The air in the Spire didn't just vibrate, it screamed.
Lady Vespera hovered ten feet off the ground, her silhouette burning with the cold, diamond-hard light of Stasis. Behind her, the air fractured into mirrored shards, each one reflecting a timeline where she had already won.
"I have paused empires!" Vespera shrieked, her voice layering over itself. "I have frozen falling stars! You are nothing but a glitch in my perfect world!"
She thrust her hands forward. A wave of Absolute Stasis washed over the library. It wasn't ice, it was the cessation of physics. The dust motes stopped spinning. The light stopped travelling. It was a wave of grey death that sought to turn Dante into a statue for the rest of eternity.
Dante didn't dodge. He couldn't.
"Prime!" Dante yelled, his voice grinding like tectonic plates. "Input!"
"Shielding matrix," the Doppelgänger's voice echoed in Dante's skull. "Divert output to thermal agitation. 400% overload."
Dante slammed his foot down.
"ACCELERATE."
He didn't create a barrier. He created a zone of hyper-time.
The grey wave of Stasis hit Dante's aura and instantly aged. The magic spell itself grew old, withered, and collapsed into harmless sparks before it could touch his skin.
Dante lunged through the sparks. He moved with the terrifying precision of a machine, guided by Prime's calculations, but he struck with the savage brutality of a desperate animal.
He punched Vespera in the stomach.
CRACK.
The sound was sickening. But it wasn't flesh breaking. It was Vespera's time-shield.
She gasped, flying backward, smashing through three rows of light-books. She scrambled up, coughing. Real blood—red and wet—dripped from her lip.
"You... made me bleed," she whispered, staring at the drop on her hand. Her eyes went wide with insanity. "YOU MADE ME CHANGE!"
"We're going to make you end," Dante growled.
But the cost was immediate. Dante's right arm—the one that delivered the punch—was smoking. The skin had turned black and cracked, the recoil of channeling Prime's raw mana burning him from the inside out.
"Warning," Prime stated coolly. "Structural integrity at 60%. Your biological chassis is inferior. Finish this quickly, or you will dissolve before she does."
"Shut up and drive," Dante spat.
Vespera screamed, and the library transformed. The floor turned to glass. Reflections of Vespera rose from the surface—hundreds of them.
"Chronal Clone Swarm."
The clones rushed Dante. They weren't illusions, they were Vespera from one second ago, two seconds ago, ten seconds ago.
Dante was swarmed. He slashed with his Transmutation Daggers, turning one clone into steam, another into sand. But there were too many. Cold hands grabbed his coat, his throat, his legs. They were piling on, trying to freeze him through sheer mass.
"I can't breathe!" Dante choked, the frost creeping up his neck.
"Analyze," Prime commanded. "The clones are tethered to the original. Sever the anchor."
Dante's eyes—one human, one glowing violet—snapped to the real Vespera. She was floating near the ceiling, channeling the spell, her face twisted in concentration.
"She's too far," Dante thought.
"Calculate trajectory," Prime replied. "Use the environment. The Spire is responsive."
Dante grinned beneath the Silvergrin.
He dropped his daggers. He grabbed the two clones holding his arms.
"Harvest."
He didn't absorb their flesh. He absorbed their momentum. He drained the kinetic energy stored in their magical forms. The clones turned to grey dust instantly.
Dante took that stolen energy and compressed it into his legs.
He launched himself.
He broke the sound barrier inside the room. He was a blur of black and silver, shooting straight up toward the ceiling.
Vespera saw him coming. She raised a hand.
"REWIND!"
A beam of yellow light hit Dante.
He felt the universe dragging him backward. He felt his jump reversing. He was being pulled back down to the floor.
"No you don't!" Dante roared.
"Override," Prime commanded. "Inject Origin Mana directly into the Entropy Core."
Dante reached into his own chest. He grabbed the burning sun of mana Prime was feeding him and crushed it into his own void.
Paradox Trigger.
Dante didn't rewind. He broke the spell.
The yellow beam shattered like glass. Dante punched through the time-stream, his fist glowing with a color that didn't exist—the color of Unmaking.
He hit Vespera dead center in her chest.
"Time's up, your Highness."
"TOTAL ENTROPY."
He didn't just rot her body. He unleashed the accumulated decay of the entire Blind Spot into her veins.
Vespera's eyes went wide.
"No..." she gasped. "I am... eternal..."
"Nothing is eternal," Dante whispered, his face inches from hers. "Even stars die."
Vespera screamed.
In a single second, three hundred years caught up to her.
Her skin wrinkled like parchment. Her hair turned to dust. Her bones became brittle chalk. Her dress rotted off her frame.
She fell.
It wasn't a body falling. It was a cloud of dust falling.
By the time she hit the floor, there was nothing left of the Aspirant of Stasis but a pile of grey ash and a hollow, echoing silence.
Dante landed in the ash.
He tried to stand, but his legs gave out. He collapsed, coughing violently. Black sludge poured from his mouth. His right arm was useless, the bones fractured by the force of his own magic.
The glow faded. The connection severed.
The Doppelgänger stepped out of Dante's shadow. He looked pristine, annoyed, and holding a new cup of tea.
"Inefficient," Prime noted, looking at Dante's broken body. "But effective."
Dante rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling of the Spire. "We... we won."
"You won," Prime corrected. "I merely provided the fuel."
Prime walked over to the center of the library. There, hovering where Vespera had been, was a floating geometric shape. A Tesseract.
"The Core of the Spire," Prime murmured. "This entire structure... it is not just a building. It is a databank."
He reached out and touched the Tesseract. The library shifted. The walls became transparent, revealing the cosmos outside.
"Dante," Prime said, his voice reverent. "This is one of them. The Axiom of knowledge."
Dante wheezed, sitting up painfully. "One of the Seven? We found one?"
"We are in one," Prime corrected. "The Seven Axioms are not just artifacts you can carry in a bag. Some are weapons. Some are places. This one... this is the Archive of the Origin."
Prime turned to Dante. The look on his face was unreadable.
"I am staying."
Dante blinked. "What? The Blind Spot is unstable. We need to leave."
"You need to leave," Prime said. "I am pure information. This is my natural habitat. If I leave with you, I remain a passenger in your decaying car. If I stay here... I can interface with the Axiom. I can learn everything."
"You're trapping yourself," Dante warned.
"I am securing the asset," Prime countered. "Someone must guard this. If another Aspirant like Vespera finds this place, they will become a God. I will ensure that does not happen."
Dante stood up, swaying. He looked at his other self. The cold, logical machine.
"You just want to read the books," Dante smirked.
"Correct," Prime admitted. "However, I recognize the utility of our partnership."
Prime waved his hand. The Tesseract spun.
"I will remain here, in the Blind Spot. I will stabilize the pocket dimension. You will return to the world. You will continue the search for the other six Axioms."
"And if I need help?" Dante asked. "If I run into something I can't rot?"
"Then call me," Prime said. "I can project mana to you. I can analyze threats for you. I can be your Oracle."
Prime stepped closer, his eyes cold.
"But Equivalent Exchange is absolute, Dante. I am not your servant. I am your partner. Every time you ask for my power, there will be a cost."
"What kind of cost?" Dante asked warily.
"Artifacts," Prime said. "Knowledge. Rare materials. You will be my scavenger. If you want a miracle, you bring me a piece of history to study. If you want a strategy, you bring me a secret. No payment, no service."
Dante looked at the pile of ash that used to be Vespera. He looked at his own ruined arm.
He extended his left hand.
"Deal."
Prime shook it. The touch was cold, like touching a mirror.
"Go now," Prime commanded. "The collapse of the Stasis field is destabilizing the exit. If you do not leave in three minutes, you will be trapped here with me. And I do not like roommates."
Dante nodded. He turned and limped toward the massive doors.
He stopped at the threshold.
"Hey, Prime?"
"What?"
"Try not to get lonely."
Prime didn't answer. He was already opening a book of light.
Dante stepped out of the Spire.
The transition was brutal. The Blind Spot ejected him like a virus.
Location: The Ruins of the Great Foundry, Sector 3.
Time: Sunrise.
Dante hit the concrete floor of the real world hard.
He gasped, inhaling the thick, smoggy air of the Iron Lung. It tasted disgusting. It tasted like home.
The iron wall that led to the Blind Spot was gone. In its place was a scorch mark in the shape of a door.
Dante lay there for a moment, listening to the distant factory whistles signaling the start of the morning shift.
He was alive.
He reached into his chest. The hollow ache was still there. The hunger was still there. But it felt... manageable. He wasn't fading as fast. The residue of the Origin Mana had bought him time.
He sat up. His coat was in tatters. His jaw was locked. He needed Silas to fix his arm.
But he smiled.
He wasn't just a scavenger anymore. He wasn't just a victim of a failed experiment.
He was the Guardian of the First Axiom. He had a god in his corner (even if that god was an asshole version of himself).
Dante stood up, the sun glinting off his Silvergrin.
"One down," he whispered to the smog. "Six to go."
He began the long walk back to Sector 9.