Chapter 144: His Stone God

Lithos climbed out of the black abyss, and the jagged gap in the wall shattered.

CRASH!

Bricks exploded into the East Basement.

The massive stone construct pulled its upper body into the workshop, and the physical size of the guardian defied the architecture of the room.

It did not fit inside the standard dimensions, but the ancient magic warped the space to accommodate the divine weapon.

Lithos raised a fist made of solid bedrock and slammed it into the nearest support pillar.

BOOM!

The stone column shattered into powder, and the ceiling groaned under the sudden loss of structural integrity.

Caius stood near the wooden table and his eyes widened.

“Stop it!” Caius yelled over the noise of the falling rock.

“That is the Pillar of the Storm! Every time it destroys a piece of the foundation, it permanently weakens the entire node!”

Lithos did not care about the structural damage, because the isolated divine fragment operated on pure, corrupted instinct.

It turned its massive golden eyes toward Caius and raised its fist again.

“Lucian!” Raziel shouted.

“Get upstairs and evacuate the dormitories! If this ceiling collapses, it kills everyone on the ground floor!”

Lucian grabbed his practice dagger from the dirt.

He did not argue or ask for a better weapon, just nodded once, activated his Stealth Gift, and sprinted up the dark stone stairs to wake the sleeping novices.

Raziel drew his iron dagger and ran straight at the construct.

He did not plan to stab solid granite with a basic blade.

He needed to get close enough to touch the guardian, because he possessed the second Forbidden Gift.

He needed to use Soul Resonance to establish a direct mental connection and calm the ancient machine down.

He slid across the dusty floor and dodged a sweeping strike from the massive stone arm.

The fist missed his head by an inch and smashed the heavy wooden reading table into splinters.

Raziel planted his boots and lunged forward.

He pressed his bare left hand flat against the cold granite of the guardian’s leg.

He dropped his mental barriers and forced his consciousness into the stone.

VMMMM!

The connection established instantly, and the feedback nearly blew his mind apart.

Raziel expected to find a sleeping god or a complex system of defensive logic.

He found a screaming void instead.

THREAT-DESTROY-PROTECT-THREAT-DESTROY-PROTECT-THREAT!

The divine consciousness screamed the exact same three concepts in an endless, deafening loop.

Five hundred years of isolation under the Church’s foundation had completely rotted the mind of the guardian.

It possessed zero capacity for reason or negotiation.

It was just a rabid dog chained to a door.

Raziel ripped his hand away from the stone and stumbled backward.

He gasped for air and gripped his head to stop the ringing in his ears.

“It is deaf!” Raziel yelled at Caius. “It cannot hear us!”

Zorya pulled a glass vial of standard blue ink from her satchel.

She threw the liquid onto the floor and channeled her mana to draw a massive kinetic reflection seal.

“I can hold it back!” Zorya shouted.

Lithos stepped on the geometric lines.

The blue magic flared and tried to repel the massive weight of the construct.

CRACK.

The master-level containment seal shattered in less than a second.

The blue light died, and Lithos kept walking forward without losing a single step.

Standard Church magic held absolutely zero authority over a weapon forged by the Primordial Pantheon.

Raziel dropped to his knees and placed both hands flat against the shaking bricks of the floor.

He channeled his Umbral Paragon core and pushed the gold and black energy deep into the foundation.

He activated Architectural Inscription and bypassed the standard defensive spells. He attacked the physical reality of the room itself.

He drew the geometric sequence to rewrite the structural integrity of the stone beneath the guardian.

He needed to turn the solid floor into a massive sinkhole.

“Zorya!” Raziel commanded.

“Reinforce the anchor points! I need more mana to break the foundation!”

Zorya dropped to her knees right next to him.

She placed her hands over his glowing lines and pumped her raw, unchained energy into the Umbral syntax.

She stabilized the geometric borders while Raziel forced the stone to open.

Lithos turned its golden eyes toward the two Inscriptors on the floor.

The construct raised both of its massive fists into the air.

It prepared to crush them into the dirt.

“I cannot hold the structure!” Zorya screamed over the grinding noise of the breaking floor.

“I need thirty more seconds!” Raziel yelled back, keeping his hands locked on the stone.

“We do not have thirty seconds!”

The granite fists started their downward descent.

A blinding pulse of pure silver light exploded in the center of the room.

Caius stepped directly between the falling fists and the Inscriptors.

The novice raised his scarred hands and released a concentrated wave of ancient Pantheon mana straight into the guardian’s face.

He used his Gift as a Guardian of the Pantheon to speak the original language of the builders.

Lithos stopped.

The massive fists hovered three feet above Caius’s head.

The golden runic eyes flickered and dimmed for exactly two seconds.

The corrupted divine fragment recognized the familiar silver light. Confusion replaced the blind rage for a fraction of a moment.

It was enough time.

“Now!” Raziel roared.

He completed the final geometric loop and severed the structural anchor.

The stone floor beneath Lithos vanished.

The solid bricks turned into a gaping black hole, and gravity took over.

The colossal stone construct fell backward into the dark abyss of Level -5.

CRASH!

The impact shook the entire academy.

The vibrations traveled up the stone pillars and rattled the stained glass windows in the Main Chapel above. A massive cloud of gray dust erupted from the sinkhole and coated the entire basement.

Then the East Basement went completely silent.

Raziel collapsed onto his back and stared at the cracked ceiling.

He breathed hard and his arms shook from the massive mana drain.

Zorya sat on the floor next to him and wiped the dust from her face. She looked at the giant hole in the ground.

“Did we kill it?” Zorya asked between breaths.

Caius walked to the edge of the abyss and looked down into the dark.

“No,” Caius answered with a flat voice. “We just delayed it.”

A sound echoed up from the bottom of Level -5.

It was a series of vocalized runes spoken in the ancient language of the Primordial Pantheon.

The sound vibrated against the stone walls and carried a heavy, mechanical finality.

Caius stared into the dark and listened to the message.

“What did it say?” Raziel asked and sat up from the floor.

Caius turned his head and looked at Raziel.

“It said: ACTIVATING FINAL PROTOCOL.”

Caius swallowed hard and pointed down into the hole.

“If the node is threatened again, the node will destroy itself to deny access to the enemy.”

The ancient temple was willing to commit suicide to prevent Elector Mordecai from sealing its doors.

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