Deep underground, in the absolute darkness of the Void-Bleed, a war of gods was beginning. Elijah, the King of the Grey, stood before the giant Archon of War. Elijah’s hands had broken out of their black glass shell. His hands were now made of deep, dark space, filled with swirling, burning white stars. Elijah was evolving into Star-Matter. He was preparing to fight Ares-Prime. But high above them, on the surface of the Earth, the Archangels of the Seventh Sphere were not waiting. Michael-Prime, the Archon of Order, had made a decision. Wisdom and logic had failed. The Archangels were done playing games. They were done using tricks and plagues. They were going to use pure, unstoppable, brutal force to crack the Earth open like an egg. On the 200th floor of the Obsidian Spire, the throne room was quiet. Marcus, the Iron Marshal, stood alone. The giant, ten-foot-tall metal commander held his flaming obsidian spear. He watched the broken window. Outside the Spire, the giant, bloody

A five-mile radius around the Spire was instantly crushed. The old stone buildings did not crumble; they were instantly pressed into flat dust. The dead bodies of the demons sank into the mud until they were perfectly flat. The giant, mountain-sized lower half of the Colossus of Rot was crushed down until it was nothing more than a thin, flat red stain on the ground. The muddy wasteland was turned into a perfectly smooth, hard, flat disk of compacted dirt and blood. It looked like the surface of a giant, dark mirror. "HE IS FLATTENING THE WORLD," Marcus calculated, his metal body groaning under the increasing weight. Barachiel did not stop. The massive golden sphere floated directly down toward the center of the city. He floated right above the glowing gray shield that Elijah had built. Barachiel gently rested his massive, dense body on top of the gray web. The gray shield bent deeply inward.&

"The Heavens are above for a reason," Barachiel’s voice boomed. "You are bound by the earth. You belong in the mud. We are the sky that weighs upon you. We decide who stands and who falls. Submit to your weight."Barachiel pushed harder. The golden sphere grew denser. The gray shield bent deeper into the throne room. The starry floor beneath Marcus flickered. Elijah’s anti-gravity was strong, but Barachiel was an Archangel older than the Earth itself. He had billions of years of practice. Down in the Void-Bleed, Elijah felt the push. He staggered backward. The starry skin on his arms flashed wildly. Ares-Prime watched him struggle. "Barachiel is going to flatten your city, King," Ares grinned. "And while you are busy holding up the sky, I am going to cut your head off."Ares raised his dripping, bloody sword and charged across the floating stone toward Elijah. Elijah was caught in another impossible parado

The absolute darkness of the Void-Bleed shook with the force of an exploding sun. Ares-Prime, the Archon of War, had just detonated his own magical core. He had sacrificed his rank as an Archangel to break Elijah’s inverted gravity field. Now, Ares was no longer a general of the Heavens. He was a creature of pure, mindless, unstoppable violence. The heavy, dark red angel landed on the floating stone platform. His armor was smoking. His eyes burned like fresh blood. He raised his giant sword, aiming the phantom-blood blade at Elijah. "No more rules," Ares breathed heavily. "Just blood."Elijah, the King of the Grey, stood his ground. Half of his body was made of burning Star-Matter, the deep space pulsing with white starlight. His violet eyes locked onto Ares. "Lyra," Elijah commanded softly, his electric voice buzzing. "Take the Plumber. Leave the beast to me."Lyra, the Mistress of the Bleed, hovered nearby. He

[STATEMENT VERIFIED. YOU ARE THE CENTRAL ROUTER.]"Then why am I acting like a moon?" Elijah demanded. "Why am I letting him be the planet?"Elijah did not write a virus. He did not invert the gravity like he did in the basement. He did something much more profound. He changed his own definition in the universe. "Execute the Sovereign’s Pivot," Elijah commanded. "Declare me the Center."Elijah pushed his absolute, Kingly will into the green code. He told the universe that he was no longer a target. He was no longer a person standing on a floor. He was the Node. He was the absolute center of reality. When you are the center, you do not fall. Everything else falls toward you. Elijah opened his eyes. The liquid starlight had stopped leaking. His eyes burned with a pure, solid, terrifying purple authority. The change in the physical world was instant and bizarre. The crushing, terrible weight tha