The Kernel Sovereign stood fully frozen in the center of the Central Console Dais, trapped in an infinite loop of unhandled logical paradoxes.
Yet even in this numbed state, the titan’s physical stonework remained profoundly dangerous. Beneath its warped, diamond-latticed chest plates, the internal starlight core was reaching critical heat mass. A dull, dark violet glow bled through the spreading joints between the dodecahedrons, with a high-pitched sound whine that climbed steadily up the hum register: two thousand hertz, four thousand hertz, eight thousand hertz.
The trapped energy had nowhere to fade.
In less than ninety seconds, the internal heat runaway would trigger a total holding breach, exploding the titan’s starlight core with the force of a five-hundred-kiloton sun-hot warhead and vaporizing the entire Central Console Dais.
The empty pocket in the Singularity Well began to warp. Sight ripples distorted the outlines of the sapphire stelae. The star-white-gold flooring began to radiate intense infrared heat that burned through the soles of their marching boots. The air grew thick with the smell of scorched man-made carbon and spark-charged quartz.
Lin Tao knelt at the base of the titan’s left leg. He drew a piece of white spirit chalk across the star-iron plating.
