The ground shook.
The Architect finished changing—no longer the still, robed specter who spoke in riddles. He was now flesh and terror, a titanic being of obsidian muscle veined with burning fault lines. His skin cracked and steamed like a volcano dressed as a man. His jaw split open down the middle, glowing with cosmic fire. Horns curled back from his head like twisted blades, and his eyes—no longer hidden behind porcelain—were pits of gravitational hate.
Joshua didn't move.
He stood there with one hand on his blade, fire lacing the edges of his silhouette, a quiet storm waiting to scream.
The Architect raised a hand the size of a throne and clenched his fingers once.
BOOM.
The entire battlefield cracked downward, the floor breaking into spiraling steps of ruin and obsidian. Lava-like light surged through them. The sky above blinked red. Not with blood—but memory. It showed images: past battles, broken gods, dying worlds—all of them destroyed by the thing now facing Joshua.
