Beneath all creation, beneath even the roots of time and the bones of the gods, there pulsed a core—an origin that none dared name. It was not light, nor darkness, but a resonance. The First Pulse, as ancient texts called it. The Heart of the World.
And Zeirion, Aralya, and Selariel were now descending toward it.
No road led there.
Only remembrance.
The Descent Without Path
Aralya led, her presence slicing through dimensions like silk through water. Her moonlight aura illuminated the unknowable—every step dissolving lies history had written to bury this place.
Selariel followed, barefoot. She needed no armor, no shield. She was becoming something else now—no longer heir, but inheritance incarnate.
Zeirion trailed behind, silent.
The path refused to form under his feet at first. It rejected him.
The world remembered the Sovereign as a conqueror, not a creator.
But he pressed on.
And the veil yielded.
"You built the laws," Aralya murmured, not looking back. "But she will choose which to keep."
Zeirion said nothing.
He knew it was true.
A World Beneath Worlds
They arrived.
There was no chamber, no throne. The Heart was not a thing, but a presence.
It floated—an orb of translucent, living potential. It pulsed slowly, like a slumbering star wrapped in song. Every beat sent ripples across the hidden lattice of reality. Mountains rose. Empires collapsed. Souls were born.
Selariel stepped forward, and the Heart responded.
It quickened.
"It recognizes her," Zeirion said, awe bleeding into his cold voice.
"It always would," Aralya replied softly. "She is what we could never be."
Then the ground shifted.
Not trembling.
Breathing.
The Wound
As the Heart stirred, so did its pain.
A wound festered across one side—a black vein of entropy. Not chaos, but decay. Corruption not from war, but from betrayal.
Selariel placed her hand upon it.
And visions surged.
A god born in the First Dawn. A pact broken. The theft of the Sixth Law.
"What do you see?" Aralya asked, stepping close.
"A name," Selariel whispered. "A name buried in every silence."
She turned to them. Her eyes had changed.
They no longer shimmered with starlight—they burned with golden flame.
"The Architect."
Zeirion froze.
"That name…" he breathed, fists clenched.
"You knew him," Selariel said. Not a question.
"I killed him," Zeirion replied grimly. "Or so I thought."
The Architect Returns
The realms had feared Zeirion.
But even he had feared one—the being who built fate itself, before gods, before time.
The Architect had not died.
He had disappeared, folding himself into the breath between realities, waiting for the Fifth and Sixth Locks to stir.
Now, with the Heart touched by Selariel…
He awoke.
In the Hollow Sky, stars twisted.
In the Dreamless Realm, a clock began to tick backward.
In the Garden Beyond Time, petals turned black.
And in the eyes of the Heart, a figure began to form—tall, robed in mathematical precision, eyes like collapsing galaxies.
"Sovereign," it said, staring at Zeirion.
"Daughter," it said, now to Selariel.
"You trespass upon my design."
Zeirion stepped forward, cloak flaring.
"This world no longer belongs to you."
The Architect smiled.
It was not a smile of cruelty.
It was one of inevitability.
"It never did."