NOVEL NEXT Chapter 267: The Axiom of Life
Inside the World-Tree, Ryan felt Scarlett start to fade. Her fiery, defiant presence in his mind, which had been a blazing bonfire, was now flickering like a candle in the wind. He could feel her weariness, her struggle against the Silent Minister's slow, gentle poison of peace. She was losing. And if she lost, they all lost.
He was still wrestling with the immense power of the Forge, his will a dam holding back an ocean of creative energy. He couldn't interfere directly in Scarlett's soul-duel. It was her fight, a battle of one idea against another. If he tried to jump in, he would be like a third person trying to help in an arm-wrestling match—he would just get in the way and mess everything up.
He couldn't help her fight. But maybe… he could change the rules of the fight itself.
The Minister's power came from the idea of stillness, of endings, of a quiet, perfect peace. Scarlett's power came from her own messy, chaotic, and stubborn feelings. Right now, on this battlefield, those two ideas were evenly matched. But what if he introduced a new, bigger idea? A fundamental rule that would make one side stronger and the other weaker?
It was a wild, desperate, and probably very stupid idea. It was the kind of idea Jaxon would have loved.
"Okay," Ryan thought, a grim determination settling over him. "Let's get a little creative."
He dug deep into his new abilities, the core of what it meant to be a Genesis Lord. He was a being of creation. He didn't just have to follow the rules of the universe; he could write new ones. He had already created Axioms before, the powerful concepts he had used to imprison the Silent King. But those had been ideas of endings: Stillness, Absence, and Fate.
Now, he needed to create an Axiom of a beginning.
He reached for the concepts he had used to fix Regent Vorlag. They were like building blocks of pure feeling, floating in his mind.
He took the bright, warm, and defiant feeling of Hope, the one that Emma carried with her every day. It felt like the promise of a sunrise.
He took the fierce, unbreakable feeling of Love, the one Scarlett had used to rebuild his soul. It felt like an anchor in a storm.
And he took the wild, beautiful, and unpredictable feeling of Free Will, the choice to be messy and make mistakes. It felt like the spirit of his entire, chaotic family.
He took these three powerful ideas—Hope, Love, and Free Will—and he began to forge them together in his mind. It was like a blacksmith hammering on a piece of glowing metal, shaping it, folding it, making it stronger. He hammered the three concepts together, blending them into a single, coherent, and unbelievably powerful new principle.
He was creating a new fundamental law of existence.
He was creating the Axiom of Life.
Once it was forged, a glowing, golden-green sun of pure, beautiful energy in his mind, he didn't hesitate. He unleashed it.
He didn't just send it to Scarlett. He flooded the entire World-Tree mindscape with it. He poured this new, overriding law into the very air, into the glowing bark of the trees, into the shimmering leaves, into the ground itself. He was rewriting the operating system of his own soul.
Inside the mindscape, the change was instant and absolute.
One moment, Scarlett was tired, her fiery avatar flickering, the Minister's calming influence slowly putting her to sleep. The next, a wave of pure, warm, golden-green light washed over the entire forest.
It felt… incredible.
It felt like every single good moment she had ever had, all at once. It felt like the warmth of Ryan's hand in hers. It felt like the pride of a victory won with her friends. It felt like the goofy sound of his laugh in the mess hall. It felt like every hopeful glance, every loving touch, every fierce choice she had ever shared with Ryan and their entire, crazy family.
All of those feelings, all of that life, all of that love, was concentrated into a single, overwhelming wave of pure power.
It didn't just restore her strength. It super-charged it.
Her flickering, candle-like avatar erupted into a blazing inferno. She was no longer just a fiery warrior. She grew, becoming a towering, glowing figure of pure, vibrant life. She was no longer just an embodiment of her own feelings; she was now an avatar of Life itself, in all its messy, chaotic, beautiful, and glorious struggle.
She felt fantastic. "Okay," she thought, a grin spreading across her new, giant, glowing face. "This is more like it."
But if the new law felt good to Scarlett, it felt very, very bad for the Silent Minister.
The Minister was a being of stillness, of endings, of the negation of struggle. Her entire existence was based on the idea that life's chaotic fight was a problem to be solved with a quiet, peaceful end.
And Ryan had just rewritten reality to say that life's chaotic fight was the whole entire point.
The new Axiom of Life was a fundamental law that the Minister's mind simply could not compute. It was like telling a calculator that 2+2 now equals a banana. Her entire system crashed.
The wave of golden-green light washed over her serene, elegant form. Her calm expression finally broke, replaced by a look of pure, philosophical horror.
She screamed. It was a silent, terrible sound, the scream of an idea that has just been proven fundamentally wrong.
Her avatar didn't explode or burn. It was much quieter, and much more final, than that. She was painlessly, perfectly, and completely unmade. The concept of "her" was being overwritten by the bigger, more powerful concept of "Life." Her gray, light-absorbing robes dissolved into a shower of brightly colored flower petals. Her serene, calm form faded away, replaced by the warm, golden light of the restored forest.
She was gone. The parasite had been purged, not by violence, but by an overdose of pure, joyful, stubborn life.
The last patch of gray in the forest vanished, and the beautiful, living song of the World-Tree returned, louder and more triumphant than ever before.