The Grand Archons did not have physical bodies. They weren't giant men in armor, and they weren't terrifying, multi-limbed monsters. They were exactly what they were supposed to be: raw, unadulterated system logic rendered into physical space. They were swirling cylinders of blinding white and blue code, stretching twenty feet into the air. They lacked faces, but Sebastian could feel their gaze. It was a heavy, suffocating pressure, like being stared down by a supercomputer that was currently calculating the exact date and time of his inevitable death.
For a long moment, nobody spoke. The silence in the Inner Sanctum was profound.
Then, the Archons communicated.
It wasn't a single voice. It was a unified, overlapping chorus of thousands of synthesized tones, perfectly layered to sound majestic and entirely devoid of human empathy.
"ANOMALY ZERO," the Archons hummed.
