The reality grid screamed in protest.
The birth of The Becoming had violated a fundamental, non-negotiable ITER protocol. A being that was simultaneously Order and Chaos, both noun and verb, constant and changing, could not be filed, categorized, or processed. The cosmic bureaucracy that Balance had built over countless eons panicked. Its systems overloaded. It registered an Erasure Threshold error of infinite magnitude, a paradox it could not resolve.
With a sound like tearing parchment on a galactic scale, the fabric of space tore open. But this was not a chaotic rift, not a wound of entropy. It was a geometric incision, clean and precise, a surgical cut made by reality itself. From this impossible rift descended Axiom.
Axiom was not a biological entity. He was a High Avatar of Balance, a living instrument of law forged in the deepest, most absolute foundries of the Similarity's first principles. He was not a warrior like the avatars that policed the lower realms; he was a Law-Bringer, an auditor of existence. A construct of pure, flawless geometry, his body was a symphony of white angles and golden ratios, his face a featureless plane of perfect calculation. In his hand, he held a staff that was not wood or metal, but a solidified Law Matrix, glowing with the cold, unforgiving light of quantum certainty.
"Anomaly," Axiom stated. His voice was not a sound; it was a mathematical proof made audible. It vibrated in the teeth of reality itself. "You violate the Principle of Distinction. You are categorized as: Undefined. Protocol: Definition by Force."
Lumina stepped forward, placing her body between the rigid Avatar and the newborn entity. "Wait! This entity is stable! It has resolved the paradox! It is not a threat to the integrity of the All-Known!"
"Paradoxes are errors," Axiom declared, turning his featureless, angular face toward The Becoming. The air around him crystalized into perfect, shimmering grids of hard logic. "The Omniverse requires definitions to function. You must be Constant or you must be Changing. You cannot be both. Ambiguity corrupts the Archive. Choose a state, or be Pruned."
The Becoming looked at Axiom. It tilted its head, and the galaxies swirling inside its silhouette shifted their alignment in a slow, majestic dance. It did not look afraid. It looked... patiently amused, like a master watching a student struggle with a flawed premise.
"You are a Cartographer," The Becoming said gently, its voice the soft rush of a distant river. "You draw lines on water and expect the ocean to obey the ink."
"I am the Law," Axiom roared, the space around him buckling under the weight of his declaration. He raised his staff, the Law Matrix at its tip blazing like a newborn sun. "Initiating Stasis Protocol. I will freeze your time-particles until you are a statue of your own nature. Then I will file you under 'Inert Matter'."
The staff flashed. A beam of Absolute Order a concentrated Temporal Seal of the highest tier, the kind used to quarantine dying universes anced out across the void. It was a beam designed to halt all motion, to reduce the target to absolute zero in every conceivable dimension, to strip the verb from the noun and leave only a frozen, static object.
Lumina gasped, raising her shield on instinct. "Run! That is a Tier-3 Seal! It will lock your Prime Particles into a single state! You'll be trapped!"
The Becoming did not run. It did not block. It did not raise a shield.
It simply recited a line from the poem.
Categories are cartographers' lines, useful but not absolute.