Chapter 163: His Broken Physics

…he raised his crystal cane to tap the black Silencer artifact a second time, and the world broke.

CLINK.

The artifact activated a second sub-audible pulse.

The physical pressure hit the air and shoved the red digital static outward from the black sphere.

The glitching polygons chewed through the dirt road and slammed into the silver dome of Zorya’s counter-shield.

The silver magic buckled.

Zorya screamed through the communication rune painted on Raziel’s collar.

The sound carried raw physical agony.

Raziel heard thick blood dripping onto her parchment down in the East Basement.

The unchained Inscriptor pushed her core to the absolute limit and forced the architectural shield to hold the line against the deletion code.

The silver dome stabilized.

The red static stopped advancing and ground to a halt against the ancient magic.

Elector Mordecai stopped tapping his crystal cane.

He turned his head toward the western tree line and noticed the disruption.

He saw his three master sealers lying dead in the dirt near the heavy wooden crates.

He saw the broken iron chains and the ruined tri-point formation Lucian and Gideon left behind.

The Elector did not shout an angry command to his remaining troops.

He did not pull a holy relic from his pristine white robes.

He did not cast a divine spell of retribution to avenge his fallen men.

He lowered his cane.

He raised his bare left hand and pointed his open palm at the western courtyard wall of St. Celeste.

He swiped his hand across the empty air.

The physical stone wall ceased to exist.

The massive thirty-foot-high barrier did not explode.

No mortar cracked and no bricks showered the ground.

The kinetic force of a standard siege spell did not occur.

A giant rectangular section of the solid stone just vanished.

It left behind a flat, gray void in the exact shape of the missing wall.

The gap absorbed the morning light and cast zero shadows.

It possessed no texture and no depth. It was an unrendered hole in the fabric of the world.

Raziel stood in the cloister and stopped breathing.

He recognized the horror of that gray void because he spent months looking at the System interface.

The blue screens erupted in his vision.

The text did not display the standard blue or red fonts, the letters glitched and bled across his eyes.

[CRITICAL ALERT: MASSIVE PACKET LOSS DETECTED.]

[ENVIRONMENTAL DELETION IN PROGRESS.]

[WARNING: WORLD PHYSICS COMPROMISED.]

Raziel stared at the frantic warnings.

The System struggled to process the missing architectural data.

The game foundation of Phaedra recognized a catastrophic error in its own source code.

Mordecai did not use Church magic.

He did not use the Dones granted by the Goddess Zhalyr.

He interacted directly with the Architect’s game engine.

The supreme commander of the Inquisition possessed administrative access to the physical reality of the server.

He could delete the game board.

“Raziel!” Lara screamed through the communication rune.

Raziel looked up at the second-floor balcony.

Lara collapsed onto her knees and grabbed her head.

Her empathic net covered the entire academy perimeter, and the sudden absence of physical matter tore a massive sensory hole in her mind.

“I cannot feel the stone!” Lara gasped and cried. “There is a void! It hurts!”

“Break the net!” Raziel yelled back and gripped his iron dagger.

“Pull your perception inside the courtyards! Do not touch the gray area!”

Lucian and Gideon crouched in the thick brush outside the deleted wall.

They stared at the unrendered gap separating them from the academy. The morning wind stopped blowing near the hole.

“What the hell is that?” Lucian whispered through the comms.

He gripped his blood-stained steel dagger and refused to step out of the tree line.

“Stay in the trees!” Raziel ordered them. “Do not step into the gray space! We do not know if it deletes organic matter!”

Raziel processed the absolute disaster unfolding in front of him.

He secured six Forbidden Gifts to fight an ecclesiastical war.

He spent weeks training to counter destructive spells and holy fire.

He planned to fight a fanatic religious commander who wanted to burn heretics.

He did not prepare to fight a man who swiped his hand to erase reality.

Mordecai adjusted the gold trim on his white sleeve.

He stepped forward and walked through the red digital static surrounding the Silencer artifact.

He approached the massive gray void he just carved into the academy defenses.

He stepped through the unrendered gap and set his boots on the grass of the main courtyard.

He bypassed the heavy iron gates and Zorya’s silver shield completely.

The counter-shield blocked the black sphere, but it could not block a man who walked through a deleted wall.

Thirty elite Inquisitors marched right behind him.

They raised their long steel halberds and stepped through the gray void in perfect military synchronization.

They formed a tight, disciplined wedge inside the academy grounds.

The siege breached the perimeter in less than five minutes.

The Inquisitors did not shout battle cries.

They maintained absolute silence and waited for their commander to issue the order.

The air inside the courtyard grew heavy with impending violence.

Raziel tightened his grip on his weapon. He felt the Umbral Paragon core hum inside his chest.

The gold holy light and the black Shadow Parasite twisted together and prepared for combat.

He knew standard magic held zero value against this enemy.

He knew the ancient silver runes of the Pantheon could not stop an administrator from deleting the bricks.

He had to rely on the anomaly.

He had to use the corrupted magic the Architect failed to anticipate.

Mordecai stopped in the middle of the courtyard.

He looked around the quiet academy grounds and took in the empty training fields.

He turned his head and locked his cold eyes directly on Raziel standing in the cloister forty yards away.

The Elector smiled. It was a thin, cruel smile lacking any human warmth.

“A very clever shield,” Mordecai’s voice echoed across the courtyard, carrying an unnatural, amplified volume.

“But you cannot lock the door against the one who built the house.”

He raised his bare left hand again.

He pointed his open palm straight at Raziel’s chest.

“Let us see if you bleed code like the rest of them.”

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