The boy I had tormented, the rival I had broken, was gone. In his place was a god. An avatar for the heat death of the universe.
Seraphina, the vengeful ghost, felt it too. The raw, absolute power radiating from that fortress made our own, petty squabbles seem like the games of children.
[It is too powerful,] she sent, her thought a sharp shard of ice in my mind. [Even with my golem and your own power, a direct assault is impossible. This was a trap.]
"Everything is a trap," I replied, my voice calm, my mind a blizzard of cold, hard calculation. "That just means the prize is worth the risk."
She thought I was insane. She was right.
A direct assault was suicide. But I had not come to the Abyss to fight a god. I had come to perform a software update.
The memory of the Creator's failsafe, the reboot command for the Primeval Edict, burned in my mind. It was a line of pure, conceptual code. To activate it, I didn't need to defeat the Static-Avatar. I just needed to get close enough to "input the command." I needed to touch it.
"I have a new offer for you, Seraphina," I said, my gaze fixed on the distant, pulsing beacon. "Your resurrection. I can give it to you. Right now."
[Lies,] she hissed. [You need a Prime Homunculus, the World-Forge...]
"I have a better idea," I interrupted. "I have the Creation Engine. I have the Chronaeternal Engine. I have the authority over Law and Time. I don't need to build a new body. I can simply… turn back the clock on an old one."
I opened a small portal, a window in time and space, showing a scene from a world away. The throne room of the Ravencrest Palace. And on the floor, the fresh, recently slain body of her mother, the Duchess Vane.
"Her body is a perfect, high-tier vessel," I explained. "Empty. And thanks to you, conveniently available. I can reverse its decay, purge its soul-signature, and make it a blank slate. Your original body was a puppet. This one is the body of The Architect's chosen agent. A significant upgrade. All you have to do is create a distraction for me."
She was silent, processing the sheer, monstrous pragmatism of my offer. I was offering to give her her life back, using the corpse of her own mother as the vessel.
[What is the distraction?] she finally asked.
"That," I said, pointing to the colossal fortress-city, "is the heart of the Netherworld's power. It is a nexus of countless demonic souls. The Kaelen-Golem you control is a creature of Karmic Abscess. It feeds on righteous indignation and dynastic energy. But I suspect… it can feed on other things too."
"You want me to unleash it on the city?" she asked, a note of horrified awe in her voice. "To attack the Netherworld itself?"
"I want you to be the biggest, loudest, most gloriously suicidal diversion in the history of this reality," I confirmed. "Draw its attention. Draw the Avatar's attention. Give me the opening I need to get to the spire. Succeed, and your new life awaits."
It was a suicide mission. But it was also the only path to her ultimate desire.
[Done,] she hissed, and the deal was struck.
The Kaelen-Golem, its golden form now burning with a black, vengeful light, shot towards the city, a living meteor of pure, dynastic fury. The ghost of a prince, puppeteered by a vengeful queen, was about to wage a one-man war on hell.
The moment it struck the city's outer walls, the Abyss responded. Legions of demons, shrieking horrors of claw and shadow, poured from the battlements. The psychic screams of a billion souls turned to a single, unified roar of war.
The distraction had begun.
While all eyes were on the golden god wreaking havoc at their gates, I made my move.
I didn't fly. I didn't run. I used my authority over Time.
I stepped outside the linear flow of causality, wrapping myself in a bubble of frozen, unmoving moments. To the demons, to the Avatar itself, I was not invisible. I simply… wasn't. I walked through the heart of a raging battlefield where no one could perceive my existence, a ghost moving between the ticks of the clock.
I reached the base of the central spire. I ascended, my feet silent on the steps of a citadel that was the nexus of all evil.
I reached the throne room.
And I saw it. The entity that had been Lin Feng. It was no longer a man. It was a being of pure, static-laced, crimson energy, vaguely humanoid in shape, sitting on a throne carved from the solidified despair of a billion souls. It was staring out at the battle, at the golden golem, its attention completely focused on the glorious chaos I had orchestrated.
The Primeval Edict was not an object it held. It was its heart, a pulsating, corrupted star of pure, chaotic law at the center of its being.
I solidified my presence back into the normal flow of time, right behind its throne.
It whirled around, its featureless face turning to me, its consciousness registering my impossible presence with a jolt of pure, cosmic shock.
[YOU,] its voice was the sound of a dying universe.
"Me," I said, and I placed my hand on its chest, on the heart of its power.
I didn't try to devour it. I didn't try to fight it.
I simply typed the command. The failsafe code I had seen in the Creator's memory. A line of pure, conceptual law that was the master key to this stolen, corrupted System.
[SYSTEM PROTOCOL OVERRIDE: INITIATE 'THE PRIMEVAL EDICT'.]
[PURGE ALL FOREIGN CORRUPTION.]
[RE-DESIGNATE PRIMARY TARGET.]
[NEW TARGET ACQUIRED: 'ROGUE SUB-ROUTINE - UNIT 001 - THE WATCHER'.]
[ACTIVATE.]
The Static-Avatar screamed, a sound that was not of pain, but of a hostile program being overwritten by its original, absolute directive. The crimson, chaotic energy that defined it was burned away, purged by a wave of pure, silver-white, conceptual fire.
The entity that was Lin Feng was erased. The avatar of The Static was deleted.
All that remained was the fragment itself. The Primeval Edict. No longer a corrupted heart, but a clean, pristine, and terrifyingly powerful crown of pure, silver light, humming with a single, new purpose: to hunt and kill its creator's betrayer.
It floated in the air before me, its power absolute. It had its mission. And it was about to leave to begin its eternal, multiversal hunt.
But I was a sovereign. I was a thief. And I did not just come here to fix a bug. I came here to claim a prize.
Before the Edict could depart, I raised the Void-Eater's Hand. And for the first, and final, time in my existence, I used my authority over Chaos, Law, and Time to do something truly impossible.
I did not devour the Edict. I did not try to control it.
I copied it.
I pulled a perfect, conceptual echo of its power, its authority, its 'System-Killer' protocol, into my own Nexus Codex. It was an act of cosmic, digital piracy of the highest order.
The original Primeval Edict, its purpose restored, shot up through the roof of the spire and vanished into the multiverse, beginning its eternal hunt for the Watcher. The greatest threat to my existence was now being hunted by the universe's most powerful assassin, a problem that would, eventually, solve itself.
And I was left in the silent, crumbling throne room of a dead god, my own System now humming with a new, terrible power. The power to unmake other Systems.
My victory was total. I had defeated my rival, purged a cosmic threat, and acquired a power that made me the undisputed apex predator of the entire Tower.
I stood there, the master of a dead world, a king with no subjects. My path was now truly, absolutely, my own. I could go anywhere, do anything.
But as I prepared to finally, truly begin my own, unbound ascent, a final, chilling notification appeared in my newly upgraded, five-core System. The data from the Primeval Edict's echo had finished integrating. And it had brought with it one last, forgotten piece of the Creator's memory. A final, terrifying twist that redefined my entire understanding of my own grand ambition.
[CREATOR'S LOG: FINAL ENTRY]
[The Omnistructure is complete. A perfect engine to create and govern realities. But I fear the betrayal of my Librarian. He seeks to unmake everything. I have created a failsafe, the 'Primeval Edict', to hunt him should he succeed.]
[But I have also created a final, desperate contingency. A backup. A way to restore myself if I am shattered.]
[I have scattered seven 'Main Cores' of my own being. If a single, worthy soul can find and reunite all seven, they will not just repair the System. They will become the vessel for my own, restored consciousness.]
[The one who completes the System will not be its master.]
[They will be me.]
[My final, greatest creation… is my own resurrection.]