Chapter 16: Where Gods Fear to Dream
The sky was not sky anymore.
The gate yawned above the Tower, vast and circular, forged of starlight that bled upward into a void without end. The air stilled. The Tower held its breath.
Anterz stepped forward.
He didn't ask what lay beyond.
He already knew.
Not in words, but instinct. Like his soul had once been here and bled to forget.
Elaria touched his shoulder.
"You don't have to go alone."
He looked at her.
"Yes, I do."
---
He stepped into the light.
There was no sound.
No sensation of motion.
Just transition—like stepping through memory into something older than memory.
Then the light broke.
And he stood on a field of endless night.
---
It was flat. Infinite. The sky above rippled with fractured constellations—patterns he almost recognized but couldn't name. There was no horizon. Just emptiness, and in the center…
A tree.
Dead.
Enormous.
Its roots curled like petrified serpents. Its trunk was cracked down the middle, leaking light. At its base, a pool of still, dark water reflected nothing.
Valteris pulsed.
> "This is the cradle. Where the first gods were born. Where they tore power from silence."
Anterz approached the tree.
And found a body sitting beneath it.
---
It was massive—half-flesh, half-marble. Four arms. Three eyes.
No mouth.
The body sat cross-legged, unmoving.
A sword was impaled through its chest—its hilt shaped like a sun broken in half.
Anterz stared.
Valteris hissed.
> "That is the First. The one whose death bled divinity into the world."
> "The gods came later. Built from the echo of its scream."
Anterz stepped closer.
The body breathed.
Once.
Slow.
Impossible.
---
The sword in the god's chest shifted.
A voice rose—not from the being—but from the water beside it.
> "So you came at last."
Anterz turned.
The reflection pool had changed.
Now it mirrored him.
But not the boy. Not the man.
It showed Anterz as a god.
Crowned in ruin. Cloaked in flame. Valteris embedded in the sky above him like a second moon.
The reflection smiled.
> "You brought the ruin full circle."
> "Now end it."
---
Anterz stepped back.
The reflection moved closer.
> "Why hesitate?" it whispered. "You've seen the lies. The pain. The failing. You could unmake it all."
Anterz raised Valteris.
"Who are you?"
The reflection's smile widened.
> "I am your future, if you end the world."
> "Not in flame. Not in war. In silence."
The reflection raised its own blade.
And stepped from the pool.
---
It wasn't a dream.
It wasn't a shade.
It was Anterz.
Unbound.
Unbroken.
Whole.
The god he had chosen not to become—made real by the Tower's permission.
"I have to fight myself?" Anterz asked.
The other Anterz nodded.
> "No. You must kill who you could have been."
---
They clashed.
First strike: ruin against ruin.
The ground cracked for miles in all directions.
Second: the god-Anterz vanished mid-step—reappeared behind, blade spinning like a storm.
Anterz barely blocked.
Each strike came with memory—visions of a world rewritten. Cities that never fell. People who never died.
"See what could be!" his other self roared.
Anterz struck back.
His blade carved through illusions.
> "It's not real."
The god-Anterz smiled.
> "It can be."
---
The fight twisted space.
They rose into the sky—blades colliding across the stars.
Each swing shattered constellations.
Each movement bled potential futures.
At the center of it all, the tree groaned.
Its trunk split wider.
Light poured from within—raw creation.
If either of them touched it, the world would restart.
---
Anterz fell.
Slammed into the ground hard enough to fracture stone.
His god-self landed lightly, calmly.
"You fought to remember. Now choose. Rewrite everything."
Anterz lay still for a moment.
Then stood.
Shaking.
Bleeding.
But smiling.
"No."
The god-Anterz paused.
> "Why?"
Anterz looked at the tree.
Then at the blade in his hand.
Then at the scars on his chest.
"Because I've lived. And what I lived matters."
---
He threw Valteris.
It screamed through the void.
The god-Anterz raised his own blade—
And caught it.
Too late.
Anterz followed the throw—moved faster than thought—and drove his fist into the reflection's chest.
It cracked.
Golden light spilled from the wound.
The god-Anterz staggered.
"You refuse perfection?"
Anterz nodded.
"I choose freedom."
He grabbed the copy's blade—broke it in half.
And watched the god-version shatter like glass.
---
Silence returned.
The light from the tree pulsed once more.
Then faded.
Its crack sealed.
And the god-body beneath it slumped fully.
Dead.
Truly.
Valteris whispered:
> "You have denied the cycle. There will be no reset. No correction."
> "Only what comes next."
Anterz stood in the void.
Alone.
Alive.
Himself.
---
The gate behind him reopened.
Elaria stood beyond it—waiting.
When he stepped through, she didn't speak.
She only saw his eyes.
Saw that he had made the only choice.
And she smiled.
---
Far beneath the world, something ancient sighed.
And the ruins began to heal.
Not perfectly.
But truly.
One broken stone at a time.
---