Chapter 541: Abyssal IV
Liliana’s threads snapped one by one, her body trembling as though her existence itself was under audit. "This is their law... to name what we are... and strip us down until nothing remains but obedience."
Roman planted his hand against the stair, every bone in his arm shattering under the weight. Yet he still snarled up at the impossible crown. "Then name me corpse all you want, bastard—I’ll still spit blood in your face."
Milim’s laughter, though frayed, only climbed higher. Her violet fire writhed, mutating against the Throne’s pressure. "HAHA! YES! Rewrite me! See if I don’t tear your script to ribbons from the inside!"
But Leon—Leon stood like the eye of a storm. His flame, though small compared to the vastness of the descending crown, did not flicker. It coiled tighter, burning not outward but inward, condensing, becoming something denser than decree.
The Throne’s voice boomed again, every syllable a gravity well.
"FLAME IS KINDLING. STEP IS CROWN. YOU PRESUME TO UNWRITE LAW."
The stair cracked. Entire spans of fire turned black and collapsed into the abyss, dragged screaming into nothing. The Tower itself buckled under its progenitors’ wrath.
And Leon answered, not with defiance alone, but with declaration.
"No." His voice rang like a bell struck at the heart of creation. "I do not presume. I perform."
His flame flared, not to consume, but to divide. A fracture split the descending shadow, like a seam opening in its perfect geometry. The Throne’s descent stuttered for the first time in eternity.
Leon lifted his hand, fire threading through abyss and heaven alike, binding stair and ruin together.
"The second law," he thundered, "is this: Law shall not bind flame. Flame shall bind law."
The Tower convulsed. The stair reignited in a storm of suns. Abyss chains screamed and tore. The heavens above splintered, their false constellations shattering into rivers of fire.
The Upper Throne reeled. Its perfect form cracked, geometry unraveling into chaos. For the first time since time itself, the unbending law bent.
And from the rift above, the other Thrones stirred deeper, their crowns tilting, their vast voices hissing in unison:
"ARCHITECT. HERESY."
The sky writhed, and more crowns began to descend.
Leon’s flame burned brighter still, and his voice was iron.
"Then let heresy be the foundation."
The sky did not merely darken—it revised itself. Stars folded into symbols, constellations collapsing into thrones of impossible geometry. From the rift above, not one, but a procession of crowns descended, each heavier than history, each radiating authority older than memory itself.
The Tower screamed. Its marrow, already bent by Leon’s laws, shook as if caught between two authors tearing at the same page.
Roselia dragged herself upright, emberblade trembling in her grip, her body buckling with each heartbeat. "Leon... if they all descend, the Tower won’t hold. It’ll tear itself apart trying to bear two truths."
Naval spat sparks, scales cracking under pressure, yet his eyes never wavered from the sky. "Then good. Let it tear. Better no Tower than one chained to their decrees."
Liliana forced her broken threads to knit again, weaving them into trembling scaffolds around Leon, though her lips bled with every word. "No... it will hold. It must. Because it’s already chosen him. They descend to crush him before his third law takes root."
Roman’s voice was ragged, but fierce. "Then it’s on us to keep him standing long enough to write it." He slammed his ruined arm against the stair, blood smearing into flame, as though offering it to the foundation itself.
Milim’s laughter pitched to madness, her body writhing as violet fire tried to eat her alive. "LET THEM ALL COME! I’LL DANCE IN THEIR GEOMETRY AND BURN A HOLE STRAIGHT THROUGH!"
The crowns above aligned, a chorus of unyielding will. Their voices fused into a singular decree, a wordless judgment that shook abyss and heaven alike:
"NO FLAME. NO LAW. ONLY THRONE."
Their light became spears—edicts made flesh—raining down on the stair. Each was not an attack but an erasure, rewriting fire into nothing, unmaking existence into silence.
Leon’s allies braced to be obliterated.
But Leon raised his hand.
The seed of flame in his chest burst. Not outward as explosion, but inward as resonance—each ember of the stair, each thread of abyss, each fragment of shattered heaven vibrated in time with his pulse.
The decree met resistance. Not because it was denied, but because it was bound. The second law held: flame binds law. Their erasure faltered, its perfection forced to follow his rhythm.
Leon’s voice cut through the collapsing sky, low but immovable.
"Your crowns are not absolutes. They are echoes of the first script, chained to repetition. I am not repetition. I am fracture. I am seed."
The stair blazed hotter, brighter, alive. The Tower’s very roots pulsed like a beating heart.
"The third law is this—" his voice thundered, shaking rift and abyss alike, "—No crown shall sit above flame. All who step shall bear the right to burn their own law."
The impact was immediate.
The descending crowns screamed. Their geometry collapsed into storms of impossible angles, bending inward as if devouring themselves. The stair blazed with billions of tiny flames, each spark a memory, a step, a duel—every climber who had ever bled within the Tower.
The law of the Architect had spread beyond Leon.
And for the first time, the Upper Thrones hesitated.
The hesitation was not silence—it was fury restrained, law cracking under its own weight. The crowns writhed, their geometry unraveling, as if the very decree that birthed them had been infected by Leon’s flame.
The Tower groaned like a living beast, its marrow splitting and reknitting at once. The stair pulsed brighter, no longer one fire but millions, each spark answering the third law. Climbers long dead, forgotten by name yet not by step, rose in flickers of memory—warriors, scholars, beasts, even shadows. They were not ghosts. They were echoes, carried in the Tower’s bone, now freed by Leon’s decree.
Liliana gasped, threads fluttering weakly around her as her silver eyes widened. "He... he’s giving them voice. Every climber who ever rose, every step carved in pain or blood—they’re not erased anymore. They burn."
Roselia’s emberblade steadied as she staggered forward, awe and exhaustion warring in her voice. "...This isn’t just his law. It’s theirs. Every flame is a law unto itself."