Alias shifted his gaze back to Norx. The slight tremor in his hands stilled, the anxiety freezing over into a cold, ancient focus.

He didn’t look at the face of his former partner; he looked at the invisible threads connecting Norx to the higher spheres. He looked at the blueprint of the god standing before him.

​"You have rewritten their parameters," Alias said, his voice flat, completely stripped of emotion. "You have locked their spirits into your own descent. If their bodies fail, they will remain in your void."

​"They are my clay, Alias," Norx said, taking a step closer, his red eyes wide with a wild, unblinking intensity. "I breathed life into them. I gave them the capacity to bleed, to fear, and to weep. If I want to pull the thread and unravel the whole cloth, the heavens will not stop me. And neither will you."

​"The heavens will not," Alias murmured, his silver hair beginning to float as the white sparks within his core ignited into a steady, silent flame. "But I am the Architect. I did not give you permission to break the foundation."

​Without a single physical motion, Alias released his structural authority.

​He did not strike with a bolt of light or a concussive wave of force. Instead, he reached straight into the conceptual matrix of the lower world.

He located the unique divine signature that defined Norx’s status—the specific, celestial code that allowed a creator to access the heavens, alter the upper scrolls, to channel the life-giving fires, and to slip between the dirt and the stars.

​And then, Alias began to pull.

​A low, subterranean roar vibrated through the earth, though the water in the lake remained perfectly still.

Norx’s red eyes suddenly widened, a sharp, choked gasp tearing from his throat as his knees buckled. The pristine white light that usually lived deep within his chest began to bleed outward, turning into thin, smoking ribbons of gold that rose toward the ceiling before shattering into harmless dust.

​"Alias... what are you doing?" Norx hissed, his hands flying to his throat as his skin began to grey, the divine luster fading from his flesh in real time. "Stop... Stop it!"

​Alias did not stop. His face remained completely expressionless as his silver eyes tracked the unraveling code. He was systematically unpicking the divinity from Norx’s soul.

"Alias!!!" Norx let out a piercing scream, his fingers tearing at the floorboards as the agonizing weight of the extraction pressed him down. "You would betray me for the bugs? For the clay of my own making?"

​"This is not a betrayal, Norx," Alias said calmly, his voice steady but carrying the cold, absolute finality of bedrock. "This is me fighting back. You shouldn’t have touched those precious to me."

"Alias, For thousands of years, I stood by your side! We measured the stars together!"

​He looked down at the twisted, desperate features of his former partner. This was not the partner he had measured the stars with.

The partner who had laughed, nudging him, trying to get him to curve his lips... this was an entity that had been corrupted.

Alias did not know what had made Norx go this far and become this rotten. It was way past what a god should do. He was no longer a creator testing his work; he was becoming a tyrant, and Alias could not leave this world in the hands of a tyrant.

In order to save this world and the lives within it, he had to end his tyranny right here and now, taking away his control over this universe.

​He knew the cosmic laws. He could not completely take away Norx’s creation ability and core divinity—the clay would always recognize its molder—but he could at least take his authority.

​Therefore, Alias stripped away Norx’s title, his authority, and his right to ascend back through the veil and into the heavens. He was tearing the wings from a god, grounding him permanently into the very dirt he had claimed to despise.

​With a final, sickening crack that echoed through the aether, the connection severed.

​Norx collapsed fully onto the floorboards, his hands slamming into the wood to keep his upper body from hitting the mats. He was gasping, his chest heaving as the last of his celestial majesty evaporated into the corners of the room.

He was a fallen god now, his presence heavy, dark, and bound to the earthly realm forever.

​But even as he lay broken, a thin, hysterical laugh escaped his teeth. He pointed a trembling, grey finger toward the translucent wall of the pocket dimension.

​"You think... you think you won?" Norx wheezed, his voice a ragged, scraping frequency. "Look at them, Alias. Look at what your little tantrum did."

​Alias’s gaze snapped to the distortion and his heart froze.

​The void trapping Theo and the others had reacted to Norx’s fall. Deprived of the steady divine power that had formed it, the grey shell was collapsing inward, tightening around the three frozen humans.

The calm finality that had anchored Alias’s chest shattered into a million pieces, the sharp shards tearing through his lungs. His breath hitched, a harsh, jagged sound echoing in the warped space.

​His eyes wavered violently, the silver color drowning in a sudden, frantic rush of pearl-like tears. He staggered toward the translucent wall of the pocket dimension, his boots heavy against the floorboards.

​No. Not like this.

​He had calculated the numbers, he had stripped the tyrant of his title, but he hadn’t factored in the immediate, violent recoil of Norx’s collapsing power. His decision to save the world had just signed the death warrant for the only people who had ever truly loved him.

​Alias breached the boundary of the grey mist. His entire body was trembling, a visceral, terrifying panic seizing his throat as he dropped heavily to his knees beside the massive, frozen frame of the mortal he loved.

​"Theo... Theo, please," Alias choked out, his voice small, cracking, and stripped of all divine weight.

​He reached out with shaking fingers, his cool palm pressing against Theo’s cheek. The tanned skin was already turning a deathly, frost-bitten grey under his touch.