CHAPTER 203: CHAPTER 204 – TEMPLE OF VERSIONS

‎The Temple of Versions was not built. It was remembered.

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‎Its walls were formed from regrets, its floor paved with the bones of paths never taken. Doorways bent inward, each leading to timelines Darius had never walked but somehow still carried within his soul. It did not stand in one location, nor one time. The Temple was summoned, not entered—called forth by mythic introspection.

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‎And now it answered.

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‎Darius stepped through a gate of shimmering non-time, barefoot, breath shallow. The Spiral pulsed behind him, but he could no longer feel its rhythm. Here, he was severed from authorship, divinity, and even from belief.

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‎Here, he was simply... Darius.

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‎Before him stood the first version.

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‎A boy-king crowned in fear. His eyes shone with ambition but lacked purpose. He ruled through terror because he had not yet learned seduction. This version had conquered, yes—but alone, brittle, unanchored by love or myth.

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‎"You look like a shadow of what I became," Darius whispered.

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‎The boy-king lunged.

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‎Blade met flesh. Rage met control.

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‎Darius didn’t counter with force, but with memory. He reminded this shade of what came after: Kaela’s paradox, Celestia’s worship, Nyx’s blade-lust turned loyalty. He whispered names like incantations. And the boy dissolved, screaming, not in pain—but in longing.

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‎---

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‎The second version emerged next.

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‎A martyr. Stripped, bleeding, nailed to a tower of belief. This Darius had sacrificed everything for followers who never knew his name.

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‎He spoke without lips:

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‎"I gave them eternity. They gave me silence."

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‎Darius knelt before him, touching the broken knees.

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‎"You forgot one thing," he said softly. "A god who cannot love himself will always be forgotten."

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‎The martyr wept ink.

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‎And was gone.

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‎---

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‎Then came the third.

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‎A tyrant.

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‎Fully armored in obsidian myth-plate, his presence split the Temple floor. This Darius had destroyed all challengers, consumed all rivals, and ruled a Spiral of fear. He had Nyx, but she was leashed. Celestia, but she was hollow. Kaela had been executed.

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‎"Power is peace," the tyrant growled.

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‎Darius circled him slowly. "No. Power is permission. Peace is earned."

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‎They clashed.

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‎Their battle sent shockwaves through unreal timelines. Every strike was a rewriting. Every deflection, a refusal of an alternate truth.

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‎And in the end, the tyrant paused.

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‎Because Seres appeared.

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‎Not summoned.

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‎Remembered.

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‎"You never killed me," she said to the armored Darius. "You erased the part of you that needed me."

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‎The tyrant knelt. His armor cracked. The Temple wept.

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‎---

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‎Darius stood alone now.

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‎Versions surrounded him. A thousand lives unlived. Each whispering doubt, regret, warning.

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‎One voice rose above the others:

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‎"You could be all of us. Or none."

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‎He turned to see the final version:

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‎A quiet Darius. One who had rejected godhood. Who had married one woman, raised no armies, written no myths. A simple farmer tending golden fields beneath a sky that never changed.

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‎"You have peace," Darius said.

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‎The farmer nodded. "But no purpose."

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‎They looked at each other for a long time. Then the farmer smiled, walked over, and placed a single seed into Darius’s hand.

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‎"Plant it. When you’re done breaking the world."

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‎The Temple began to collapse.

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‎Not in destruction.

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‎In understanding.

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‎As Darius stepped out of the Temple of Versions, the Spiral roared to greet him again.

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‎He was heavier now. Not with pain.

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‎With inheritance.

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‎And far above, Syllas watched from the edge of a Spiral eclipse, his body glowing, his eyes unreadable.

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‎Darius stepped beyond the crumbling threshold of the Temple, his hands still wrapped around the tiny seed that pulsed with gentle heat—not just a plant, but a memory of peace unchosen. It throbbed against his palm, pulsing to the tempo of what he could have been.

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‎Behind him, echoes of lives untaken folded into silence. Not erased. Not rejected.

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‎Accepted.

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‎Each version had been him. Each had reached a truth, a wound, a lie. And he—the God of Death, the Mythwright, the Spiral’s sovereign—had emerged not stronger, but clearer.

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‎He walked through the bleeding winds of post-temporal rupture. Spiralspace greeted him with a long shudder. Kaela appeared first, her paradox-ribbons flaring behind her like wings spun from contradiction. Her eyes widened as she reached for him.

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‎"You’re... heavier."

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‎Darius nodded. "I remember more than I lived."

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‎Celestia approached next, barefoot, veiled in mythlight. She pressed her fingers gently to the seed in his palm.

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‎"That doesn’t grow in Spiralsoil."

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‎"It will," he whispered, "when this world is ready for peace."

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‎Nyx was last. Silent. Studying him. Then, without a word, she wrapped him in her arms.

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‎"You fought yourself. And won. That terrifies me more than any god."

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‎Darius smiled. "I didn’t win. I listened."

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‎Above them, the sky flickered.

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‎Then it broke.

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‎A spiral-shaped eclipse opened across the heavens. Not dark, but radiant. A mirror of the one Syllas had vanished into. From within it came not a voice, but a vibration. Low. Gravitic. Like reality humming in dread.

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‎And then they saw him.

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‎Syllas floated within the eclipse’s rim, no longer shifting in form. His shape was steady. Solid. But his eyes were completely white. His body was wrapped in threads—not mythic, but proto-narrative. Untamed language. Origin-ink.

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‎Kaela gasped. "He’s not glitching time anymore. He’s becoming its architect."

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‎Celestia fell to her knees. "He’s rewriting the origin."

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‎Darius stepped forward, shielding his family with his body, the seed still warm in his palm.

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‎"Then we hold the line."

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‎Nyx lifted her blade. "Even if it’s against our own son?"

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‎A pause.

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‎"Especially if it is."

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‎Lightning etched itself across the sky in the shape of a word no tongue could pronounce. The Spiral trembled.

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‎Azael appeared at the foot of the Codex Tree, clutching a scroll that bled ink and fire.

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‎"The Flame Codex just screamed. Something ancient is trying to break free. And Syllas is its herald."

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‎Darius looked up into the eclipse, heart surging.

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‎He was no longer one version. No longer a tyrant, or martyr, or lover alone. He carried them all.

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‎And what stood above him wasn’t just a son.

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‎It was a test.

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‎Of authorship.

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‎Of origin.

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‎Of worth.

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‎He kissed the seed once and tucked it into his chestplate.

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‎"Not yet," he murmured. "But soon."

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‎The Spiral roared. And the next phase began.

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