Chapter 148: Ship Titan

The ship stood up with six hundred and fourteen freed champions inside its rib cage.

Its hundred decks unfolded across the sky. Prison blocks locked together into legs. Execution chambers became fists. The command spine rose through the center of its body and forced the Champion Vault into a chest large enough to hold a thunderstorm.

The Titan planted one foot in the harbor. The other came down beyond the Safe Zone, crushing warehouses, elevated roads, and three abandoned towers beneath an iron heel.

[ROOK TRIAL SHIP: TITAN CONFIGURATION]

[HEIGHT: 18,400 FEET]

[WEAPONIZED DECKS: 96]

[PRIMARY TARGET: SAFE ZONE]

[EXTERMINATION STEP: 1 OF 3]

[HEALTH: 203/420. CHARGE: 62/140]

Jace slid across the tilting vault floor with one arm around a broken cage bar. His six original combat skills remained sealed. His Trial Knuckle was empty, his ribs were braced instead of healed, and his remaining stamina would have embarrassed a corpse.

The Titan raised its right foot over the Safe Zone.

The sole covered the sky.

Every street below vanished beneath its shadow.

Liam's voice came through Jace's collar. "If that foot lands, there will not be enough Safe Zone left to bury."

Mateo answered over the scream of crane engines. "I can hold it for three seconds."

"You cannot hold that," Liam said.

"I did not say four."

Six crane trucks fired their cables upward. The lines caught beneath the descending heel, stretched until their steel frames lifted from the street, and bought exactly what Mateo had promised.

Three seconds.

Jace looked at the freed champions. "You powered this ship while it tortured you."

Penelope raised her spear. "We remember."

"Then take your power back."

Caleb slammed a painted stake into the vault floor.

"Boundary," he said. "Everything inside this line belongs to the prisoners."

Red paint raced from the stake. It crossed walls, cages, and folded corridors, then climbed the inside of the Titan's chest in a glowing circle. The ship tried to close the vault around them. Caleb's boundary forced every closing plate to stop at the line.

[CHAMPION VAULT: SEPARATED FROM TITAN COMMAND]

[INTERNAL RESISTANCE DETECTED]

The Titan answered by growing weapons.

Cannons pushed out of its shoulders. A sword longer than Manhattan assembled between its fingers. Its free hand opened above the river, and six hundred and fourteen stolen techniques ignited across its palm like stars.

"Everybody who can break something," Jace said, "aim outward."

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The vault erupted.

Skybreaker Chain struck first. Blue lightning tore through the Titan's left ribs and jumped between buildings outside. Ninefold Wall followed as a battering ram made of nine shining cities. Twin Moon Dance carved silver crescents through the armor while fire beasts, tidal spears, stone serpents, and a screaming flock of glass birds attacked the same wound.

Alexander and Scarlett reached it together.

"Falling Verdict!"

"Ember Rend!"

Their blades crossed. The Titan's ribs split open, and daylight exploded into the vault.

[EXTERNAL HULL BREACHED]

[CHEST ARMOR: 71%]

The raised foot broke Mateo's first four cables.

Alexander caught Jace by the belt. Scarlett caught him by the collar.

"On three," Alexander said.

"Why three?" Jace asked.

"Two sounds like a threat."

They threw him.

Falling Verdict and Ember Rend crossed beneath his boots and flung him through the opening on a line of red light. He shot through the broken ribs, crossed half a mile of open sky, struck the exterior armor hard enough to crack it, and lost the breath Emma had forced back into him.

[HEALTH: 203 -> 190]

The world turned vertical.

Jace ran up the Titan's chest, boots finding the cracks Falling Verdict had left, with the red afterimage of the throw still pulling him toward its throat. Below him, the Safe Zone looked small enough to cover with one hand. The Titan's descending foot filled everything beyond it.

Mateo's fifth cable snapped.

The sixth began to glow.

"Two seconds," Mateo said.

The Titan noticed Jace.

Its cathedral-sized hand came across the sky.

Alexander leapt from the open ribs and drove Falling Verdict into one finger. Scarlett landed on another and cut through two joints with Ember Rend. The hand still struck Jace with enough force to throw him through three layers of neck armor.

[HEALTH: 190 -> 172]

He landed inside the command spine.

A hundred red seals rose around him, one for every deck. They rotated around a black shaft that ran into the Titan's skull. Six locked doors appeared behind them, each carrying the shape of one of Jace's stolen combat skills.

The Titan had found them.

It had not opened them yet.

[SIX SEALED SKILLS DETECTED]

[TITAN EXTRACTION: BEGINNING]

"Do not touch those," Jace said.

He pressed the Rook Blade Seal into the command spine.

[ROOK BLADE SEAL: ACTIVATED]

[TARGET: SINGLE PILOT AUTHORITY]

[COST: REMAINING STAMINA]

The seal burned through his palm and climbed his arm. Jace's knees struck the floor, but the command spine opened. He saw the order controlling the entire Titan.

ONE VESSEL.

ONE WILL.

ONE PILOT.

Jace smiled through the blood in his mouth.

"That is your mistake."

The last crane cable snapped.

The Titan's foot fell.

Jace drove Overwrite Pulse into the open command spine.

[OVERWRITE PULSE: ACTIVATED]

[CHARGE: 62 -> 57]

[NEW COMMAND REQUIRED]

His voice entered every deck.

"Say your names."

Penelope shouted first.

Six hundred and twelve champions answered her. Caleb spoke last.

"Caleb Marr."

Their names hit the Titan from inside. Every prison deck remembered a prisoner. Every weaponized corridor remembered the feet that had crossed it. Every cage rejected the number painted above its door.

The command spine tried to reduce them to one pilot.

Jace forced it to count again.

[COMMAND SOURCES: 615]

[SINGLE PILOT AUTHORITY: REJECTED]

[DISTRIBUTED TITAN CONTROL: UNAUTHORIZED]

The Titan's foot stopped twelve feet above the Safe Zone.

Its leg shook.

Then six hundred and fifteen wills pulled together.

The Titan twisted at the waist and drove its raised foot into the harbor instead. Water rose higher than the skyline. The impact broke the sword in its hand, tore cannons from its shoulders, and dropped the entire iron colossus to one knee.

Windows burst across Manhattan.

The harbor emptied for one impossible second.

The Titan remained kneeling when the water came back.

[TITAN EXTERMINATION COMMAND: OVERWRITTEN]

[SAFE ZONE: INTACT]

[ROOK TRIAL SHIP: DEFEATED]

The black shaft inside the command spine cracked open. The Arena Engine rose through it, still carrying the house-sized seed recovered from the Faceless Champion.

Jace expected another monster.

Instead, the seed unfolded into six hundred and fifteen control stations surrounding an empty throne.

[TITAN OWNERSHIP: CONTESTED]

[ROOK CLAIM: SEVERED]

[NEW CLAIMANTS: 615]

[DESIGNATION REQUIRED]

Alexander climbed through the broken neck armor and stared at the throne that had belonged to his House.

"You defeated a Rook Trial Ship," he said.

Jace pulled his burned hand loose from the spine. "No."

Inside the Titan's chest, six hundred and fourteen champions placed their hands against the walls that had imprisoned them.

"We stole one."

The empty throne split apart.

It became six hundred and fifteen smaller seats.

Far above Earth, something answered the theft.

A red eye opened in orbit, large enough to eclipse the moon.

[UNREGISTERED TITAN CLAIM DETECTED]

[HIGHER ROOK AUTHORITY: AWAKENING]

Health: 172/420.

Charge: 57/140.