Chapter 41 – The Prime Architect
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Chapter 41 – The Prime Architect
> [System Override Imminent…] [Warning: Spiral Core Zone Breached] [Incoming Entity: PRIME ARCHITECT OF DESIGN – "VEL'THRAX, THE UNWRITER"]
The air turned heavy.
As if the very laws of reality began to resist existence.
Erevan stood amidst the broken remains of the city, Spiralbreaker still humming in his hand. The ground, once black and cracked, now pulsed red—lines of ancient circuitry spider-webbing outward in perfect geometry.
The sky peeled open.
Like an old page being torn from a forgotten book.
Through it descended a monstrosity of will and shape, something that refused to obey dimension.
It didn't move. It simply existed in every layer of space at once, folding over itself—an amalgam of scaffolding, eyes, ink-dripping feathers, and impossible limbs sculpted in shifting stone and chrome.
Vel'thrax.
The Prime Architect.
The one who had written the Spiral Core and designed the logic that governed adaptation itself.
> "Erevan."
"In your soul, I see chaos. Corruption. And the echo of a failed rebellion."
"You are not a threat. You are a blueprint defect."
Erevan didn't flinch.
"You built the Tower's rules. That makes you responsible for the hell it became."
Vel'thrax unfurled a hand—a canvas of reality. On it, a million timelines played. In every one, Erevan died. Broken. Erased. Rewritten.
"You will not survive this page."
The world shattered.
Not exploded.
Not burned.
Shattered.
Erevan's perception fractured. Time looped. Space twisted.
He was flung through design paradoxes.
One moment, he was a child.
The next, a corpse.
Then a god.
Then nothing.
> [Warning: Reality Spiral Inversion Initiated] [Memory Layers Fragmenting]
Vel'thrax's power was not combat.
It was unmaking.
He didn't kill.
He rewrote purpose.
Erevan screamed—not in pain, but resistance.
Liberator's Mercy flared in his chest, anchoring him. Remembrance surged.
And Spiralbreaker?
It shined.
> [Passive Unlocked: LAWBREAKER'S WILL – You may resist forced rewrites for 7 seconds.]
Seven seconds.
That was all.
Erevan clenched his jaw, ripped his mind back together, and locked eyes on Vel'thrax's core.
A swirling orb—a beating heart made of every rule he ever wrote.
"That's all I need."
He moved.
The suppression field cracked under the weight of his will. Every step tore through laws. He glitched through distance. Each attack was met by dozens of counterstructures—walls of logic, spikes of command chains, claws made of dead gods' oaths.
But Erevan adapted.
He spun mid-air, letting Spiralbreaker carve a glyph through time.
Vel'thrax's left wing disintegrated.
The Prime Architect shrieked—not in pain—but in shock.
"You cannot cut what was never built!"
"I don't follow blueprints," Erevan snarled. "I burn them."
Clash.
A tidal wave of pure concept slammed into Erevan.
He tanked it with a shift—skin transforming into mirrored code, reflecting attacks just long enough to slide past.
He reached the heart.
But Vel'thrax opened a mouth on his chest—and spoke a single word:
"Redact."
Erevan was erased.
Gone.
...
...
But in the void, something stirred.
A memory long buried.
A time before the Tower.
When Erevan was not a tyrant, not a rebel—but a creator.
He had helped build something once.
Not the Tower.
Not a world.
Hope.
And that flicker?
It gave him a foothold.
[Hidden Stat: Remembrance - Activated]
[Memory Unlocked: Genesis Spark]
A golden spark lit within him, and from the void, he returned—
Rewritten by his own hand.
He appeared behind Vel'thrax.
No warning.
No sound.
Just a final whisper:
"Redact this."
He drove Spiralbreaker into the Architect's heart.
And all the laws screamed.
> [Prime Architect Defeated] [Tower Laws Fragmented: Design Layer Breach Achieved] [System Response: CRISIS PROTOCOL 3 – ACTIVE]
Vel'thrax crumbled into a rain of pages.
Each one a rule he had written.
Now falling like ash.
Erevan fell to his knees, chest heaving, blood dripping from his arms. Spiralbreaker hummed low, dimmed but not broken.
The city was gone.
The Spiral Core was broken.
And far above, the Tower began to crack.
Not physically.
But in belief.
> [You are no longer bound by standard Tower progression] [You have unlocked the Design Layer] [Warning: All System Avatars will now converge on your location]
Erevan stood slowly.
And smiled.
"Let them come."
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Next: Chapter 42 – The Siege of the Forsaken Layers