Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig axcient.com. NS
Answer
axcient.com. 2 NS ns3.efscloud.net.
axcient.com. 2 NS ns4.efscloud.net.
axcient.com. 2 NS ns5.efscloud.net.
axcient.com. 2 NS ns2.efscloud.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns2.efscloud.net. 2 A 198.73.22.32
ns3.efscloud.net. 2 A 198.73.17.12
ns4.efscloud.net. 2 A 198.73.23.4
ns5.efscloud.net. 2 A 185.65.212.128
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0