The cellar was melting. Not like stone into lava, but like ink into water. The red glow of the ring on my finger pulsed with the rhythm of a failing heart—my heart. Aethel, or the thing wearing his skin, stood over me with the golden scroll, his ultraviolet eyes reflecting a cold, celestial hunger."Choose, Elias," Aethel’s voice vibrated, sounding like tectonic plates grinding. "One stays. Two are deleted. The Ledger demands its pound of flesh. Faceslap of a reality check: You can't save everyone with a speech and a rusted nail."I looked at Miri, who was clutching my leg. I looked at Leo, his hands still stained with mana-dust. Finally, I looked at Selene. Her silver eyes were wet, but her chin was high."Don't do it, Eli," Selene whispered. "If you choose, they win. They turn your mercy into a transaction.""If I don't choose, the whole sector goes dark!" I roared. My head felt like it was being split by an invisible axe. A white-hot pressure was building behind my eyes, a tidal wa

The bridge of the *Thorne Ark* didn’t feel like a flagship anymore. It felt like an interrogation room. My head was a pressurized tank of God-data, the Sphere’s stolen memories rattling against my skull like jagged glass. Outside the viewport, the remaining Outer Gods were scattering into the dark, but I wasn't looking at them. I was looking at the central terminal of the Sovereign System."Boss, your eyes are still leaking that black smoke," Leo said, his voice trembling as he stood by the manual overrides. "You just ate a God. Maybe take a seat before you implode?""Faceslap of a recovery period, Leo. I don't have time to sit," I snapped. My fingers danced over the holographic interface, the commands flowing out of me with a terrifying, ancient familiarity. "The Sphere had a backdoor. A hidden partition in the System’s root directory. I’m cracking it now.""Eli, look at the timestamp on the source code," Selene whispered, leaning over my shoulder. Her silver eyes widened. "This isn'

The *Thorne Ark* groaned, its structural integrity failing as the violet gravity within me began to warp the very atoms of the bridge. I stood in the center of the wreckage, a black hole wrapped in human skin. The hunger wasn't a feeling; it was an absolute command. Every star visible through the shattered viewport looked like a flickering candle waiting to be snuffed out."Eli, look at me!" Selene shouted, her voice barely audible over the roar of the spatial distortion. She had her hand on the hilt of her blade, but her fingers were trembling. "Fight it! You’ve audited the Gods—you can audit this hunger!""Faceslap of a miscalculation, Selene," I rasped. My voice sounded like grinding tectonic plates, echoing with the billion screams of the souls I’d just inherited. "There is no auditing a vacuum. I am the end of the ledger. I am the zero at the bottom of the page.""Elias, please," Lydia sobbed, reaching out from the deck floor. She was human again, her Phoenix bloodline drained an

The transition wasn't a walk through a portal; it was a violent tear in the fabric of existence. I spilled out into the vacuum of the Iron Sector, my violet aura clashing with the sterile, artificial light of a thousand binary suns. This was the graveyard of the "Logic-Mages," a realm where every asteroid was a factory and every moon was a data-storage unit."Faceslap of a cold welcome," I rasped. My voice didn't need air; it vibrated through the dark matter itself.The hunger in my gut wasn't a stomach ache; it was a gravitational collapse. My very presence caused the nearby debris—shattered satellite relays and scrap metal—to swirl toward me in a jagged, metallic whirlpool.[Sector: Iron][Status: Automated Defense Protocol Alpha Initiated.][Warning: User Elias Thorne identified as 'Universal Solvent'.]"Target locked," a voice boomed—not from a person, but from the void.A fleet of mechanical dreadnoughts, each the size of a small continent, dropped out of warp. They were sleek, s

The Crystal Peaks were behind me, a frozen memory of shattered ice and silver snow. I had fled the Coalition’s trap, but the heat in my veins wasn't from the escape—it was the stolen Qi of five sectors churning in my gut like a molten slurry. I tore a hole into the Fire Realms, and the atmosphere hit me like a physical slap. The air was ninety percent sulfur and ten percent liquid flame."Faceslap of a sauna," I croaked. My voice was a dry rattle, stripped of its humanity by the "Cold Logic" still lingering from the Iron Sector.I landed on a throne of jagged, cooling rubies in the center of the Magma Plaza. Around me, the sky was a bruised, weeping orange, lit by the rhythmic pulses of the Fire Core. This was the heart of the Third Heaven, a realm of passion, fury, and unrefined power. It was exactly what I needed to balance the sterile iron in my soul.**[Sector: Fire Realms]****[Status: Extreme Instability Detected.]****[Alert: A secondary 'Eraser' presence is already on-site.]**