Aureus's boots hit the dust of the Royal Artificer Yards. The ground still felt sick, a sickening lurch that defied normal gravity. He ignored the whinnying, terrified horses of his royal carriage and the stammering pleas of the Gate Captain. The time for polite inquiry was over. The Spacial Gate Stability Crisis was no longer a theoretical threat; it was a physical fact.
He pushed past the stunned guards, Lord Lysander scrambling in his wake, shouting useless bureaucratic warnings. The immense, raw energy bleeding from the central testing platform was visible now, even without the aid of his [Sacred Aetheric Conduit].
Above the workshops, the massive adamantine ring of the Gate strobed, flashing jagged violet light that arced silently into the metal structure.
Aureus marched toward the source, ascending the sheer metal stairs that led to the control platform. The air here was dense, thick with static, copper, and the sharp, nauseating smell of raw, unstable mana.
He burst onto the platform, his small form cutting a figure of absurd, gold-trimmed authority against the background of towering Magitech. Mages in rune-scribed robes and Dwarven engineers, already sweating and shouting readings, froze.
"Halt all power draw! Shut down the primary reactor!" The command, delivered by a six-year-old child, gained an unnatural, penetrating resonance from the latent mana Aureus unconsciously channeled.
At the epicenter of the control platform, Volund Aether-Hand turned. The Master Artificer was a mountain of a Dwarf, broad-shouldered and bearded in iron-grey. He wore a heavy leather apron over his Guild robes, his hands stained with soot and grease, a testament to his supreme Forge Rank. He stared at Aureus with his pride evident and his stance unyielding.
"Prince Aureus?" Volund grunted, wiping his hands on a rag. He didn't bow; his position as the continent's foremost engineer commanded respect that transcended mere human royalty, especially one so young. "You are interrupting a highly complex stress test. Get him off the platform, Captain."
A group of engineers started toward Aureus, their expressions a mix of annoyance and confusion.
"The Gate is compromised, Master Artificer," Aureus stated, ignoring the approaching engineers. He pointed a small finger at the central console. "The flow rate is spiking, the air is toxic, and the dimensional integrity is collapsing. You are being blind to the problem."
Volund bristled. To be lectured on Magitech by a human was insulting. To be lectured by a six-year-old human was outright intolerable, a direct challenge to his Forge Rank. He tapped a massive, glowing green crystal on the primary monitoring console.
"With all due respect, Prince," Volund said, his tone heavy with patronage, "my sensors cost more than your palace wing. They read Green. Optimal flow. Stable resonance. My Guild has factored in all variables. We filtered out the background 'noise' years ago to ensure a clean reading."
He gestured to the surrounding monitors. "We have run five thousand cycles. The Optimization Protocols are flawless. This is safe."
"Your protocols are the reason of failure, Master Volund," Aureus countered, stepping closer, his amber eyes burning with terrifying conviction. "They are measuring the size of the river, but ignoring the poison in the water. The 'noise' you filtered out is the Dimensional Instability itself, the precursor to catastrophic shear. Your sensors are blind because they are designed to be blind."
For a moment, a cold tremor of recognition ran through Volund. He knew of the Optimization Paradox — the century-old compromise that prioritized Mana Rank/Volume for military reports over the qualitative data of stability. It was an engineering debate he had won years ago for the sake of efficient war reporting. But to hear a child expose that philosophical flaw with such terrifying certainty...
"The structure is flickering!" Aureus insisted, his Radiant Warmth intensifying, pushing back against the oppressive static in the air. "The mana channelling is tearing the dimensional sub-layer. If you push the power past 98%, you will not complete the test. You will open a hole in the floor of reality, and you will kill everyone on this platform."
Volund hesitated. His gaze darted to his daughter, Bronwyn, who was standing several meters away near a diagnostics station. He was not a man to be swayed by a child's words, but his own daughter was present there today, and to take a risk even if it was negligible according to him, made him flinch a little. The fleeting moment of panic was enough for Aureus's claim to lodge in his mind.
But before doubt could become action, the lead engineer, a high-ranking Dwarf named Thane, intervened.
"Master Volund! The prince is interfering with the test sequence! We are stable at 98%! The King's schedule demands—"
"Schedule demands nothing when the gate fails!" Volund roared, but the interruption gave him the necessary excuse to rally his pride. He shook his head, pushing aside the fear. He was a Sovereign-Rank engineer. He trusted the cold, hard numbers of his Magitech over the prophecy of a golden-haired child.
"You heard the man, Thane! Read the console!" Volund snarled, pointing to the screens. "The numbers are Green! Proceed with the full power draw and prepare the containment runes. Escort the prince to the emergency bunker. Forcibly if you must."
Two guild guards stepped forward, reaching for Aureus's arms.
Aureus did not resist. He simply stood his ground, letting the guards grab him, his eyes never leaving Volund. He saw the pride, the fear, and the utter, monumental arrogance of the Master Artificer.
"You are making a mistake, Master Volund," Aureus whispered, the sadness in his voice genuine. "And because of your pride, your daughter will be the first to suffer. The price of your clean reports is catastrophe."
The guards dragged Aureus down the metal stairs.
At that exact moment, the countdown reached zero.
…
While the Guild guards dragged the six-year-old Prince down the metal stairs, the central control platform remained focused on its own hubris. Volund Aether-Hand stood with his back to the chaos, his focus entirely on the massive, glowing green monitors. He refused to acknowledge the momentary doubt Aureus had instilled.
Meanwhile, tucked away near a separate diagnostics console stood Bronwyn Aether-Hand, one of the harem heroines of the original.
Bronwyn was eight years old, dressed not in the silks of a noble child, but in a small, practical set of leather overalls stained with flux and oil. She had the deep green eyes and sturdy build of her Earth/Metal element lineage. Her hair was a thick, dark braid the colour of iron ore, usually tied back to keep it away from the machinery. She possessed the robust, honest beauty typical of Dwarven craftsmanship, a sturdy elegance that valued function over fragility. She was a prodigy of observation. She didn't rely on the monitors; she watched the physical world.
The engineers were shouting the final activation sequence: "Pressure stable at 98.8%! Power draw initiating at 99%! Full fusion in T-minus 10 seconds!"
Bronwyn frowned. Her datapad, which tracked passive environmental readings for stress testing, confirmed the main consoles: all stable. But her eyes and her innate sense, the subtle, pre-awakened intuition of her [Structural Integrity] Trait, screamed rejection.
The air around the Gate shouldn't be shimmering like that. The light pouring into the chamber wasn't refracting cleanly. It was bending in minute, impossible ways, creating visual dissonance, a subtle, warping effect that suggested the physical laws governing the volume of space within the ring were beginning to fray. Her mind instinctively calculated the stress points.
'The metal is tired,' Bronwyn thought. 'And the containment runes are failing to compensate for the flux.'
She ran to the nearest senior engineer, Thane, the same man who had pushed Volund to ignore the prince.
"Master Thane, the structure is warping!" Bronwyn yelled over the whine of the charging reactor. "Look at the light! The atmospheric refraction is off by two degrees! The containment runes are vibrating in the fifth harmonic layer, it's not a mana flow problem, it's a structural collapse!"
Thane, busy staring at the perfectly green numbers on his console, waved her away dismissively. "Bronwyn, go back to your post. The sensor array reads zero instability. Your eyes are playing tricks on you. Trust the numbers, not your feelings. Go!"
Bronwyn clenched her jaw, feeling the deep, familiar resentment born of Dwarven arrogance. The engineers dismissed any qualitative observation that didn't align with their raw, numerical output. She realized, with a chill, that the prince's warning of the Optimization Paradox was terrifyingly accurate.
She looked toward her father, who was still focused on the final activation sequence. He was her last hope. She abandoned protocol entirely.
"Father! It's failing! The Tantalum casing has a micro-fracture! The numbers are lying!" Bronwyn screamed, rushing toward Volund.
Volund whirled around, furious at the second interruption, his eyes blazing. "Enough! You trust your eyes over my—"
His voice died.
The massive, central monitoring console, the one that had read GREEN for the last hour, suddenly went dark. Not with a fuse pop or a gentle flicker. It went out with a deafening, wet CRACK.
The sound was the physical manifestation of the primary structural components failing. The crystal housing the core stabilizing rune shattered, and the power surged violently past the containment matrix.
The air turned solid violet, and the massive, three-story Gate ring, which had been perfectly stable moments before, began to tear. It wasn't an explosion; it was an implosion — a rapid, terrifying deformation of reality as the Gate created a vacuum it could not sustain.
Volund stared at the now-blackened monitor, the terror of sudden, absolute failure wiping the arrogance clean off his face. His technology had betrayed him.
"CODE RED! SHUTDOWN! SHUTDOWN!" Volund finally roared, grabbing the emergency cutoff lever.
It was already too late. The dimensional tear had opened. The platform bucked violently, throwing engineers to the floor. The chaotic energies, once mere "noise", now flooded the chamber, threatening to trap and consume everyone.