Chapter 1845: The End(5) Below Telmus was his pool of warm blood that he could feel slowly congealing around his feet. His body was broken and his bones were sticking out from his skin in a dozen places, but his majesty was unmistakable. "Listen," he growled, a command, and silence fell across the Arena as the pervading psychic hum of so many Primordial minds clustered in one small space was shut off. The judges flinched as if a whip had swept across their necks. Telmus turned around slowly, his gaze meeting each judge, and they could not turn away from him. A balance had been shifted, and the tides were going against the pull of gravity. The King of Silence leaned against the pressure from Telmus’s gaze, breaking his nature as he whispered in an airy voice like the last exhale of a dying man, "How?" Telmus grinned; this was more towards his nature. Deliberately shifting his gaze away from this judge, he began to speak, "You believe I stand in your court. You are fucking mistaken. You built this place to judge what is worthy. But you built it upon a foundation you do not own. You laid your commandments over a truth that existed before your first thought. You call this the Pantheon of Chains, a proving ground for the unworthy. I call it the First Layer of Origin, and it does not belong to you. It belongs to me!" As he was speaking, his mortal body was beginning to recover. The blood on the ground started to rise, drop by drop, like raindrops caught in a field of inverted gravity, before rushing into his body. Dull cracks resounded as his bones returned to their places and his flesh closed over them. If this process was hurting him, it clearly did not matter because his body and mind were steady. Bringing up a hand that had perfectly healed and pointing to all those who stood in judgment of him, Telmus’ voice shook the Arena, "The laws you imposed upon me...destiny, mortality, hierarchy, are not the pillars of reality, my reality. They are merely the furniture you brought into my house of existence. You arranged it, declared it absolute, and have been demanding that I should navigate your design ever since." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺 The throne on which the judges sat shattered, and they fell to the floor with a resounding crash that sent cracks to all corners of the Arena. Screams of pain and surprise filled the air, but when Telmus began to speak once more, their cries were forcibly silenced. Telmus raised both of his hands wide, " I am not a guest in this house. I am the foundation upon which it was built." Then he began to point at each of the judges, stating their fate, "Your Inquisitor of Destiny could not bind me because my will is the author of fate, not its subject. Your Warden of Mortality could not frighten me because my existence is not contingent on this flesh; this flesh is a momentary expression of my existence. Your Architect of Hierarchy could not categorize me because I am the space in which all categories are formed." With each judge he mentioned, their form shrank and their powers were stripped from them. They were reduced to the bodies of mortals, and their screams of pain were a testament to the fact that they hated this form, but they could do nothing but endure it." "You see, your laws cannot touch me. Not because I am powerful enough to resist them, but because I am fundamental enough to permit them. Do you not understand?!" His words were like hammers, and all the judges were reduced to mortals, shivering before a god; even the Silent King groaned under the weight of Telmus’s authority, "The chains you so proudly display have no weight, no strength, except that which I grant them. I allow the concept of destiny to exist for those who need its narrative. I allow mortality to give meaning to moments. I allow your hierarchy to create order for those who cannot bear the terrifying freedom of a universe without it." The Silent King tried to fight, "This cannot be... a man cannot just refuse the sun to shine, and it would... we are the fundamental axis of your Tribulation. You needed to defeat us, not...not..." "Claim you?" Telmus smiled, "I am Defiant Ascension. I permit your laws to function. And in this space, your Pantheon, I now revoke that permission for myself. I am not under your jurisdiction. I am the jurisdiction." The silence that echoed over this space was profound; it was as if these personifications of these laws, which were truly the Tribulation any Primordial Entity would face as they delve deep into their Origin, had never considered that their authority would be stripped away in this manner. Mortals were meant to avoid danger, to struggle before they gained dominion over a thing... this is how it was always meant to be. No Primordial entity in existence had overcome their Tribulation like this, and these judges could not come to terms with what was happening. Telmus began to rise up in the air, his hands spread open, and his long white hair carried by an invisible breeze. This fragment of his consciousness still remained a mortal, but his unflinching and mad resolve to claim his Origin meant the line that separates mortals and Primordials had blurred to nothing. "So look upon me," Telmus roared, "Echoes of a borrowed authority. You are not my judges. You are artifacts in my gallery. Your thrones are exhibits of a bygone era of thought. The First Layer of Defiant Ascension is mine. Its truths are mine to define. Its laws are mine to allow or dissolve. My ascension is not a request for entry into your kingdom. It is the announcement that I have always been its king!" He closes his eyes, and for a moment, the entire Pantheon of Chains flickers. The marble and bronze of the Arena thrum with a new, deeper frequency, his frequency. The Chains surrounding the Arena hung inert and powerless in the space he allowed them to occupy. A loud groan shook the entire space, and the broken judges turned with shock to see that the gates to the next layer had appeared, and they not only swung open, but they bowed. "I will come for you later. For now, everything I know and love is in danger, and this layer is all I have to fight with."