detonated in the center of his court.
The game had changed. He was no longer a footnote. He was now the most important piece on the board.