Location: Sector 3, The Star-Metal Wall (Top Ramparts).
Time: 05:30.
The Wall was screaming.
It wasn't the groan of metal under stress; it was the high-pitched shriek of existence being peeled away layer by atomic layer. On the south side, the White Void pressed against the black alloy. The Entropy-Lock Dante had placed was holding, but barely. The Star-Metal was hissing, turning into white mist where the Zealot touched it, sublimating from solid matter to absolute nothingness.
Dante stood on the edge of the rampart, the wind whipping his coat. He looked different. His mechanical arm was now a masterpiece of Star-Metal (Fifth Axiom), absorbing all light that touched it. His left hand bore the glowing tattoo of the Hammer. And floating around his neck, defying gravity, was a small, rotating Crystal Pyramid (Sixth Axiom).
"He is pushing harder," Valerius shouted, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare below. "The wall has lost ten meters of thickness in the last hour! He is eating the foundation!"
"He's impatient," Dante said calmly, his red eye spinning. "Lucian hates barriers. They imply that there is something on the other side worth keeping. He finds our persistence... offensive."
Dante tapped his comms.
"Glitch. Is the Kill-Box ready?"
"Box is... Shiny!" Glitch's voice boomed from the factory speakers, skipping happily. "Mirrors polished! Angles... calculated! It is a... Fun House of Doom!"
"Mortis," Dante called. "Are the souls ready?"
In the distance, a green flare lit up the smoggy sky of the Necropolis.
"The dead are waiting," Mortis rasped over the channel. "We are the mud that will stain the light. Just open the door."
Dante took a deep breath. The air tasted of ozone and fear.
"Then let's open the door."
Dante raised his Star-Metal hand.
"Glitch. Lower Section 4."
The ground shook. A hundred-meter section of the massive black wall began to retract into the earth with a thunderous grinding sound.
The barrier broke.
The White Void didn't rush in like water. It flowed like a slow, terrifying glacier of nothingness. It poured through the gap, erasing the factory floor as it advanced. Pipes, machines, and smoke simply vanished.
Floating in the center of the white tide was Lucian, the Zealot.
He was a being of pure luminescence. He wore robes woven from light itself. His face was a blank, featureless mask of brilliance—no eyes, no mouth, just judgment. He did not walk; the world simply deleted itself to make a path for him.
"YOU SURRENDER," Lucian's voice resonated. It wasn't spoken; it was a mathematical truth inserted into their brains. "WISE. IMPURITY CANNOT BE SUSTAINED. ENTROPY IS AN ERROR. I AM THE CORRECTION."
He drifted through the breach. He entered the massive courtyard Dante had prepared.
It was an industrial plaza, surrounded by towering cooling towers.
"I didn't surrender," Dante's voice echoed from the speakers, magnified by the acoustic design of the plaza. "I just wanted to show you something."
"IRRELEVANT," Lucian stated. "DELETE."
He raised a hand. A wave of erasure—a horizontal line of white static—swept toward the control tower where Dante stood.
Dante touched the Crystal Pyramid at his throat.
"Sixth Axiom: Refraction."
The air in the plaza shimmered.
Suddenly, hundreds of massive Mirrors rose from the ground. They weren't glass; they were polished Star-Metal plates, angled with impossible precision by Glitch's targeting algorithms.
The wave of Deletion hit the first mirror.
Usually, it would erase the mirror. But Dante had coated the mirrors in Illusion using the Prism. He tricked the light into thinking it had already passed through.
The beam bounced.
ZAP.
It hit a mirror on the left. Then the right. Then the ceiling.
The White Light was trapped. It bounced back and forth a thousand times in a second, unable to find an exit vector. The plaza turned into a blinding cage of energy.
Lucian stopped. He looked around. For the first time, the "perfect" light was confused. The math wasn't adding up.
"TRICKS," Lucian announced. "LIGHT CANNOT BE CAGED. I WILL SATURATE THIS SPACE UNTIL IT CEASES TO BE."
He began to glow brighter. He was going to go supernova. He would fill the mirror box with so much erasure that the mirrors themselves would dissolve.
"You're right," Dante said, stepping onto the railing. "White light is powerful. It's absolute. But do you know what white light is made of, Lucian?"
Dante twisted the Prism around his neck.
"It's made of colors."
The mirrors shifted angle by a fraction of a degree.
The concentrated beam of white light hit the Prism floating around Dante's neck.
It didn't bounce. It Split.
The White Void was torn apart by physics.
RED.
ORANGE.
YELLOW.
GREEN.
BLUE.
INDIGO.
VIOLET.
The plaza exploded into a psychedelic storm. The absolute purity of the Zealot was fractured into the chaotic spectrum of the physical world.
"NO!" Lucian screamed. His voice lost its calm resonance. It sounded like tearing glass. "I AM ONE! I AM WHOLE! DO NOT DIVIDE ME!"
"You are parts!" Dante shouted, leaning over the railing, bathed in rainbow light. "And parts can be broken!"
The Red light (War) slammed into Lucian, burning him with heat.
The Blue light (Cold) froze his shoulder, shattering the luminescence.
The Green light (Soul) poisoned him with radiation.
Lucian's form began to unravel. He wasn't a god anymore; he was a rainbow. He was complex. And complexity can die.
"Now!" Dante signaled. "Mortis! Pollute him!"
From the shadows of the cooling towers, black smoke poured out. It wasn't just smoke; it was Necrotic Smog. The concentrated essence of decay, rot, and the grave.
The smog mixed with the separated light.
You cannot stain white light easily; it burns the dirt away. But you can stain a rainbow.
The colors turned muddy. The Red turned to rust. The Green turned to bile. The Blue turned to bruise-black.
Lucian screamed as the "Impurity" touched his core.
"DIRT! FILTH! GET IT OFF! I AM UNCLEAN!"
He thrashed, trying to delete the smog, but he was fragmented. He couldn't focus his power. He was drowning in the mud of existence.
Dante jumped from the tower.
He fell toward the center of the plaza, his Mechanical Arm (Entropy) and his Star-Metal Hand (Creation) raised together.
He was the Avatar of Complexity falling on the God of Simplicity.
"You wanted a perfect world, Lucian!" Dante roared.
He slammed both hands into the Zealot's chest.
"Welcome to the Mud!"
"First Axiom: DECAY."
Dante pumped raw entropy into the fractured light.
The Zealot didn't explode. He solidified.
The light turned to glass. Then to stone. Then to dust.
Lucian looked at his own hands as they turned grey and crumbled.
"I... am... matter?" Lucian whispered in horror. "I am... heavy?"
"Dust to dust," Dante whispered back.
Lucian's form collapsed. The White Void evaporated, leaving only a pile of grey ash in the center of the mirror-box.
Floating above the ash was a single, glowing sphere of pure white energy.
The Third Axiom: The Light.
Dante reached out and grabbed it. It burned, trying to erase his fingers, but his Star-Metal hand held firm.
"THIRD AXIOM: INTEGRATED."
"UNLOCKING FUNCTION: ERASURE (DELETION BEAM)."
Dante fell to his knees in the ash. The mirrors retracted. The smog cleared.
The sun shone down on Sector 3. It wasn't the harsh light of deletion. It was just sunlight.
Valerius ran up to him, skidding to a halt.
"Is it done?"
Dante looked at the white sphere pulsating in his chest, joining the Red Engine, the Blue Prism, and the Black Archive.
"The Zealot is gone," Dante said. "The South is open. The map is restored."
He looked at the holographic map projecting from his arm.
Five Axioms held (Mind, War, Forge, Prism, Light).
One held by an Ally (Spirit).
One left.
The Seventh.
"Where is it?" Valerius asked.
Dante consulted Prime. Now that he had 6 out of 7 pieces of the Origin Code, the triangulation was nearly complete.
"Triangulating..." Prime buzzed. "The Seventh Axiom. The Void. Location: Sector 0. The Origin Point."
"Sector 0?" Dante frowned. "There is no Sector 0 on the map. The map ends at the City."
"Correct. It is beneath us. The Center of the World. The Hole at the bottom of the Universe."
Dante looked down at the ground.
"Of course," Dante laughed softly, wiping ash from his face. "We've been fighting for the surface. But the truth... is in the basement."