Amid the wreckage above Mercury, Darrow intercepts a corvette carrying Orion, fighting through Gorgons and Olympic Knights while Ajax nearly stops them. Rhonna extracts Orion and Darrow detonates rigged reactors to cover their escape, snatching a narrow advantage that denies the Dictator Atalantia vital fleet intelligence. On the ground, Darrow tours the maimed, steels his resolve, and unveils a desperate strategy: awaken buried terraforming engines—Storm Gods—so Orion’s Blues can conjure a planet-spanning tempest to blind landings. He clashes with ArchImperator Harnassus over secrecy and ethics even as Master Maker Glirastes revives the first engine.

In parallel, Lysander approaches the Society dreadnought Annihilo with Rim envoys Diomedes and Seraphina. He fears Atalantia will see a rival, yet seeks a Rim–Core accord against Darrow. A brutal reception by Ajax and Kalindora sets the tone. Atalantia plans an Iron Rain onto Mercury and demands blood as proof; Seraphina volunteers. Lysander resolves to fall with Ajax to earn a scar and a voice.

Atlas, the Fear Knight, outmaneuvers Darrow’s bait, slipping past the shield chain to Angelia. Darrow discovers a macabre distraction masking analog hardlines that trigger reactor meltdowns across the north, collapsing Mercury’s shields. As atomics open the sky, he cancels his feint and activates Operation Tartarus: unleash the storms and maneuver his armies through the chaos. The Ash Rain falls. Lysander masters terror with the Mind’s Eye during drop, survives murderous air defenses with help from Kalindora and Seraphina, and pushes inland. Then Orion’s storm forms a kill circle, erasing landing waves and severing comms. Lysander deduces a hidden Storm God drives the sand wall and leads Praetorians with Kalindora and Seraphina to destroy it, forging an alliance with Cicero’s Votum in the murk. The Storm God fires first, killing Seraphina; a savage fight ensues.

At Tyche, Darrow finds Orion driving the engines past the safe horizon toward terraforming ruin. He seizes a secret override and kills the sync—killing Orion—to spare the coast, and pivots to save Heliopolis, where Ajax has struck. He empowers Alexandar to hold the gravLoop for evacuations, sends Thraxa to relieve the siege, and rides south through the storm. Lyander’s strike party collapses under Darrow’s ghostCloak ambush; Kalindora loses an arm, Lysander loses an eye, and Ajax refuses to rescue him. Darrow reaches Heliopolis only to be ambushed by Atlas. At the brink, the Morning Star arrives; Colloway creates a gravity shadow, Thraxa rescues Darrow, and after a brutal day-long fight the Iron Leopards withdraw. Heliopolis holds—for now.

Over Luna, Virginia announces Mercury’s narrow survival and vows relief despite a paralyzed Senate and the Syndicate’s rot. She scrambles votes for emergency fleet control, battles oligarchs, and tries to leash Sevro’s violent hunt for the Syndicate Queen. The Senate floor erupts into the Day of Red Doves: moderate Vox die mid-speech, Wardens betray their oath, mobs storm the Forum, Daxo is beheaded, and Lilath—long thought dead—claims the crown of the underworld. Virginia is captured, resists the Pandemonium Chair with seeded false memories, then watches her loyalists executed beneath the Obelisk. The show trial collapses as Boneriders storm in; an Abomination—a clone of Adrius—reveals himself as the hidden puppeteer wielding Publius as his mask and promises a new tyranny. Virginia poisons him with a trapped night lily, survives a hatchet mauling by Lilath, escapes through a secret chute, and is extracted by Holiday to Kavax’s ship. With Heliopolis imperiled and a Rim–Core alignment forming, she orders a retreat to Mars.

Darrow refuses surrender despite fallout, short anti-rads, and unrest, then at dawn wades into the surf to meet stealth obelisks fired from Earth. Inside waits Virginia’s message: supplies, belief, and a date to come. Harnassus defies a Senate order to arrest Darrow with a one-word reply, “Bloodydamn,” and burns a dreadnought, re-centering command. Meanwhile, Lysander—captured by Gorgons—meets Atlas, who reveals Atalantia’s plan to deploy a new chemical omnicide on Heliopolis. They stage a reversal: Lysander strangles and binds Atlas, murders guards, and frees the Elysian Knights; Alexandar leads a harrowing escape through booby-trapped caverns. Darrow answers their call with LongMalice artillery and a shuttle, securing Atlas alive. Lysander enters Heliopolis under the alias Cato and, while beating lie-detection, leverages Glirastes’s guilt to seed a covert loyalist network and deduces Darrow’s true aim: a massive EMP hidden in a gutted torchShip to black out Mercury long enough to flee.

On Mars and Venus, Ephraim awakens maimed after a crash and is dragged to Eagle Rest, where Sefi the Quiet hires him to professionalize her skuggi in exchange for the lives of Volga and Lyria, who sit in Victra’s prison. He reframes the assassins around deception, but palace fractures widen: Valdir’s desire for Freihild, Sefi’s failing health, and the phantom of Volsung Fá. The Julii ship Pandora is then boarded by vacuum-hardened raiders; Lyria frees Volga amid null-G carnage as Victra is blown into space and the ship falls. Stranded in the Cimmerian Highlands, Lyria, Volga, and a pregnant Victra flee the Red Hand, only for Victra to be seized and her newborn, Ulysses, murdered. Lyria infiltrates the Red Hand as a “bride,” arms captives with Fig’s device-teeth, survives torture, and uses an acid tooth to free Victra. Together with a rising slave revolt led by Volga, they topple the fortress and cast Harmony to her death; a grassroots Martian flotilla answers Lyria’s broadcast, and Pax—in the stolen Snowball—destroys a torchShip. Reunited, Ephraim extracts Pax and Electra from Obsidian custody and later returns to expose Xenophon as Atlas’s embedded Gorgon. Volsung Fá arrives, claims Ragnar’s blood, challenges Sefi, and blood-eagles her at the moot. Olympia falls to sack. Ephraim kills Xenophon with a heartspike bomb and dies as Fá tears out his heart.

Back on Mercury, Darrow suspects “Cato” when a Lune creed slips in sleep and a DNA check confirms Lysander. He orders Glirastes seized and the EMP destroyed, but Lysander moves first: he incapacitates Rhonna, murders Alexandar, hijacks city holos, triggers internal blasts, and decoys missiles with empty gravBoots before firing the EMP. Heliopolis goes black; ships and suits die. Darrow claws free of a lynch mob, revives a suffocating Thraxa, and organizes a street defense to cover evacuations. Lysander rallies Praetorians and Votum’s sunbloods, leading a catastrophic cavalry charge down the Via Triumphia. Thraxa ambushes him and is wounded; Darrow fells Kalindora. In a mounted duel, Lysander impales Darrow through the lung and shatters his slingBlade, breaking the line. As Ajax closes for the prize, a cloaked ship erupts from the Mound: Cassius, alive, lifts Darrow aboard the Archimedes and vanishes into the storm.

Afterward, Lysander stages a Triumph, is laurelled, and outmaneuvers an assassination by kneeling to propose political marriage to Atalantia, binding Lune to Grimmus. Kalindora, dying of poison, confesses she and Atalantia killed Lysander’s parents on Octavia’s order and that his memories were erased; she urges him to stop Atalantia from taking the Morning Chair. On Mars, Virginia completes the Iron Circle, takes total imperium with Darrow’s slingBlade, reconciles with Victra in grief, and learns Earth has fallen to a united Rim–Core front. Kieran presents Volsung Fá’s demand: he will leave Mars and free captives if Volga—Ragnar’s daughter—comes to him. Volga chooses to go. As the board resets, Lysander courts the Minotaur, Apollonius, amid restored Sovereign statues, offering prey and the Mind’s Eye for an alliance without fealty. They clasp hands and turn the statues toward Mars, promising the next campaign.