CHAPTER 496: WAR OF THRONES V

The world was already screaming.

But the next clash—this one would decide which law remained.

Leon’s fractures spread like glass struck from every angle. Each outcome splintered, cascaded, tore reality into threads of possibilities. His vision blurred—every heartbeat was a thousand, every breath was a legion of echoes trying to exist at once. His very bones howled under the strain of Fracture Requiem.

He knew it couldn’t hold.

Not like this. Not for long.

And Kaelith... Kaelith was not a man anymore. He was his Throne.

The banners lashed overhead like storms, the obsidian seat towered until even the sky of the arena looked like it had been conquered, pulled into service. The Sovereign Warlord stood unshaken, unbowed. His decree had not faltered.

"Flamebreaker." His voice was thunder folded into steel. "You are powerful—but no Throne bends. It commands."

And then Kaelith raised his hand. Not in a strike. Not in a punch.

But in an open palm, fingers spread, as if to seize the horizon.

A hush fell—too deep, too unnatural. Even the fractures Leon had made froze mid-shatter, suspended in the weight of a higher law.

Kaelith’s final Sovereign Command descended.

"Kneel."

It wasn’t a word. It wasn’t sound. It was law. It was the order the universe itself recognized, and the body obeyed. Muscles rebelled, blood faltered, even Leon’s knees buckled, screaming to collapse under the command.

The audience went silent—some clutched their throats, some dropped their heads as if dragged by phantom weight. Kaelith’s Command didn’t distinguish—it bent all beneath the Throne.

Leon’s body trembled. His fractures began to collapse inward, snapping back to reality’s default: obedience. His vision blackened at the edges, not from weakness, but from inevitability.

And yet—

Through the choking law, through the collapsing fractures, through the roar of a Sovereign Command, Leon whispered hoarsely:

"...Then... I’ll break the command itself."

The Fifth Pulse writhed, unstable, suicidal in its resonance. He drove it deeper, past mastery, past survival, into a realm that was not meant to be touched.

Fracture Requiem didn’t just splinter outcomes this time.

It turned inward.

Leon was fracturing the Command itself.

Kaelith’s eyes widened—not in fear, but in savage, exalted recognition.

The banners above the Throne whipped wildly, the decree straining to hold against something no sovereign law had ever faced.

Leon bled from every pore, every fracture slicing into his existence. His arms shook, his chest caved under pressure, but his voice cut through the collapsing world:

"Your Throne commands... but I decide what echoes remain."

The law of Kneeling split.

Obedience fractured.

The Command itself broke.

Kaelith roared—not in defeat, but in joy, like a king who had found the one warrior who could finally breach his gates.

And with that breach, both of them surged forward—Leon wielding a Requiem on the edge of annihilation, Kaelith wielding the Throne’s banners in a final decree.

Their last clash ignited the arena into white silence.

The little group pressed further into the city, weaving between broken carriages and the tilted remains of stone houses. Moss clung to the walls, and here and there they spotted birds nesting in hollowed windows.

The silence of the clash still lingered in Leon’s bones, like a ghost that refused to leave.

But here, in the ruined city, it was a different kind of quiet. Not the silence of laws colliding, not the stillness of a Throne’s decree—this was the hush of abandonment. Of a place that had once been alive, but now only remembered it through echoes.

The group moved cautiously. Naval’s blade was drawn, his eyes scanning every shadow; Milim hummed idly, skipping on cracked cobblestones as though the destruction were just scenery; Liliana’s gaze swept the rooftops, wary, sharp; Roselia trailed her fingers across the moss, murmuring the faint pulse of life she could feel beneath stone; Roman walked behind, his massive frame watchful, carrying the weight of both protection and burden.

Leon walked at the front. His steps were steady, but only just. Every breath was weighted with what he had just endured. His veins still burned with the echo of Kaelith’s Command, and Fracture Requiem rattled inside him like a storm trapped in glass.

Naval finally broke the silence.

"...This city feels wrong."

"It is wrong," Liliana replied quietly, adjusting her bowstring. "The walls lean, the air feels heavy. It’s like time itself slipped here."

Leon stopped at a crossroad where the main road split. The stone was blackened in places, as though fire had swept through, yet no ash remained. His eyes narrowed. He could feel the pull—like threads tugging in opposite directions, guiding him deeper.

"This isn’t just ruin," Leon said. "It’s resonance."

Roselia’s fingers froze over the moss. "Resonance? With what?"

Leon looked upward.

The sky was still blue, still scattered with faint white clouds... but at its heart, far above the ruined roofs, something shimmered. A distortion, like a tear in the heavens itself.

"...The next Throne."

The group fell silent at that. Even Milim’s humming faded away.

Because they all felt it now—the oppressive weight, the unseen hand pressing against their skin, heavier the closer they walked. It was not the law of Kaelith’s Command. It was something colder, quieter, but no less absolute.

Roman muttered under his breath, "...Then this city isn’t just ruins. It’s a boundary."

Leon’s gaze lingered on the shimmer in the sky, his jaw tight.

A Throne awaited.

And unlike Kaelith, this one had not yet revealed its law.

The wind shifted.

It whispered through the hollowed windows, carrying not dust, not scent, but memory. Every broken wall seemed to breathe out echoes of the lives that had once filled them—children laughing, merchants shouting, soldiers marching. Yet each sound was brittle, like glass scraping glass, and gone before it could fully form.

Milim stopped skipping. She tilted her head, eyes wide, as if listening to something no one else could hear. "They’re still here," she murmured. "Not bodies. Not souls. Just... the moment before they were erased."

Roselia frowned deeply, her hand tightening on her staff. "Then this Throne doesn’t just rule space or fire. It rules... permanence."

Leon’s stomach turned. The pressure in the air thickened the deeper they went, not crushing like Kaelith’s decree, but dissolving—like each step closer stripped away something of their presence. Even the moss under Roselia’s fingers seemed to dim in color.

Naval cursed under his breath. "Feels like the whole city’s trying to forget we’re even walking through it."

Liliana’s bow rose. "Or worse—like we’re being rewritten to belong here."

Leon stopped again. This time, his eyes weren’t on the sky, but on the street ahead.

A figure stood at the far end of the broken road.

Not tall. Not armored. Not a warlord like Kaelith. But cloaked in white threads that drifted like unraveling cloth, their face hidden behind a veil of pale strands. They didn’t move, didn’t breathe—but the silence bent harder around them, as if reality itself was holding its breath.

Leon’s chest tightened. The threads weren’t cloth at all. They were fractures. Thin, delicate tears in the world, pulled into the shape of a person.

Roselia whispered, almost reverent, almost horrified:

"...The Archivist."

The name rang in Leon’s skull like a tolling bell. He had heard it only once, in the warnings of the Elder Ants. A Throne not of conquest, not of command—but of record. The one who sat above memory, truth, and erasure.

The figure tilted its head, and though no voice came, all of them felt the decree form inside their bones:

"All that is written must endure. All that is unwritten... does not exist."

Milim shivered. Roman’s jaw clenched. Naval’s grip on his sword shook for the first time.

Leon swallowed, every fracture inside him flaring in protest.

This wasn’t a battlefield.

This was judgment.

And the Archivist had already begun weighing which of them the world would remember.

The Archivist did not move.

And yet the city did.

The street around them rippled—stone bending like paper, moss peeling away in silent shreds. The blackened road softened, smoothed, until it was no longer ruin but whole. Houses straightened, windows filled with glass, banners fluttered from rooftops as if the city had never known destruction.

Only it was wrong.

The people walking the streets were pale outlines, sketches filled with motion but no life. A mother tugged her child’s hand, a soldier polished his blade, merchants waved their arms to bargain—but their faces were blurred, and their voices were nothing but a hollow hum, like words erased before they could form.

Milim’s eyes went wide. "It’s... showing us."

"No," Roselia said sharply, clutching her staff until her knuckles whitened. "Not showing. Deciding."

Leon felt the fractures inside him strain like chords pulled too tight. The Archivist’s decree was not violence—it was judgment, a quiet, absolute weighing of existence. Every outline in the city was a record, a moment preserved. But there were gaps. Places where nothing had ever been written, where people should have been, yet there was only silence.

The Archivist raised a single hand. Threads of fracture lifted, weaving a spiral in the air above its palm. Then, for the first time, its veil shifted—and though no mouth was visible, a voice pressed against all their ears, flat and toneless:

"Memory is law. Present your truth... or vanish."