CHAPTER 394: CHAPTER 392: THE GUIDE

The sky split like a wound.

And from its fracture came a shadow so vast that it made the Fourth Layer tremble.

The horizon dimmed; even light itself seemed to kneel. The air became thick enough to choke on, dense with an ancient gravity that pressed on the heart more than the flesh.

Clouds curled inward, devoured by the radiance of two eyes—white and endless, opening like twin suns above the ruins.

When the voice came, it was not a sound, but a command written into every atom.

"Atlas, the Guide. Son of Empress Lilith... Truly, a child of Genesis."

The words carried both pride and warning. The tone of a creator watching her creation stand upright for the first time.

The shadowed form towered higher still, its silhouette melting into the vault of heaven, so immense that Atlas could see only half of its body—yet even that half was more than the mind could hold.

The wind died. Every spark of mana in the air bent toward the Empress’s gaze.

Aurora’s knees trembled as she raised her eyes to that colossal being. Her breath came shallow. She had seen gods before—Zeus’s flames, Ra’s sunfire—but this was different. This wasn’t divinity built from worship; this was divinity that predated the concept of fear.

Beside her, Atlas stood motionless, every muscle locked in quiet defiance. The glow from his axe pulsed faintly against his back, resonating with something ancient in the Empress’s voice—like an echo recognizing its source.

Aurora turned to the Elder, whose expression had lost its usual calm. The lines on his face deepened, not with age but with reverence. His head bowed low, his staff pressed against the ground like a blade of penance.

So the Elder... he wasn’t just our normal guide. He wasn’t just some relic from another age.

He was something else.

Something that belonged directly under her command.

A thought, sharp and unsettling, flickered in Aurora’s mind. He made the system. That was what he had told them before. The strange structure that governed Atlas’s powers, his ascension, the way faith itself obeyed him like code responding to its user.

But what powered it?

What kind of force could birth something that sat above gods and below no one?

She remembered every battle, every moment Atlas’s system had saved them from annihilation. The way it calculated fate, rerouted destiny, rewrote laws as if the universe itself was negotiable. That wasn’t magic. That wasn’t ...science.

It was something else entirely.

Her breath caught.

Lilith.

The realization struck her like a divine arrow.

The system’s core wasn’t a source of power—it was a person.

Lilith. One of the three Empresses. Atlas’s own mother.

It was only but a suspicioun. But...

Aurora’s heart thudded hard enough she could feel it in her throat. The Empress of Genesis hadn’t simply created her son. She’d bound herself into him. Into his system. Into his growth.

Every time Atlas used his power... he was using it through her... maybe..

Her essence. Her will.

The thought twisted into something almost painful. Then what is Lilith making?

A son? Or a successor? A vessel?

She glanced at Atlas again. His outline shimmered faintly with light from the Empress’s eyes. It wasn’t just illumination—it was recognition.

The child and the creator, two halves of a circle meeting again.

Aurora swallowed. "I should talk with him," she whispered, voice barely audible. "Later."

The Empress’s eyes shifted. Her gaze swept over Aurora, pausing long enough to make her soul feel naked.

And then, the voice came again, colder this time—like the tide pulling away before a storm.

"The seed of the future is indeed fertile. Do not fail me, Oh Architect."

The title hung in the air, heavy as prophecy. Architect.

Atlas said nothing. His hand curled into a fist at his side.

The shadow began to dissolve, light unraveling from the sky like torn silk. The pressure lifted. The air grew thin again, breathable.

Around them, the Fourth Layer seemed to sigh, its tension releasing after eons of silence.

And then, the voice was gone.

The Elder stepped forward, staff scraping softly against the stone. "Now you know," he said quietly. "What I am. Who I am, I’m not just one of those sick elders..."

His tone carried both pride and fear.

He straightened, meeting Atlas’s gaze. "But...You will keep this to yourself. The others must not know my lineage. The Elders... do not take kindly to secrets of such oaths...."

His words carried a finality that even gods might hesitate to argue with.

Atlas inclined his head. "Understood."

The Elder nodded, satisfied, and turned away. The sound of his steps echoed like the ticking of an ancient clock. With each stride, the world seemed to part before him.

From the empty air ahead, a shimmer bloomed—a distortion, a pulse, then a full portal. Its edges rippled like molten glass, light bending around it.

Beyond it was nothing they recognized.

No ground, no horizon. Only a faint vibration that smelled of rain and iron and memory.

The Elder planted his staff into the earth. "Now," he said, voice low, almost reverent, "to the city of elders...we go to the birthplace of the Guide. The origin of the one true being who started it all... and who still resides within you."

The words struck Atlas like a heartbeat.

He felt it inside—the quiet stir of another voice. Familiar. Ancient.

{{{{ It’s been a while...}}}}

Atlas closed his eyes. The presence was warm, calm, vast. The Guide. His other self. The first fragment of the being he once was, before the fall, before the mortal body, before the chains of memory.

He exhaled softly. You miss this place?

A pause. Then, the voice again, resonant, sad.

{{{{{No... but you need to go there and You must change it.}}}}

Atlas frowned. "Change it? Why—"

But before he could finish, the connection flickered, and the voice dissolved into static.

The Elder was already walking into the light.

One by one, they followed.

Aurora last. She hesitated at the threshold, watching Atlas disappear ahead of her. The air around the portal hummed like a living thing, and for a heartbeat, she thought she saw something behind the light—shapes, figures, thousands of them, kneeling.

Worshiping.

Her breath caught again.

Then she stepped through.

The transition was not a fall. It was a folding.

Space bent inward, wrapping them in waves of warmth and sound. Colors bled into each other—white to crimson, crimson to gold, gold to black. It felt like being pulled through the bloodstream of the universe itself.

Then—impact.

They landed on something soft, breathing, alive.

Atlas rose slowly, blinking. The ground beneath him pulsed faintly with light—veins of luminescent stone, glowing with slow, rhythmic heartbeat patterns.

The air shimmered with silver mist, thick enough to blur the horizon.

A vast cathedral loomed ahead, carved from flesh and crystal, its towers spiraling upward into clouds that moved against the wind.

Every surface was inscribed with runes that glowed in pulses, like a living language still speaking itself.

Aurora whispered, "Where... are we?"

The Elder smiled faintly. "The Genesis Chamber. Where gods remember they were once ideas."

Atlas took a slow step forward. The world here knew him. He could feel it—the walls humming in response to his heartbeat, the air vibrating with his name.

Every breath carried faint whispers. Welcome back...

He shivered.

As they walked deeper, faint echoes of his past life began to manifest around him.

Visions like ghosts—moments from a world of technology and loneliness, flickering in fragments: a computer screen glowing in the dark, the sound of rain on a city window, a boy staring at a reflection he didn’t recognize.

He had forgotten these details long ago. Yet the Chamber remembered for him.

{{{{ Change this place}}}} the Guide’s voice had said.

Why?

He could feel it—something hidden beneath the surface, a rhythm too perfect, too absolute.

The Genesis Chamber was not just birthplace. It was a prison made of perfection. Every law in it was too stable, too symmetrical.

Perfection was another word for stagnation.

Atlas placed his hand on a wall. The runes flared. Images rippled outward—gods born, gods dying, the same cycles repeating endlessly. Creation, destruction, worship, decay.

It was a loop.

A closed system.

Lilith hadn’t built eternity. She had built containment.

He pulled back his hand. The wall dimmed, almost resentful.

Aurora noticed the look on his face. "Atlas. What’s wrong?"

He hesitated, then said quietly, "This isn’t a birthplace. It’s a reset point. The Guide inside me... he was made here. Reborn again and again, every time he fell."

Eli shivered. "Then this place—"

"—is where power is recycled," Atlas finished.

The Elder’s staff struck the ground, and the chamber resonated with light. "And that," he said, "is what you must change."

Atlas turned to him sharply. "What did you mean earlier—’the one who started it all still resides within me’?"

The Elder’s eyes gleamed faintly. "The Guide was the first avatar of the one below all. The original will of his creation.

You are his echo, his continuation. The faith of one below all is inside you. I may be a lawn of the empress, but my faith still lies with the one below all.

But our faith needs change, like how you brought change to the fallens.

Aurora’s throat went dry. " if he changes this place—"

"Like we have talked before, the elders and the high elders, their immortal my mind and body can no longer hold the faith of one below all and his only son...the guide. The one inside you.

They preach but they don’t follow, they guide but they are lost themselves. All needs to change. From here.

"So if He breaks the chain, " the Elder said. "And with it, the balance that even gods obey."

Atlas’s hand tightened on his axe. The runes along the blade pulsed, hungry, like it understood.

He exhaled slowly, gaze fixed on the heart of the chamber—where a single crystal throne floated, encased in slow-turning rings of light. A figure sat upon it, indistinct, almost transparent.

The original Guide.

The first Atlas.

A memory of himself.

He stepped forward, each footfall echoing through the chamber.

The figure lifted its head. Its eyes opened—mirrors of his own.

Atlas stopped. The air trembled around him.

"What are you?"

{{{{{{What you will be... or what you’ve already been. }}}}}}