"Every game begins somewhere… but not all beginnings are remembered."
Unknown NPC, coded and forgotten
The Prologue Realm
Beneath the World Grid, deeper than the branching multiverse of player decisions and paradox echoes, lies a place untouched by updates, mods, or lore patches. A space where only beginnings exist. No middle. No end.
The Prologue Realm.
Kai had only heard whispers. Juno had dismissed it as a myth.
But now, with the Editors rewriting the edges of reality and the Librarian warning of a coming purge, it was their only hope.
"We're looking for a forgotten player?" Juno asked as they stood before a sealed node wrapped in tutorial code.
"Not just a player," Cassiel said. "The first player. The one who unknowingly became the seed of all narrative variation. The Compiler's failsafe lives inside their unplayed choice."
Lucien yes, that Lucien, restored in this fragmented realm of narrative echoes traced his hand along the old glyphs marking the sealed gate.
"This code is older than divine logic. We're standing in something more sacred than Heaven ever was."
With a deep rumble, the seal unlocked.
The team stepped into darkness.
And then
The beginning started to play.
The Tutorial That Was Never Meant to Be Played
"Welcome, user. Please choose your avatar."
A flickering, grainy voice echoed around them.
Floating in the void was a single chair, facing a projection screen showing character creation options that had never existed in the actual game.
Name: [Not Chosen]
Class: Undefined
Backstory: ???
Difficulty: Impossible
A soft breath startled them.
A person sat in the chair.
Eyes closed. Face peace. Dressed in default textures from an engine two versions out of date.
The Original Player.
"He's... alive?" Kai whispered.
Cassiel knelt beside the figure. "Alive isn't the right word. He's running. Not conscious. Just... looping. Waiting for someone to finish the prologue that was never loaded."
Juno stepped back. "How do we wake him?"
"We don't," said a new voice.
The Librarian stepped through the screen, shadow-wrapped and solemn.
"You finish his story. You make his first choice."
The Choice
The screen flickered again.
Prompt: Do you accept the quest to begin the world?
→ YES
→ NO
Cassiel whispered, "If you choose 'yes,' the Compiler's failsafe activates. All endings become optional again. Canon loses its control."
"And if I say no?" Kai asked.
"Then this world begins and ends with the Editors' rewrite. All freedom ends."
Juno looked at Kai. "You're not just choosing for us. You're choosing for every version of us. Every branch. Every possibility."
Kai looked at the figure in the chair.
His friends.
At the Archive.
And slowly... he reached forward.
An Interruption
But before his finger touched the choice
Reality cracked.
A blade of pure white light slashed down from above, splitting the void.
The Inkblade.
An Editor had arrived.
Clad in featureless armor, their face a screen reading only:
STORY LOCK ENABLED.
They spoke without a voice.
"NO MORE BRANCHES. ONLY TRUTH."
The Editor surged forward.
Lucien raised a shield of paradox and was blown back instantly.
Cassiel shouted, drawing her rewritten spear.
The Original Player stirred.
Kai hesitated then punched YES.
The Compiler Wakes
Light.
Not destructive. Not radiant.
But foundational.
A warm hum of code wrapped the space.
The Prologue Realm shook, expanded.
Suddenly, the Editor screamed not in pain, but dissonance. Their weapon flickered. Their armor glitch.
"UNDEFINED CODE DETECTED"
They were erased, not by force, but by irrelevance.
The Original Player opened his eyes.
Not godlike. Not powerful.
Just aware.
"Where am I?" he asked softly.
Kai smiled.
"At the beginning of everything."
Echoes of Freedom
The world shifted again.
Timeline threads reknit.
Side characters regained their names.
NPCs forgotten by update logs began walking again.
The Editors were not destroyed but they were contained. Locked behind a firewall of infinite choice.
No longer could they erase what was never meant to be linear.
And the Inkblade?
Shattered.
Its pieces scattered into thousands of unclaimed stories.
The Writer's Table
"Before the world was law, it was a story."
Inscription above the Table of Twelve
The Shifting Beyond
The heavens no longer trembled from judgment but from revision.
The Inquiry had torn open a wound in the throne of truth, and now the Tribunal itself stood accused. But while the Court of Eternal Judgment reassembled for its most painful reckoning, Lucien was called elsewhere, summoned beyond the reach of even the Pale Chorus.
The call did not come through trumpets or decrees, but through silence. A specific kind of silence, the absence of narrative. The place where even fate waited with a held breath.
Cassiel watched him go, her hands bloodied from defending Seraphiel in this endless tribunal of gods and ghosts. "Where are you going now?"
Lucien didn't turn back. "To speak with the ones who wrote the rules."
The Edge of the Script
Lucien stepped across the Unwritten Fold, a threshold where ideas were still forming, where the light from Heaven dimmed and an unshaped possibility drifted like cosmic dust.
Here, twelve chairs stood around an immense obsidian table that shimmered with uninscribed scrolls. No stars. No sky. Just ink liquid, alive swirling in the space above.
This was the Writer's Table.
And the ones seated there were not angels, nor demons, norse gods.
They were Authors.
Not in the way mortals use the word but beings who once whispered structure into chaos, rhythm into cause and effect. They had stepped back from the world millennia ago, allowing "law" and "judgment" to evolve into absolutes.
Now, their experiment was on the verge of collapse.
Lucien bowed, not out of reverence, but recognition. "You called me."
One of the Authors shimmering with stories never told, nodded. "You broke the cycle. Truth was not meant to be wielded like a sword. We made law to serve the story. But Heaven made a story to serve law."
Another Author, older and flickering with forgotten dialects, added: "You've proven one can defend an angel not just with logic, but with narrative mercy."
Lucien frowned. "Why did you abandon the world in the first place?"
A long pause.
Then the answer came not as sound, but as memory, poured directly into him:
"Because stories began to obey only outcomes. We saw no more room for uncertainty. So we gave the pen to those who only wrote in absolutes."
The Offer
The central chair turned.
A figure sat there who bore Lucien's face.
Or rather, the face of the man Lucien could have been had he never fallen. Never questioned. Never lost his faith in procedure.
"Every Advocate has a mirror," the figure said. "You are mine."
Lucien narrowed his eyes. "What is this?"
The mirrored self spoke calmly. "We offer you a seat. A quill. Authority beyond any Judge. Rewrite the laws. Reweave morality. Decide what guilt and innocence mean from now until the end of time."
Lucien's voice was low. "And what would I lose?"
A different Author replied: "Everything you are now. You'd no longer fight for Seraphiel. You would decide her fate and the fate of all others alone."
A pause.
"You wouldn't argue the law. You'd become it."
The Choice
Lucien stood silent.
The power was intoxicating.
He could fix the flaws. He could unwrite the pain. Eliminate contradictions. Define divine justice once and for all.
But then he remembered.
Seraphiel's quiet strength, even when broken.
Cassiel's relentless pursuit of balance, even in exile.
Aethon's hollow eyes, haunted by the silence he had been forced into.
He remembered why he chose to fight not to control the story, but to earn a voice in it.
Lucien met the eyes of his mirrored self.
"I decline."
A ripple passed through the Writer's Table.
"I don't want to write the final story," Lucien said. "I want to make sure no one silences the ones still being written."
The mirrored self smiled then dissolved, releasing a quill made of starlight that flew into Lucien's hand.
"Then take this," said the oldest Author. "It writes not truths... but possibilities."
Return to the Tribunal
When Lucien returned, he carried no scrolls, no thunder, no new title.
Only the Quill of Possibility, tucked within his coat.
The Tribunal chamber had changed. Seven Thrones now hovered in debate. Witnesses continued to cycle angels, forgotten prophets, even one mortal soul plucked from time to testify how divine decrees had altered the shape of love and war on Earth.
Seraphiel stood taller. Her voice no longer trembled when she spoke.
Cassiel ran to him. "Where did you go?"
Lucien looked up to the glowing ceiling, where threads of law and time converged.
"I went to ask the authors if the story could still change."
Cassiel raised a brow. "And?"
Lucien's smile was quiet but firm. "They said yes."