With the Spire's structure complete, Mo Chen turned her attention to the laws of her new nation. There would be no constitution, no parliament. There would be one law, immutable and absolute, etched not on paper but into the very fabric of the place.
She called it the "Law of Ashes."
It was simple: Any act of aggression against The Aerie or its Sovereign will be met with total, irrevocable annihilation. Not of the aggressor, but of the nation, corporation, or organization from which they hail.
It was a doctrine of mutually assured destruction on a personal, vengeful scale. It was the ultimate deterrent, born from her own experience. No shadowy consortium, no rival corporation would risk having their entire existence erased because one employee got trigger-happy.
To demonstrate this law was not an empty threat, she needed a test case. She didn't have to wait long.
A rogue intelligence agency, a remnant of the post-Kraken chaos, detected the unusual energy signatures and construction activity on the archipelago. Seeing a potential new power to exploit, they sent a stealth submarine to gather intelligence.
Silas's sensor buoys detected the sub the moment it entered the territorial waters she had unilaterally declared. Mo Chen was on the bridge of the The Unburnt, now permanently docked in the Aerie's newly forged harbor.
She didn't launch a counter-attack. She didn't send a warning. She opened a secure, untraceable channel to the agency's headquarters and played them a live feed from a drone high above their main research facility in Siberia.
Then, she used the [Scorched Earth Protocol].
A million dollars vanished. Seventy-two hours later, a "meteorological balloon" carrying "experimental equipment" suffered a "catastrophic failure" and crashed directly into the Siberian facility, detonating with the force of a small tactical nuke. The facility was wiped off the map.
The message was sent. The Law of Ashes was now written in fire and blood. The rogue agency, and every other player watching, understood. The Aerie was not a target. It was a trigger.