It was vast—too large to feel accidental. Taller than any fortress gate I had ever seen, wider than the span of three siege towers laid side by side. Its surface was neither stone nor metal, but something in between: smooth, dark, absorbing light instead of reflecting it, as if the door itself refused to be observed too closely.
Runes covered it.
Not decorative script, not warnings, but sentences—long, layered axiomatic declarations engraved directly into the material. They pulsed faintly, breathing, each rune linked to the next in a continuous logical chain.
This was not a lock.
It was a verdict.
On either side stood executioners.
Statues, at first glance. Robed figures carved from pale stone, hoods pulled low enough to hide their faces entirely. Their hands rested on enormous axes, blades thick and heavy, etched edge-to-spine with runes of severance, finality, and erasure.
They were not inert.
Their Axiom signatures were dormant, compressed to a dangerous density, like blades held inches from flesh.
Between them stood a pedestal.
A raised platform, smooth and bare, positioned directly before the sealed door.
A familiar design.
I stepped onto it. The moment my fingers brushed the runes carved into the door—the world snapped.
No sound.
No displacement.
No sensation of falling or movement.
One blink—
And I stood in white.
Not light. Not emptiness.
Judgment.
A vast court unfolded around me, stretching endlessly in every direction. Marble-white floors polished to perfection, pillars rising into nothing, benches aligned with mathematical precision. The space was sterile, oppressive in its cleanliness.
Every sound I made echoed too long.
I took a step back.
Metal slammed down around my wrists.
Cold and heavy.
Resonated Axiom-alloy restraints snapped shut, locking my hands to a stone table that rose from the floor beneath me. The metal burned—not with heat, but with pressure, forcing my Axiom inward, suppressing it.
I pulled once.
Nothing.
My breath quickened.
The judge's dais loomed at the far end of the court. Elevated. Absolute. Carved with runes of authority, judgment, continuity, and execution.
The judge sat.
Faceless.
No eyes. No mouth. No expression.
Yet when it spoke, the voice was perfectly clear.
"Elrin Therion," it said."You are charged with the crime of kin-slaying."
The words struck harder than any blade.
My chest tightened.
"No—" I tried to say.
Leather snapped tight around my mouth.
The pressure bit into my cheeks, my jaw, my tongue. My voice was stolen in an instant.
The judge did not pause.
"You are accused of murdering your father and mother. You are accused of betraying your blood. How do you plead?"
I shook my head violently, wrists straining against the restraints, metal biting into bone.
The witness stand beside the judge filled.
She appeared without sound.
My mother.
Blood soaked her dress, dark and sticky. Her skin was pale, her eyes glassy, fixed on me without recognition. She did not cry. She did not rage.
She only spoke.
"He killed us."
The benches filled in an instant. The empty court became crowded—packed with faces I recognized too well. The citizens of Sunspire. The ones who watched. The ones who jeered. The ones who dragged me through the streets and threw me into the dungeon like refuse.
Their eyes were empty.
Judging.
Another blink—
My father stood before me.
His chest was torn open where the blade had struck. Blood soaked his hands as he reached toward me, fingers trembling.
"Why?" he asked softly. "Why did you do this to us, Elrin?"
My vision swam.
My heart pounded so hard it hurt.
I shook my head, tears burning my eyes.
Another blink.
Lyra sat in the witness stand.
Whole.
Clean.
Her expression was exactly as it had been that day.
"I should have never trusted someone like you."
The image stuttered.
Glitched.
Her body split, blood pouring from her eyes, mouth, skin tearing open as rot consumed her in seconds. She remained seated, staring at me as she decayed.
The crowd began to chant.
"Why did you kill us?"
Once.
Again.
Again.
The floor cracked.
The sound was wet.
Veins pushed up through marble. Organs spilled from fissures, dragging themselves across the court. Pillars warped, becoming bone and cartilage. Teeth erupted where stone should have been.
In this world, there are no such thing as demon lords.
Only the Blight.
Common knowledge said the Blight was divine punishment cast upon humanity. A correction imposed after the First Lie—a catastrophic metaphysical rupture that fractured reality itself. Scholars claimed the gods caused it. Others claimed the world rejected a false definition of "purity."
No one truly knew.
Only that it consumed everything.
The Blight shouldn't be here.
Flesh overtook the court. White rotted into red and black. Decay accelerated unnaturally, as if time itself had been infected.
Only two figures remained untouched.
The judge.
And me.
The judge's voice changed.
Now it was my father's.
Now my mother's.
Now Lyra's.
"You are guilty."
"You are guilty."
"You are guilty."
The words overlapped, recursive, looping endlessly, driving into my skull.
Corrupted runes crawled up my arms, sinking into my skin like parasites. I felt the pull then—the pressure, the drain.
Understanding cut through the terror.
So that's it.
This wasn't judgment.
It was hunger.
The dungeon was reclaiming the Axiom I had stolen—months of survival, adaptation, pain. It was pulling at the power I forced into myself.
I was the food.
Rage surged—but I crushed it down.
Think.
This is an illusion. A mental construct. A reality distortion generated by axiomatic logic.
And that means—
I remembered the nights alone in darkness. The wounds that never healed cleanly. The monsters I ate despite the taste, forcing myself to swallow just to live. The way absorbing Axiom felt like ingesting poison and demanding my body adapt or die.
Every scream I swallowed.
Every tear I shed alone.
Every burning second.
They did not break me.
They forged me.
I pulled against the restraints.
They held.
I pulled again.
Harder.
My hands went numb. Pain flared white-hot as skin split, blood dripping onto the stone table.
I screamed into the gag.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Metal shrieked.
With a wet, horrifying snap, my hands tore free—flesh mangled, bones exposed.
I didn't stop.
I condensed Axiom into my right arm—raw, unstable—and forced tissue to knit, muscle to obey, bone to seal.
I stood.
The judge loomed.
"This is my mind," I thought. "Not yours."
I sprinted forward and drove my fist into the judge's faceless head.
The court shattered.
White collapsed into black.
The Blight screamed.
—
I snapped back.
My body lay against the pedestal.
My head was down waiting for an execution.
Axes descended.
I twisted, rolling aside as steel slammed into stone where my neck had been moments before. The pedestal exploded.
The executioners moved.
Not statues.
Guardians.
Axes rose, humming with activation runes, their Axiom signatures flaring to life.
I stood, bloodied, burning, breathing hard.
Before that door—
I would not be executed again.
The dungeon would not eat me.
Not the Axiom I bled for.
Not the power I earned.
The guardians charged.
I smiled.
"Try," I whispered.