The Gilded Age of Aether

You throw the final lever, and the citadel's ancient heart turns golden. A river of stellar fire pours through aetheric conduits across the void, cascading into Earth's waiting grid. Within weeks, London burns brighter than the moon. Airships drift in lazy fleets above every capital, and factories hum without coal or steam.

They call it the Gilded Age. They do not call your name — your role remains a whisper in Admiralty vaults. Yet on quiet nights aboard the Aurelian, you train your spectrometer toward Mercury and listen.

The citadel hums still. Patient. Watchful. Humanity believes it has seized a gift. You suspect, with a cold certainty no medal could soothe, that you have only signed the first page of a contract written in a language no living soul can read.