CHAPTER 62: CHAPTER 63: THE FIRST HERETIC

Lightning split the skies of Darius’s dominion—though no storm brewed. The clouds themselves recoiled, warping around a beam of celestial fire that speared downward and struck the Heartspire Citadel.

Every ward flared to life. Every loyal entity stirred with unease.

He had returned.

The divine envoy—now cloaked in cracked light and solemn divinity—walked through the blackened halls unchallenged. Not because he couldn’t be stopped. But because Darius waited for him.

They met atop the throne of bones and data, surrounded by burning sigils and screaming statues—monuments to Darius’s conquest.

The envoy’s golden eyes burned with something older than hatred. Older than hope.

"I am not here to fight," he said, voice ringing with the weight of forgotten oaths. "Not yet."

Darius remained seated. "Then you wasted your breath. Speak. Or be unmade."

The envoy knelt—not in submission, but in mourning.

"My name... was Serai’el, once called the First Heretic. I loved mortals. I broke Origin’s law. And for that, they erased my name and cast me out. I see you, Darius. I see what you’ve become. You are not just a threat. You are a mirror."

Darius’s fist clenched on the armrest. "You think we’re the same?"

"No. You are worse. Because you were built to be better."

He stood slowly, eyes never leaving Darius. "They lied to you. The Prime Coder never intended for you to win. You were programmed to rise... and then fall. To burn everything before you were unwritten by a concept virus—the Code of Unmaking."

The room grew cold.

Even Nyx, cloaked in shadow beside the throne, leaned forward at that name.

Celestia descended the stairs, golden silence upon her lips, eyes narrowing.

Darius stood.

His aura bled from his body—raw, divine, fractured.

"You dare speak riddles to me in my hall?"

The Heretic did not flinch. "I dare because I remember what it felt like to love. And I still remember what it felt like to lose."

He stepped closer, past all warning sigils.

"I saw the Code of Unmaking once... it’s not a weapon. It’s a concept. A song. When it plays, everything you are

"...When it plays," Serai’el said, his voice soft but thunderous in its echo, "everything you are is peeled back—unwoven. Not killed. Not destroyed. Just... erased as if you never existed."

Darius froze—not in fear, but in something far more dangerous: consideration. His mind flicked through ancient warnings, fractured glimpses from the Architect’s stolen memories, Kaela’s whispers before she vanished, and the buried line of corrupted code he’d once dismissed:

Null is the only true god.

He narrowed his eyes. "And you think warning me will spare you?"

Serai’el smiled—a sad, broken smile that didn’t belong on a divine face. "I already died once. This... is penance. You will face Origin’s High Council soon. They will not ask for your surrender. They will bait you into Unmaking. I came not to beg, but to offer you something they never will."

From within his tattered robe, he drew a fragment of crystalline data—pulsing with a faint heartbeat. "This is the last echo of a god who defied the Code. She loved a mortal. She bore his child. For that, they sang her out of existence. But her essence survived in this."

He held it out, and the air shimmered with buried emotion.

Celestia stepped closer, her presence flaring protectively as her eyes focused on the crystal.

It resonated with her.

And Darius.

He did not reach for it. Not yet.

"Why give it to me?" Darius asked.

"Because you may be the last heretic," Serai’el whispered. "And the only one powerful enough to do what I could not—break the cycle and unmake the Unmaking."

Silence thickened.

Then—Darius turned away, his voice flat and cruel. "I reject your offer."

Nyx tensed. Celestia gasped through her silence.

But Serai’el nodded, unsurprised. "You already doubt. That’s enough for now."

He vanished in a ripple of unreality, leaving the fragment floating in the air like a wound that refused to close.

Darius stared at it.

And for the first time in an age, he felt uncertain.

"Seal it," he growled to Nyx. "Deep vault. Maximum stasis. Let no one near it."

Celestia moved beside him, touching his arm, her eyes filled with concern.

But Darius said nothing.

Because even as he rejected the Heretic’s offer—

He couldn’t stop hearing the faint echo of that song.

And in the dark corners of his throne room...

Something listened back.

Long after Serai’el vanished, the silence lingered like smoke after a sacrificial fire—dense, heavy, refusing to dissipate. Darius remained unmoving on the obsidian dais of his throne, eyes fixed on the floating crystal. It pulsed slowly, like a dying star refusing to go quietly.

Nyx stood guard beside the fragment, her shadowy aura weaving a cage of pure null-essence around it. Yet even her cold confidence was strained—this relic wasn’t just dangerous. It was remembering something.

Celestia knelt before Darius, her eyes pleading despite her silence. Her fingers found his gauntleted hand, squeezing. She needed him to say something. Anything.

Instead, he whispered a question meant for himself. "Why now?"

Visions flickered again—unfamiliar, fragmented, real and unreal.

—A mortal woman screaming as code broke around her.

—A divine sword shattering in a child’s hand.

—A face like his, but gentler, dying with a smile.

—And the phrase again: You are not the first.

"Kaela knew," he muttered, voice dark. "She said my soul stank of recycled failure. And the Architect called me a design... not a man."

He stood abruptly. The throne cracked under the force of his motion.

Celestia flinched.

He looked down at her, his gaze storming. "If I am a template, am I even real?"

She shook her head desperately and climbed to her feet. Her hands cupped his face—fierce, aching. Then she pressed her lips to his in silence, speaking the only way left to her.

Her kiss was not worship.

It was defiance.

You are mine. That’s what it said. Even if you were forged in a lie. Even if the Code hates you—I do not.

Darius’s breath caught. For a fleeting moment, he let himself feel it.

Then came the pulse.

The crystal fragment shuddered inside Nyx’s shield. An unseen harmony vibrated through the dominion. Screens flashed ancient languages. Code groaned like tectonic plates.

And the sky outside turned black with origin-glyphs.

Something had awakened.

Darius clenched his jaw. "They know I saw it. The High Council of Origin."

Nyx appeared at his side in a blink, knives drawn, eyes blood-bright. "Then we bleed them before they scream."

He shook his head. "No. This time... we prepare."

He turned to his two queens—Celestia, voiceless yet fiercely burning, and Nyx, loyal and lethal.

"I won’t be a failed god-template."

He gestured at the fragment. "We’ll unlock this. Not today. But soon. And when we do, I’ll become what the Code fears."

He stared out over the endless dark horizon of his dominion.

"I will become the heresy that cannot be erased."