(Lawless Arc: Part XXXV)
The multiverse did not break when the System died.
It inherited a vacuum.
A throne of ash is still a throne.
And an empty seat is still a temptation.
Across dimensions, the first imposters arrived within hours — beings who believed the collapse of a god-script meant the promotion of a new one.
They were wrong.
Kael watched the horizon as the first figure materialized.
A monarch draped in weeping nebula-silk, crowned by a script stolen from the corpse of a shattered timeline.
The air around him distorted with glitching UI fragments:
[AUTHORITY CLAIM DETECTED…]
[ORIGIN: UNVERIFIED]
[MANDATE: SELF-WRITTEN]
The Monarch smiled.
"Finally," he sighed, "a world without oversight."
Kael didn't answer.
His silence was the answer.
The Monarch continued.
"You have no System now. No rules. No guidance."
He leaned forward.
"So I made some."
A parchment unfolded behind him, listing cosmic laws forged from arrogance:
The Monarch may not be challenged
The Void must kneel before its King
Energy may not be devoured without tribute
Kael scanned the parchment once.
Then he laughed — a short, humorless exhale.
"You wrote rules for a world that no longer obeys ink."
The Monarch's smile twitched.
Kael stepped forward, eyes calm, voice low:
"I am not here to challenge your rules."
A pause.
"I am here to erase your confidence in them."
The Monarch's body locked before he could move.
[LAW OVERRIDE INITIATED]
[SOURCE: OLDER THAN SYSTEMS]
[RIGHT TO INTERFERE: ABSOLUTE]
The parchment shredded itself.
The Monarch staggered.
"You can't just delete them—!"
Kael tapped the ground once.
And the Remnant answered for him:
[NEW RULES CANNOT BE SAVED.]
[REASON: THE VOID LEARNED TO READ YOU FIRST.]
Kael's voice dropped to a whisper only gods could feel:
"I reject your authorship."
The Monarch collapsed into script-dust instantly, erased from causality, identity, and obituary.
No cooldown.
No ceremony.
No echo.
The Second Imposter
A scholar-entity tried next.
They arrived cloaked in pre-System codex cloth, believing wisdom could forge what arrogance failed to write.
UI fragments emerged again:
[SYSTEM ATTEMPT DETECTED…]
[METHOD: RECODE REALITY]
The Scholar spoke anciently:
"Let the world be rewritten by necessity."
Kael replied even older:
"Necessity no longer writes law here."
The Scholar blinked.
"…Then what writes law?"
Kael turned, meeting the Scholar's eyes, voice soft like apocalypse:
"Those who survived it."
The Scholar disintegrated before comprehension formed.