My Power Costs Gold (And I Have Plenty!)

The air that wafted out from the opened doorway of Synkar's Sunpass was still and cold, an exhale from a bygone age. As the massive golden runes on the door dimmed, a new light source emerged from within—flickering, geometric patterns of cool blue light that pulsed along the corridor walls, revealing a space untouched by centuries of decay. The floor was polished obsidian, the walls were reinforced with gleaming electrum, and there was not a single speck of dust.

"By the ancestors," Bellweather breathed. "It's pristine."

It was more than pristine; it was active. As they stepped across the threshold, silent, hulking shapes detached themselves from alcoves along the corridor. They were golems, but of a design far more advanced and lethal than the Praetorians at the North Gate. Their forms were sleek, almost organic, crafted from a shifting, liquid-like metal, and their single, glowing golden eyes fixed upon the party with unnerving intelligence. These were easily Grade 5 constructs, perhaps higher.

"Halt," a synthesized, multi-tonal voice echoed from the golems, speaking in perfect unison. "Only the Core Bearer may proceed. All others will be neutralized."

Vance immediately moved to stand in front of Rhyse, his hand on his glaive. "We do not leave our lord's side."

The lead golem's golden eye flared. "This is not a request."

"It's alright, Vance," Rhyse said, placing a hand on his arm. He felt no malice from the constructs, only an unyielding protocol. This place answered to a different authority. "Wait for me here." He trusted the logic of the outpost; if it recognized him, it would not allow harm to befall him.

With a final, reassuring nod to his team, Rhyse walked alone down the corridor, the advanced golems parting silently to let him pass before closing ranks behind him, their golden eyes fixed on his retainers.

The corridor opened into a vast, circular chamber. The air here hummed with immense, contained power. In the center of the room, a single wisp of golden, ethereal light hovered, coalescing into a translucent figure—a tall, stern-looking man with piercing eyes and the unmistakable features of Theron Synkar, the first Nexus Architect. It was not a recording, but something more, a projection that seemed to watch him with a nascent intelligence.

"Heir detected," the projection's voice echoed, the same multi-tonal resonance as the golems. "Bloodline confirmed. Synkar Core compatibility: one hundred percent. A result unseen even in the First Founding. The primary seals have disengaged." The projection's head tilted. "But compatibility does not equal authority. The Architect's Will must be tested. You must prove you are a worthy successor, not merely a fortunate descendant. Prepare for the Praxis."

The world around Rhyse dissolved without transition, the ancient chamber's golden glow giving way to a sudden, all-encompassing immersion. One moment he stood before Theron's projection—the next, every sense told him he was standing atop the Synkar Manor's northern battlements at twilight, the cold wind whipping at his cloak as distant screams carried from the valley below. The simulation was flawless—when he reflexively grasped the obsidian rampart, his fingers registered every minute imperfection in the stonework, every chip from centuries of wind and war.

Below the manor's outer walls, an apocalyptic tide surged—not merely the semi-feral Krellian Scrabblers, but something worse. These creatures bore the same telltale signs of mutation: patchwork fur sloughing off in strips, greenish bioluminescence pulsing beneath cracked skin, limbs multiplying at sickening angles—but these were larger, more organized. Some moved on insectile legs tipped with blades of bone, others dragged pulsating sacs of acid behind them like grotesque supply trains. Where their corrosive drool struck the manor's outermost energy barriers, the wards sizzled, dissolving in patches as golden sparks cascaded down like dying embers.

A figure stumbled against him—Seneschal Valerius, decades older, his hair gone steel-gray, his face webbed with scars Rhyse didn't recognize. "My Lord," the simulacrum rasped, gesturing toward the failing defenses. His fingers trembled with too-real exhaustion. "The outer villages are being overrun! The southern granaries are lost, and the eastern watchtowers report their Resonance Scanners have overloaded from the sheer volume of arcane corruption in these fiends! But our inner sanctum remains intact—for now."

He gripped Rhyse's arm, his voice lowering to a battlefield hush. "If we divert all auxiliary power from the vaults and Core shielding, we might reinforce the outer wards long enough to evacuate the household guard and essential staff to the Krellian Deeps outpost. But it will mean abandoning the western settlements entirely..."

Rhyse's simulated hands clenched. He could see them now through the gathering gloom—farmers huddled behind makeshift barricades, children screaming as the front ranks of the horde breached the outer palisades. Every Synkar ledger he'd ever studied, every lesson on triage and cold calculation, rose like a chorus in his mind—and he silenced them all.

"The bloodline is worthless without the people it is sworn to protect," he said, not raising his voice, yet every syllable carried the weight of the ancestral portraits glaring down from the manor's galleries. "Divert every scrap of non-essential power from the vaults. Reroute all secondary magitech reserves to the outer wardstones. Open the armory to every citizen who can lift a blade." He turned to the command console embedded in the battlement, his fingers flying across the glowing runes with an authority he'd never possessed in life. "And send word to the Core Guard—we stand here. The Synkar do not retreat."

The battlefield lay silent in the aftermath of carnage—smoldering wardstones flickering their last, the shattered remains of Synkar magitech defenses scattered across the bloodied earth. Not a single defender remained standing. Farmers, guards, even Rhyse himself—all lay broken amidst the wreckage of his choice. Slowly, the pale luminescence of Theron's will coalesced once more above the slaughter. The aged visage remained impassive, devoid of both approval and disappointment, revealing a stark and unvarnished truth.

"Had you withdrawn to the Krellian outpost," the apparition murmured, its voice echoing with the weight of generations, "our bloodline would endure. The vault knowledge, the Core secrets—all would remain. Survivors could have been gathered, defenses rebuilt. Was it truly nobility that anchored you here? Or the Synkar pride that shudders at the thought of retreat?"

Rhyse's spectral form clenched fists that could no longer bleed. "Pride?" The laugh that escaped him was raw as the wounds staining his simulacrum's doublet. "Perhaps. But I've seen the calculations of kings and merchants—always balancing lives against convenience. I have also recently weighed the lives of many against my whims. I only needed to lower my hand, and many lives would have been lost. But if we abandon those who depend on us, what separates our House from the likes of the Valtari syndicate?"

The ghostly architect drifted closer, the glow of his form illuminating the small, terrified faces frozen in death—a child still clutching her father's rusted scythe, an elderly scholar impaled on his own ceremonial dagger. "And if the fate of nations hung in the balance? If thousands might live, but only through the sacrifice of these hundred?"

For three hammering heartbeats, Rhyse stared at the carnage his defiance had wrought. "If no alternative existed? Perhaps I could make that calculation." His voice dropped to a whisper. "But I would scour every archive, turn every stone, bleed myself white searching for another way first." He raised his chin, meeting Theron's ageless gaze. "Tell me, Founder—faced with such impossible scales, how would the great Nexus Architect have balanced them?"

For the first time, something like sorrow flickered across the will's translucent features. "The answer eludes even my long study, child. This is why the Core was forged—not to justify cruel calculations, but to shatter its constraints." The air vibrted as the chamber walls began dissolving into threads of primal aether. "Our legacy was never meant to be a blade for cutting losses... but a loom for weaving new futures."

Around them, the death-stilled battlefield erupted in sudden motion—corpses dissolving, blood retracing its sprays in reverse. The simulation was resetting.

The scene shifted. Now, Rhyse stood in a royal court. A sneering king offered him a pact. "Join with me, Lord Synkar. Your magitech and my armies will be unstoppable. We will conquer the neighboring kingdoms, and you will have riches beyond your imagining."

"House Synkar builds," Rhyse replied, his voice cold. "We do not conquer. We protect. We trade with partners. I decline your offer."

Again and again, the simulations came. A famine where he had to choose between feeding his own bannermen or sending aid to a rival house. A plague where the only cure lay in a politically hostile territory. A moral crisis where a brilliant but monstrously unethical scientist offered a world-changing breakthrough at the cost of his humanity. In every scenario, Rhyse balanced the needs of his House with the needs of the world, choosing the harder path, the one that required sacrifice and integrity, not just profit and power.

Finally, the simulations faded, and he was back in the circular chamber. The wisp of Theron Synkar was different now. It seemed sharper, more solid, and the light in its eyes was no longer nascent, but fully, keenly intelligent.

"The Praxis is complete," the projection said, its voice now holding the warmth of a real person. "Your choices align with the core beliefs of the Founding. You have passed. Welcome, Heir. It has been a very long time."

The projection solidified further, becoming a near-perfect, life-sized image of his great-grandfather. "I am what is left of Theron Synkar," it explained. "A personality construct, an echo of consciousness bound to this place and to the Core. I have been waiting for someone like you."

"Waiting for what?" Rhyse asked, his mind reeling.

"For the one who could understand the true purpose of our House," Theron's echo replied, his golden eyes filled with an ancient weariness. "The Synkar were not created to simply amass wealth or build trinkets. We were created to be a shield."

He gestured, and the air around them shimmered, displaying images of things that defied comprehension.

"I stumbled upon this place centuries ago," Theron explained. "And here, I met the last remnant of a precursor race—the primordial artificers. He told me of their greatest mistake. A fail-safe they created that became a self-perpetuating apocalypse: The Earthforged Colossi."

The images showed giant-sized constructs rising from the earth. They weren't evil; they simply saw the world as a resource to be "reordered." Cities were dismantled for raw materials, magitech was absorbed, and life was an impurity to be scrubbed clean.

"They are sleeping," Theron continued, his voice grim. "But their awakening can be triggered. By two great threats that my precursor friend foresaw."

The images shifted. One showed a creeping, sanity-twisting corruption, a tide of darkness eating at the edges of reality. "The Abyssal Tide," Theron named it. "Tears in reality caused by forgotten magical experiments."

Another image showed the world's magic turning chaotic, lands twisting and beasts mutating into horrors. "The Shifting Wilds," Theron said. "A creeping instability in the very fabric of magic itself."

"If left unchecked," Theron's echo concluded, "these lesser threats will create enough chaos, enough disturbance in the world's ley-lines, to stir the Colossi from their slumber. And this time, there are no primordial artificers left to stop them."

He looked at Rhyse, the weight of centuries in his gaze. "The remnant and I built the Synkar Core System using their technology. We designed it to be a weapon, a shield, a system of governance—all in one. We tied its power to a resource that serves as a natural barrier to all three threats. It dampens the Tide's corruption, it stabilizes the Wilds' chaotic energies, and it is a curse to the Colossi's own construction."

Rhyse stared, the pieces of his entire life, his family's entire history, clicking into place with horrifying clarity. The obsession with invention. The neutrality. The hoarding of wealth.

"Gold," Rhyse breathed, the word tasting like ash in his mouth.

"Gold," Theron confirmed. "The one perfect, stable element capable of insulating the world from these existential threats. Our wealth is not a luxury, my heir. It is the world's armor."

The truth hit Rhyse like a hammer to the chest. His family's legacy wasn't just about business and power. It was about holding back the apocalypse. And he, the magically inert heir, was now standing on the front line of a secret, forgotten war for the very survival of the world.