Chapter 26: Against the Architects
The world began to unmake itself.
Not through fire or ruin. Not through destruction.
But through absence.
Entire mountains ceased to exist. Kingdoms that had stood for thousands of years became nothing. The very concept of reality around Rheon began to erode.
The Architects were not attacking.
They were undoing.
---
The Unraveling of a King
Rheon's armor cracked. Not from force, but from something deeper.
His existence itself was being rewritten.
His name, his title, his very being—they were erasing it.
But Rheon refused.
His hands clenched into fists. His eyes burned like the dying sun.
He would not be erased.
Not by gods.
Not by time.
And not by the ones who created this world.
"You call me an anomaly."
His voice echoed. Not across the battlefield. Not through the air.
But through existence itself.
"Then tell me, Architects—"
"Have you ever encountered an anomaly that fights back?"
---
The Birth of a New Force
Rheon stepped forward.
And as he did—
The Architects hesitated.
For the first time.
Because something had changed.
The unraveling stopped.
The nothingness froze.
And in its place, something new was forming.
Something even they had never seen before.
A force beyond creation. Beyond deletion.
A Sovereign of Eternity.
A being who could not be erased.
The Architects moved as one.
Their judgment had been cast. Their decree was final.
"You are impossible."
Rheon smiled.
"Then try to erase me."
And with that, he struck.
The first mortal to ever lay a hand upon the Architects.
The first king to defy them.
And at that moment—
The battle for existence itself began.
A Battle Beyond Reality
The instant Rheon's blow connected, the world fractured.
The very fabric of existence rippled, as if recoiling from an impossible event.
No being—god, mortal, or even those beyond the divine—had ever touched an Architect before.
Yet now, one of them had staggered.
Not wounded. Not harmed.
But moved.
And that single act changed everything.
---
The Architects' Response
The air around Rheon collapsed.
Not into darkness, nor fire, nor void—
But into absolute nothingness.
An existence without time. Without space.
A place where even thoughts could not survive.
It was their judgment.
A punishment beyond comprehension.
A fate worse than death.
Yet Rheon stood within it.
Breathing.
Existing.
And then—
He stepped forward.
And the void broke.
---
The Wrath of the Unwritten King
The Architects, for all their omnipotence, for all their absolute rule over reality, were unprepared.
For what should not exist, did.
For what should not be possible, was.
And Rheon—
The anomaly, the impossible, the unerasable—
Was advancing.
The Architects moved as one, their forms shifting through dimensions unseen.
A thousand realities bent in their wake, entire timelines erased in the span of a heartbeat.
They had judged this universe for eons.
They had never been defied.
And now, for the first time—
They fought.
---
A Collision Beyond Creation
Their first attack was not an attack.
It was a decree.
A rewriting of the very laws that governed reality.
A single command:
"Let there be no Rheon."
A sentence that should have ended him.
Should have erased his past, present, and future in a single instant.
Yet—
Rheon remained.
Not untouched. Not unaffected.
But unchanged.
His very existence had rejected their will.
Denied their authority.
The Architects, for all their might, for all their divinity—
Had just met something they could not control.
And in that moment—
They understood fear.
---
The Sovereign's Declaration
Rheon's eyes burned.
Not with rage.
Not with defiance.
But with absolute certainty.
"You thought yourselves beyond consequence."
His voice did not echo.
It engraved itself into the very fabric of creation.
"You thought existence was yours to shape."
He took another step.
And reality trembled.
"But today, you learn a new truth."
The void collapsed.
The heavens shattered.
And for the first time in eternity—
The Architects bled.
The Fall of the Untouchable
The impossible had happened.
An Architect—one of the beings who shaped creation itself—had bled.
Not metaphorically.
Not symbolically.
They bled.
A substance beyond mortal comprehension dripped from their shifting, formless body. It was not blood, not ichor, not divine essence—
It was raw existence.
And it was escaping.
---
The Architects' Horror
"This… cannot be."
The words were not spoken.
They were felt across every plane of existence.
The Architects had existed since the beginning. They had never suffered, never lost, never been harmed.
Yet here, in the presence of a single mortal, one of them had been wounded.
Their very nature rebelled against this truth.
They were absolute.
They were unchallenged.
And yet—
The wound remained.
A mark of their first defeat.
And Rheon was not finished.
---
The Anomaly That Refused to Be Erased
Rheon's breathing was heavy, but his eyes never wavered.
He had done what should have been impossible.
But that was the nature of an anomaly.
He was not meant to exist.
And yet he did.
He was not meant to defy them.
And yet he had.
"I asked you once," Rheon spoke, his voice carrying through time itself. "Have you ever faced an anomaly that fights back?"
The wounded Architect shuddered. Its entire form quaked, trying to undo the reality it had just experienced.
But it could not.
The wound was real.
Rheon's power was real.
And now—
So was their fear.
---
The Architects' True Wrath
The wounded Architect vanished.
Not retreated.
Not fled.
It ceased to exist.
But the others remained.
And for the first time, they acted as one.
They had underestimated this mortal.
They had treated him as an insect.
But now—
Now they would erase him completely.
No more decrees.
No more rewriting.
Only absolute annihilation.
The very concept of war ignited in the heavens.
Storms of raw existence tore through the sky.
The oceans inverted, pulled into endless abysses beyond time.
Entire realities collapsed as the Architects' full might was unleashed.
And Rheon—
Rheon laughed.
Not out of arrogance.
Not out of madness.
But out of certainty.
For they had just made their greatest mistake.
They had stopped treating him as an anomaly.
And had finally begun to treat him as an enemy.
---
The Sovereign's Final Warning
Rheon raised his blade.
Not a weapon of gods.
Not a relic of destiny.
But his own creation.
A weapon forged from defiance.
"I do not bow."
The skies shook.
"I do not kneel."
Time itself froze.
"And I do not fear you."
The heavens shattered.
And as the battle began, the Architects knew one thing with absolute certainty—
They had made a mistake.