The Pyramid was dying. Crystalline flux columns fractured, raining down sharp shards of energy data, and the obsidian door behind them began to re-solidify, sealing the entrance. The shock of Kairo's message—Orrin's true Realm 7 location—had energized Elara, transforming her grief into laser-focused strategic intent.
"Lira, the exit is sealing. We need to go up," Elara ordered, pointing to a ventilation shaft that snaked up the core structure. "The Nomad elders—are they stable?"
Thorne, flexing his rune-anchored armor, spat a mouthful of dust. "We are resilient, Reckoner. The Archivist's proof lacked true chaos—it was just heavy math. We can hold a perimeter, but we need to move fast."
They scrambled into the tight ventilation shaft. It was a perilous climb—the shaft was designed to channel raw Foundation Qi, and the air was thick, suffocating them with pure, concentrated Newtonian energy.
"The Archivist won't risk a direct fight again. He's a Helix—he only engages when the probability of success is 100%," Elara deduced, scaling the ladder. "He'll set up a defensive logic puzzle he believes is unbreakable."
As they ascended, the shaft opened into a spacious, circular maintenance platform high inside the Pyramid's apex. The Archivist Helix-32 was waiting. He wasn't aggressive. He was simply standing in the center, his eyes glowing with cold indigo logic.
"You should have stayed in the Abyss, Voss," the Archivist said, his voice calm again. "Your victory was a fleeting anomaly. I have calculated 14,000 ways for you to fail here. The platform's logic gate is now running an Event Horizon Proof. In precisely ten seconds, the gravitational pull on this platform will increase infinitely, crushing you into a singularity. There is no counter-proof for infinity."
Elara stopped, Lira right behind her. The gravity on the platform felt heavy, but manageable—for now. She looked at the Anachronist. He wasn't holding a weapon; he was holding a proof.
"Your proof is elegant, Archivist, but it is flawed," Elara countered, leveling her staff. "You are relying on the fundamental law that a singularity is unavoidable once the threshold is crossed. That is a Foundation Realm axiom, but it is culturally dependent."
"Irrelevant. Physics is absolute," the Archivist hissed, his fingers subtly adjusting a control panel on his wrist, accelerating the gravitational pull.
"Not here," Elara stated, a flash of insight hitting her. "You forget where you are: the First Anchor. The Egyptians conceived of the universe not as a singularity, but as a cycle of perpetual motion—the sun god Ra's daily journey. Your Event Horizon Proof violates the core, ancient logic of this structure. The truth of this place rejects absolute endpoint."
She began to move, circling the Anachronist, forcing him to track her. Lira, understanding the goal, began weaving a subtle, chaotic counter-proof using her light-shadow binders—a distracting flicker of impossible velocity.
"You cannot use folklore to defeat physics!" the Archivist screamed, the pressure on the platform becoming immense. Thorne and Sira had to anchor themselves to the shaft entrance to avoid being flattened.
"Folklore is just ancient, unrefined physics," Elara snapped. She focused her Equation Weaving on the structure of the platform itself. She derived a quick Cycle Proof, utilizing the principle of Conservation of Momentum—a Foundation Realm law the Archivist could not ignore.
"Your Proof relies on constant inward force, Archivist," Elara deduced, sweating profusely. "But if I introduce a variable of constant tangential momentum, the infinite inward collapse is converted into an infinite rotational vector! The platform becomes a perpetual motion machine!"
The Zero-Probability Duel: Elara wasn't trying to beat the Archivist's power; she was forcing him to commit a logical contradiction based on the Anchor's deep cultural history.
She slammed her staff onto the ground.
The effect was not a destructive blast, but a terrifying shift in perspective. The platform, instead of collapsing, began to spin infinitely fast around its axis, but the gravity remained constant.
The Archivist Helix-32 screamed for the third time—a sound of utter, mathematical defeat. His Proof had been turned against him; his elegant logic was now trapped in a perpetual, inescapable loop of rotational chaos.
"I cannot resolve the infinite rotation!" the Archivist wailed, his temporal blur flickering wildly as he tried to stabilize the platform. "The Theorem... the Theorem is broken!"
Elara didn't wait. "Lira! Exit strategy! He's stalled!"
Lira, moving with blurring speed, used her binders to anchor the group to the stable shaft entrance. Just as they pulled themselves out, the Archivist made one final, desperate move.
He shattered the controls on his wrist, triggering a massive, global system command.
"You have won the battle, Reckoner," his voice echoed, strained. "But the Helix owns the system. I have just activated the Earth-Wards' Global Lock. You cannot leave the Foundation Realm until the Helix opens the gates! You are trapped on the dead world!"
The Pyramid's lights went dark. A deep, resonant hum vibrated across the entire planet—the sound of every defensive system on Earth snapping into global lock-down.
"A brilliant checkmate," Lira muttered, staring up at the closed shaft door. "We won the truth, but we lost the exit. We're on the ultimate isolation ward."