Creation Of All Things-Chapter 207: Joshua Vs. The Architect

The Rift Realm – Reforged Ground of Memory

The air screamed as the Architect raised his hand.

With a flick of his fingers, reality inverted. The stars blinked out—replaced by ash. The void twisted, folding itself inward like a wound closing, and Joshua was gone in a blink of lightless flame.

WHUMMM.

Adam took a step forward, eyes flaring—but Aurora held him back.

"He's not dead," she said, eyes narrowed. "He's been pulled."

"To where?"

She looked at the space that now held only smoke. "To the place they died once before."

Recreation of a Dead Battlefield – Within the Architect's Domain

The ground was black. Not burnt—erased. Flat and endless, with pillars of shattered time suspended in the air like broken monuments. A sky of grinding gears hovered above, casting no light, only motion. Thunder cracked sideways.

Joshua stood in the center of it, cloak whipping in unnatural wind. His blade was still drawn—wreathed now in fire that hissed and whispered like it had memory.

The Architect stood at the far edge. Calm. Composed. His robes fluttered. His mask glinted with cracks older than cities.

"This place," Joshua muttered. "You made this look exactly like it."

The Architect nodded once. "Because it is it."

Joshua's eyes flared. "You think remaking the battlefield gives you power over what happened?"

The Architect began to walk forward, each step echoing like metal slamming on bone. "Not power. Clarity. This was where I watched you fall the first time. I wanted to feel that moment again."

Joshua's fingers tightened around his blade.

"Then feel this."

He moved.

No sound. No build-up. Just motion—perfect and violent. He blurred forward in a streak of golden fire, swinging once, a horizontal slash meant to split anything in front of him.

The Architect caught it.

Not the blade. The motion.

A single hand, palm open, stopped the energy of the attack mid-air. The flame crackled like a nervous animal caught in a snare, struggling to move, but frozen in time.

The Architect didn't move his feet.

"I've adapted," he said simply.

Joshua gritted his teeth—and unleashed a second strike without pulling back. His foot twisted, energy condensed into his leg and he kicked upward, launching himself into a spinning backflip, bringing the sword down in an overhead arc with the full weight of his body and the divine blood in his veins.

CLANG–WHUUMM!

The ground shattered beneath them in a forty-meter radius, launching plates of black stone skyward. The shockwave bent the air.

The Architect stepped to the left—barely—and the blade missed his shoulder by inches.

But Joshua was already in his face.

A punch, cloaked in hellfire, slammed into the Architect's chest. Porcelain cracked. The Architect staggered back—not in pain, but in calculation. He looked down.

"A devil's touch. You've been busy."

Joshua's blade spun in his hand. "You have no idea."

This time he charged again, but now with two trails behind him—one of white-blue godlight, the other of deep red chaosflame.

He vanished, then appeared behind the Architect, slashing upward.

CLANG!

Again—caught. But this time, the Architect winced. The mask chipped further.

Joshua leaned in close.

"You're slower than I remember."

The Architect exploded.

Not metaphorically. A wave of disintegration force burst from his body, a full 360-degree blast that erased everything it touched—air, memory, matter. Joshua was launched, flying backward across the field, crashing through three floating monoliths.

BAM–CRACK–CRUNCH.

He rolled across the broken earth, landing hard on one knee.

The Architect walked forward again. His voice didn't rise—but it grew.

"I am not slower," he said. "You're simply… closer to what you were meant to be."

Joshua spat blood, wiping his mouth with the back of his glove.

"You still talk like a eulogy."

"Because I bury things," the Architect answered—and he vanished.

CRACKK!

He appeared behind Joshua, and this time it was his strike. A single palm to the spine.

Joshua arched, eyes wide, as an invisible spike of pure ruin surged through his body—trying to unravel his organs, his mind, his past. His feet lifted off the ground—

—but he turned in midair, dragging his blade with him in a wide spiral, catching the Architect across the mask with a flash of fire and silver.

SHHHHK—!!!

The mask split in half.

The Architect did not flinch. The two pieces fell away from his face, revealing a visage made of shifting void. No skin. No bone. Just a storm of stars shaped into a man.

Joshua landed, breathing hard. freewёbnoνel.com

"You're not even flesh anymore."

"I haven't been for eons," the Architect replied, voice now echoing with multiple layers. "I chose to become something more. Something stable. You still bleed."

Joshua took a step forward, fire swirling around him. "Yeah. But I can still love. And that's your mistake."

The Architect snarled for the first time. "Love is entropy."

And he raised both hands.

The sky split.

From the broken ceiling above, thousands of spears rained down—each made of compressed ruin, like crystallized gravity mixed with memory. They fell like a meteor storm.

Joshua's eyes flared.

He leapt upward, slicing the first wave to ribbons midair. He spun, dipped, and curved between the spears, cutting a path through falling death like a dancer of flame. His blade sang.

SHINK—SHHH—KRAKKK!

He moved faster, the divine and devil blood inside him syncing. His skin shimmered with light now. Each movement left afterimages that folded backward, like time forgetting what just happened.

He landed on a spear, pushed off, and dove straight for the Architect—sword first.

The Architect crossed his arms—then opened a rift in front of him.

Joshua vanished into it.

A heartbeat passed.

Then—

BOOOOOM.

He exploded out the other side, bursting from the Architect's shadow, blade aimed for the neck.

The Architect barely dodged.

SLASH!

But not fully.

The blade grazed across his shoulder. Black light sprayed like liquid physics itself had been wounded.

Joshua landed, crouched, panting.

The Architect straightened, shoulder flickering. "That… was new."

Joshua rose. "That was me."

The Architect raised one arm—and the world around them collapsed inward. Time looped, then broke. The entire battlefield reformed into a spiraling ruin-tower rising from nothing, its core made of the bones of forgotten gods.

"Then let me show you me."

BWAHHHHMMMM.

His form expanded. No longer a man—he became a storm given posture. A titanic figure of shadowed ruin, stretching above the tower like a second sky.

Joshua looked up.

He didn't falter.

He lifted his blade.

Spoke a word in a language older than angels.

The sword responded—growing longer, sharper, turning translucent.

"I killed you once," he said.

He launched himself upward—through gravity itself, breaking lines of force as he rose toward the god-behemoth.

The Architect swung a hand the size of a cathedral. It came down like judgment.

Joshua cut through it.

BLAAAM—!!!

The hand burst into spirals of color and reversed screams.

He reached the head—and slammed the blade straight between the Architect's eyes.

A silent explosion.

Everything went white.