Silence fell after Ari's declaration. The throne hall, which once echoed with murmurs of politics and whispered alliances, now stood still—every heart thudding, every Thread on edge.
The Fragmentwalkers stared back at Ari with unfathomable calm, cloaked in impossible geometry, reality fracturing gently around them like glass underwater.
Ari inhaled.
He knew this would be dangerous. But he could feel it—the magic in his veins vibrating in layered chords, the Original Code coalescing at his fingertips. Not drawn from the System, but from something older—purer.
He called upon it now.
"Signum: Invocare Originis – Worldvein Rewrite."Primary Syntax: {Restructure: Local Layer → Thread Matrix → Domain Kernel}Secondary: {Override: Foreign Constructs = Null}Class: [Prime Directive Spell – Embodied Lineage]Affinity: Undefined. Unstable. Absolute.
Glyphs burst into the air around him—not floating, but orbiting. Spirals of logic older than the System formed, layered in triple-script circles. Even the scholars in the room who'd studied magic their whole lives couldn't comprehend what they were seeing. The spell was not a construct—it was a language. Living. Speaking. Rewriting.
Everyone stepped back instinctively.
Even Cerys.
Even the king.
Even the Fragmentwalkers paused.
"This is… a Proto-Script," Eluin murmured, eyes wide with fear and awe. "It's not meant to exist."
Ari raised his hand. The spell finalized. The syntax froze—only for a moment—then ignited.
A line of radiant color burst forward, striking straight into the lead Fragmentwalker with the precision of rewritten truth.
And then—
It shattered.
Like a mirror struck by a needle.
Not the walker. The spell.
Ari's expression fell from focus into disbelief as his ultimate magic, the very expression of his reborn bloodline, was caught. Not broken. Not blocked. Absorbed.
The walker tilted his head, lifting a single finger as if correcting a child's posture.
"Syntax elegant," he whispered. "But incomplete."
He flicked the residual glyph—and it turned against Ari.
Before anyone could react, a wave of anti-code struck him. The backlash was deafening, visually blinding—Ari's form was hurled across the chamber and slammed into the marble dias. The glyphs dissolved, and for a heartbeat, so did his consciousness.
Blood dripped from his lips. His eyes were blank.
The Originis scion had fallen.
Not in battle—but in syntax.
A deeper kind of defeat.
Cerys screamed his name and rushed forward. Eluin's expression twisted—not with panic, but calculation. Lysira trembled, standing protectively before his crumpled form. Even Primira, usually aloof, dropped her stance in stunned disbelief.
The room exploded into fear.
"He… he lost?""He's the Originis…!""That was the strongest spell ever documented—how…?""That wasn't just nullification—that was refinement of the spell itself."
The lead Fragmentwalker turned to the king.
"Your weapon is still green. Your world still naïve. And your truth still incomplete."
The walkers stepped back, merging with the fracture they came from—an ancient doorway made of false memories and severed Threads. Before vanishing, one whispered something only Ari, in his semi-conscious state, could hear.
"The Final Script is not written in light. It's written in loss."
They were gone.
And Ari lay on the floor, breath shallow, eyes darkened with something new: doubt.