Creation Of All Things-Chapter 188: “Welcome home, Zayriel.”

The lift rattled as it climbed, a groaning old thing powered by ancient gears and mana crystals embedded deep into the city's veins. The hum beneath their feet wasn't mechanical—it was alive. A slow pulse of energy that beat like a heart, echoing up through the stone walls.

Vael didn't talk much as they ascended. He just stood near the gate, arms folded, eyes watching the rising skyline as if reading something in the clouds. Joshua leaned against the opposite rail, the lights of Karyon Sol washing over his face in soft glows. Adam stood dead center, arms crossed, unreadable as always.

The higher they got, the quieter it became.

Eventually, the lift stopped with a soft chime. The gates opened.

They stepped out onto a narrow platform. Wind tugged at their coats immediately—thin, cold, and whispering. The Council Spire stood ahead like a needle stabbing the stars. Made of obsidian stone and silver-veined crystal, it shimmered with power that wasn't entirely natural.

Vael led the way. No guards. No checkpoints. Just silence and the soft crunch of boots on mana-slick stone.

"This part," he said, voice low, "ain't open to the public. You'll see why."

The doors opened before them—not from touch or magic, but as if the Spire recognized Vael. Knew him. Trusted him.

Inside, the air changed. Thicker. Older. Like walking into a cathedral built before time. The walls glowed faintly with runes—languages long dead. The floor pulsed softly beneath every step.

They passed through a hall lined with statues—twelve of them. Joshua paused by one. A tall figure with wings of light and a sword of flame. His own face, carved into stone.

"They still kept this?" he muttered.

Vael didn't stop walking. "Of course. The Council loves its relics. Makes 'em feel like they're standing on something solid."

Adam glanced up at another statue—a horned woman with chains around her wrists and fire in her eyes.

"She looks friendly," he said.

"Archon of Binding," Vael replied. "Not someone you'd want at a party."

They walked deeper into the Spire, until the statues ended and the corridor narrowed into a spiral staircase. They descended for a long while. No torches. No lights. Just the glow from the walls.

Finally, the stairs ended at a chamber.

Circular. Carved into the bones of the city. No windows. Just a single floating orb of crystal at the center, suspended in the air by invisible threads.

Vael stepped forward and tapped it once. The orb pulsed.

The walls lit up.

Not with runes.

With moving images.

Visions. Echoes. Memories.

A battle in the skies—Seraphs against black-winged horrors.

A tower collapsing into a pit of stars.

A child screaming as magic tore through a marketplace.

And then…

The Spiral.

A symbol. Simple. Just a curve curling into itself. But around it, reality bent. The air shimmered. The walls flickered. Joshua felt it in his bones—a pressure behind his eyes, a whisper without sound.

"This," Vael said, pointing to it, "is what I needed you to see."

Joshua stared. "You recorded this?"

"Didn't have to. The Spire remembers. It's a vault. Built during the Dawn Reign. Everything that's happened in Karyon's core gets stored here, whether we want it or not."

Adam looked at the Spiral. Then at the way the chamber seemed to darken just from its image. "Feels wrong."

"It is."

Vael stepped back, letting them take it in.

"The Spiral's not just a rumor. It's old. Older than the city. Maybe older than the realms. It doesn't act like a cult. Doesn't recruit. Doesn't leave messages. It just… changes things. Warps 'em. Slowly."

Joshua narrowed his eyes. "What does it want?"

Vael shook his head. "If I knew that, I'd be in a better position than tavern cook and part-time informant. But here's what I do know. The Spiral's getting louder. Dreams. Distortions. Mana behaving wrong in places it never used to."

The orb shifted.

A scene played—recent. A rift opening in the middle of a noble district. A scream of light. A girl pulled inside. No blood. No remains.

Just gone.

Vael's voice dropped. "This happened a week ago. Council covered it up. Blamed a mana surge. But I was there. I felt it."

Joshua's jaw tightened. "So what are you saying?"

Vael met his eyes. "I'm saying whatever the Spiral is—it's reacting to you. Your presence here. The moment you crossed back through the Ostarius Gate, the city pulsed. Like a pressure valve breaking."

Adam scoffed. "So it's his fault?"

"No. But he's tied to it. Like gravity."

Joshua turned from the orb. "You want me to fight it."

"I want you to understand it first. Then burn it if you have to."

The orb dimmed. The chamber fell into soft quiet.

Vael turned toward the staircase again. "Come on. The air's heavy down here. And I'm too old to be breathing forgotten gods."

They climbed back up. No one spoke. Even Adam looked thoughtful.

Back at the top, the stars had spread wider. The Aether Crown was glowing stronger now, a faint hum like distant singing echoing from above.

Vael stopped near the edge of the Spire, overlooking the city again.

"You see it different now?"

Joshua nodded slowly. "Yeah. I do."

Vael lit another mana-stick, squinting into the night. "Then I hope you're ready. Because if this thing keeps pushing, it's not gonna stay whispers and visions."

Adam stretched. "Let's just hope it bleeds."

Vael smirked. "Everything bleeds. You just have to know where to cut."

Joshua looked out across Karyon Sol—still glowing, still alive, still moving like nothing was wrong.

But he felt it now.

The shift. The pulse. The whisper just beneath the silence.

The Spiral wasn't a story.

It was a storm.

And it was coming.

Elsewhere

The Architect of Ruin drifted through the void—formless, weightless, yet vast as a collapsing star. His presence twisted the space around him, cracks forming in reality like veins of black lightning. His eyes—if they could be called that—flared as visions pierced the silence: Zayriel, standing once more in Karyon Sol. The city still breathing. Still lit. Still defiant.

A low chuckle escaped him, warped and distant.

"Karyon Sol? That pretty little marble garden? No… That place is too quiet. Too clean. I won't meet you there, Zayriel."

His voice splintered into echoes across the void.

"I'll bring it back… the real stage. The screams. The broken sky. The ground still soaked in angel blood."

He raised a hand, and with a flick, the nothingness around him twisted—fragments of time and memory grinding into place. A battlefield began to shape from raw entropy: shattered towers, skies on fire, earth cracked wide as if the gods themselves had clawed it open.

The Architect's grin stretched wider than his face.

"Yes. We'll finish what started back then. You'll come. You have to."

He threw his head back and laughed—wild, jagged, rising and rising until it split the silence of the void like a shriek from a dying star. It echoed through forgotten corners of the realm, where even time had stopped listening.

And the battlefield kept building.

A throne of rusted wings.

A sky of red storms.

A war made from memory.

The Architect opened his arms to it all, grinning through the chaos.

"Welcome home, Zayriel."