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Chapter 106 - Pillar of Chaos

Chapter 106: Chapter 106 - Pillar of Chaos

The moment Lucius gripped the Pillar of Time, reality folded.

The glowing crystal pulsed in his hand, a heartbeat that echoed not just in his chest but across countless worlds. The hourglass above him cracked. Time flowed backward, forward, inward. He was everywhere and nowhere.

And then—silence.

The world shattered like glass.

He was falling again.

But this fall felt different. Not through memories or visions, but into something raw. Something untamed. Something hungry.

He landed with a thunderous crash on a warped plain of jagged obsidian and blood-red rivers. Lightning arced in every color across a fractured sky. Trees floated upside down. Mountains levitated. Stars blinked in and out like fireflies.

Lucius had entered Chaos.

The very air felt wrong. It tasted like fire and iron and forgotten words. His skin itched with the sensation of being watched by things that had no form. The ground beneath him constantly shifted. At one moment it was solid. The next, it was liquid glass. Then it became a living carpet of worms that squirmed beneath his boots before vanishing again.

"Welcome to madness," a voice whispered.

He turned. No one was there. Yet the voice came from everywhere. From the wind. From the ground. From inside his skull. It was his voice. And it wasn’t.

He walked.

Each step took him to a new landscape. A frozen tundra. A burning forest. A city made of bones. A field of giant screaming eyes. The world changed with his thoughts—and not always in ways he expected. At one point, he imagined a place of peace. The Realm mocked him, presenting a charred orphanage filled with the echoes of crying children.

He clenched his fists. The Pillar of Time floated behind his back, orbiting him like a sentinel. Its light flickered inconsistently, as if even it could not hold its form in this place.

He walked for hours. Or perhaps seconds. In Chaos, time itself bent like a lie. His mind strained to comprehend the endless shift in logic and form. He heard songs sung in reverse, felt emotions he didn’t recognize, and sometimes forgot his own name for a breath or two before clawing it back.

"This place has no rules," he muttered.

"Wrong," the voice returned. "There is one rule."

Lucius paused. "And what is it?"

The sky turned black. A single red moon appeared overhead, and the stars spun into a spiral like a predator’s eye.

"The rule is: Chaos tests everything."

And the test began.

A dozen Luciuses appeared around him—twisted versions of himself. One was monstrous, his body stitched together from others. One was regal, smug and cruel. One was broken, weeping blood. Others were grotesque, inhuman, deformed by obsession, rage, lust, ambition.

They attacked at once.

Lucius summoned his voidblade, but the weapon laughed at him. It twisted in his hand, became a serpent, and slithered into the ground.

"Even your power has no loyalty here."

He had to fight without it.

He ducked a clawed strike, drove his knee into the broken one’s gut. He spun, caught a blade on his forearm, grunted as his blood splattered onto the black ground. Pain was real. Time was not.

The smug version circled him, taunting. "You think you’re better than us? We are you. The parts you hide. The truths you refuse."

Lucius punched the thing in the mouth. Bone shattered.

But it smiled.

Each foe fought with his exact style. Every strike was a prediction. Every move was mirrored. The monstrous one crushed a boulder and hurled it at him. Lucius barely dodged, rolling into a splash of burning tar.

He screamed.

But rose.

He tore a jagged shard of crystal from the ground and used it as a makeshift blade. Cut down the arrogant one. Slashed across the eyes of the serpent-bodied version. He was adapting. Improvising.

But the Realm didn’t stop.

The ground itself rebelled, erupting into arms made of smoke and shadow. They grabbed his ankles, hissed accusations in forgotten languages. He crushed one with a stomp, blasted another with a pulse of pure will.

Then came the mental attacks.

"You let Lilith think she’s special, but she’s just the first. You would replace her in a heartbeat."

"You crave Alexia’s power more than her loyalty."

"You want Luna because she lets you feel worshipped."

Lucius staggered under the weight of the voices. They weren’t lies. They were his doubts. His cracks.

Visions swirled around him: Lilith turning away, betrayed. Luna sneering at his weakness. Alexia walking into the void alone, her voice cold with disappointment.

"You’re not worthy of them. You never were."

He fell to one knee.

But he didn’t stay down.

He snarled, pushed to his feet, and drove a spike through the mouth of the one who spoke. The illusion didn’t die. It laughed.

He burned the weeping version with willpower alone. Each time one died, another took its place. They came faster, more aggressive. Some wielded weapons he’d never seen before—mirrors that shattered memories, knives that rewrote identity.

Lucius fought on.

He roared. He bled. He screamed their names—not the twisted versions, but the real ones.

"Lilith. Luna. Alexia. Walter. I won’t break. I won’t."

And finally, only one opponent remained.

Himself.

But this Lucius had no face. No soul. Just a hollow version of him wielding a blade of pure entropy. It shimmered with anti-light, and as it passed near reality, the world curled away from it.

Where Lucius moved with purpose, this doppelganger flowed like liquid destruction.

They clashed.

Entropy struck first, carving a glowing red gash across Lucius’s chest. The wound didn’t bleed—it aged. The skin around it withered and cracked.

Lucius retaliated, but his strikes bounced off nothing. The void absorbed.

He was being unmade.

"You cannot kill what is not real," the hollow version said.

"Then I won’t kill you," Lucius whispered. "I’ll become you."

He allowed the blade to strike him again. Pain lanced through his side. Reality bent. But he focused. Embraced the madness.

"You’re not my enemy," he said. "You’re the chaos I carry. My unpredictability. My fear. My will."

He stepped into the strike.

And hugged the hollow Lucius.

The double froze. The entropy blade shattered. The color drained from the world.

Lucius whispered, "You are mine."

And the void dissolved into him.

The battlefield fell silent.

The skies cleared.

A platform rose from the shifting ground. At its center floated a swirling mass of color and anti-light: the Pillar of Chaos.

And beside it stood a figure.

The guardian.

They had no fixed form. A shifting, mutating shape with claws, wings, serpents, and flames. A face that changed every second—man, woman, beast, void. Their presence made the world bend. Time stuttered around them.

"You did not conquer chaos," it said. "You accepted it."

Lucius stepped forward, battered but unbroken.

"I made it mine."

The guardian’s form stabilized, if only slightly. For a moment, it took on the form of a regal figure—something like a god, or a judge of realms.

"Then take what is yours."

Lucius reached out.

The moment his hand touched the Pillar, it surged into him—burning, reshaping. His veins ignited with color. His eyes reflected a thousand realities. He felt his mind stretch, split, and reform.

He saw the multiverse—its beauty, its horror, its chaos.

And he saw possibility.

He screamed as the power entered him.

And when the light faded, he stood tall.

His cloak was now streaked with impossible hues. His shadow had no direction. His heartbeat echoed in rhythms no world could understand.

Chaos was his.

And so was the second Pillar.

The wind sang.

Not as sound, but as sensation—warmth on his skin, a pulse in his bones, the deep rhythm of life. Lucius opened his eyes.

He stood in a world unlike any he had seen. Vast fields of glowing flora stretched out to every horizon. Trees with crystalline leaves hummed with soft music. Rivers of golden light flowed through valleys of living marble. The air was thick with potential.

This was not a realm of history or chaos.

This was birth. This was beginning.

Lucius took a breath. Even that act felt like creation—the air responded, filling his lungs with raw energy. His wounds began to heal. His muscles tightened. His thoughts expanded, layered, deepened.

The Pillars of Time and Chaos now hovered behind him, casting no shadow, orbiting in perfect synchronicity.

He walked.

With each step, the land formed beneath his feet, responding to his intent. Flowers bloomed in his wake, towers rose and fell in the distance like the heartbeat of gods. The sky pulsed with radiant blues and rose-gold streaks.

In the heart of the world stood a gate. Not forged of stone or metal, but woven from starlight and willpower. And standing before it—a woman.

The Guardian of Creation.

She was made of light and color, shifting constantly like the beginning of a painting not yet finished. Her eyes were galaxies, her voice the first note of a song that would birth universes.

"Lucius," she said, smiling.

He stopped several paces away. "You know why I’m here."

"I do. But do you?"

Lucius furrowed his brow. "To claim the Pillar. To become King."

"Then you are not yet ready."

The world darkened for a moment. A great tremor passed through the roots of existence.

"Creation does not yield to kings who seek only dominion."

Lucius stepped forward. "I don’t seek to rule. I seek to build."

The Guardian tilted her head, considering.

"Then build."

She raised her hand, and light erupted.

A blank canvas of reality spread before him. Empty. Silent.

"You have one chance. Create a world. Fill it. Give it meaning. And then destroy it with your own hand."

Lucius froze. "Why destroy it?"

"Because true creation is not possession. It is sacrifice."

He stared at the void.

Then he began.