The Wheel groaned.
Not the sleek, silver imitation Saylor had crafted in his image, but the old one—fractured, rusted, groaning beneath the weight of memory. It rose from the center of the Field like a monument no one could remember building, assembled from the bones of old gods and the scraps of defiance. It pulsed with every breath the Field took, as if it were alive again. As if it had been waiting.
Lucia stood before it, wind tugging at the threadstorm swirling from her back. The players—Angela, Mira, Danvers, and Proxy-Lucia—gathered behind her in a loose formation, wary and shaken but still standing. The fog had cleared. The lies had cracked. The Field, though still hostile, had no master anymore.
And Saylor watched them from his floating dais, arms behind his back, expression unreadable.
He hadn't descended yet. He simply hovered above, the air around him shimmering with threads of logic and algorithmic static. It made him look almost holy.
"Fascinating," he said, his voice unamplified but heard by all. "The moment you were granted a semblance of freedom, you crawled back to the Wheel."
Lucia didn't answer.
He tilted his head, his gaze resting on the broken Wheel like an artist admiring a ruined sculpture. "You realize it was never meant to be spun again?"
Mira shifted uneasily. "Then why did it wake up?"
"Because you let her remember," Angela muttered, her eyes fixed on Lucia.
Saylor smiled thinly. "Very well. You want the old game?"
He stepped forward. The platform beneath him responded, lowering slowly as glyphs lit around his feet. "Let's play."
He extended a hand toward the Wheel.
The rusted spokes whined, shivering as a slot opened in its center.
> SPIN REQUEST RECEIVED
SUMMONING: ENTITY TIER — DIVINE
RULESET: EXTRINSIC HOSTILE
The sky blackened instantly.
A roar tore through the world, not from lungs, but from time itself splitting open. Lightning coiled upward instead of down. Platforms cracked. Symbols burned into the ground beneath the players' feet. The fog didn't return—but the air became heavier, like it remembered how to fear.
Angela turned to Lucia, wide-eyed. "He's... serious."
Lucia nodded, jaw tight. "He's not pretending anymore."
Proxy-Lucia said nothing. But her eyes narrowed. Her thread—the same crimson now as Lucia's—flickered in unison.
Saylor's voice thundered, louder now, pulled straight from the spinning Wheel's breath.
> "RISE: VORTHEX, THE CROWN OF MAWS."
The Field twisted.
And from the sky dropped a god.
Vorthex did not descend like a figure. He arrived like a verdict. A skeletal titan coiled in fleshless serpents, with jaws running down his spine like chained beasts. His head was a fractured mask of teeth, and his limbs bent at impossible angles as if each motion was an echo of ten others.
He landed with a soundless quake—so massive it registered not in ears, but in bone.
Danvers stumbled back. "What the hell is that?!"
Mira grabbed his arm, pulling him behind a shard of broken platform. "Something that shouldn't exist!"
Lucia stared forward.
The Wheel was still spinning.
And this was just the beginning.
Vorthex moved like a storm.
The god did not walk. He slithered, his serpentine limbs coiling across the broken Field, displacing tiles with every undulating shift. Wherever he passed, the air thinned, and sound dulled. His many jaws chattered in a rhythm, like war drums made from teeth. Glyphs spun across his spine—dozens of old languages etched into his bones, alive with wrath.
Lucia raised a hand and the players scattered.
"Don't fight him head-on!" she shouted. "Move—watch the jaws!"
Angela darted left, trailing her silver thread, while Mira and Danvers scrambled to opposite corners of a fragmented platform. Proxy-Lucia stayed by the Wheel, her eyes locked on Vorthex, thread pulsing with hesitant readiness.
Saylor stood still, observing.
Not commanding.
Just... watching.
He said nothing. His arms remained crossed, his eyes reflecting every strike and dodge with mechanical clarity.
Vorthex reared up.
A cluster of jaws opened at his chest. From them erupted a wave of blackened mist—thick, acidic, and crawling with spectral fangs.
Lucia threw up her thread in a spiral shield, intercepting the mist.
The impact pushed her back.
Pain screamed through her bones as the pressure struck, but she held. "Go!" she shouted again.
Angela leapt from a nearby ledge and threw her thread forward like a spear, piercing one of the minor serpents attached to Vorthex's flank.
It howled—one of the mouths snapping in agony—and turned toward her.
"Great, now it's mad at me!" Angela hissed.
"Good," Lucia replied through gritted teeth. "Keep it distracted!"
Mira appeared behind the god, flinging a burst of kinetic disruption into the back of its neck. The glyphs cracked for a moment.
Danvers followed with a coordinated strike—his thread unraveling into dozens of smaller filaments, each one targeting the god's leg joints.
For a moment, the massive entity slowed.
But Vorthex adapted.
The jaws down his spine screamed in unison.
A soundwave burst outward, knocking everyone flat.
Lucia landed hard, scraping against the stone, vision swimming. She forced herself up. Her thread was flickering wildly.
Across the battlefield, Proxy-Lucia stood unmoved.
And then, she moved.
Not in panic. Not in mimicry.
But with purpose.
She launched forward, weaving her thread into a whip that lashed around one of Vorthex's necks, climbing its body like a spider.
She reached the head and drove a shard of raw thread into its eye socket.
The god shrieked.
Lucia stared, stunned.
Proxy-Lucia dropped, landing in a roll beside the others.
"I don't remember all of it," she said, breathing heavily, "but I know that thing shouldn't be here."
Lucia reached over, steadying her. "Then help me put it down."
The others regrouped.
Vorthex twisted again, recovering.
But now, it bled. Dark ichor—heavy and radiant—dripped from its wounded eyes, sizzling as it struck the ground.
Lucia pulled her thread taut.
"Together," she said.
And this time, the strike wasn't scattered.
It was symphonic.
They attacked as one—threads spiraling, converging, deflecting the god's counters in tandem. Every time a jaw snapped, someone closed it. Every glyph struck, someone destabilized it.
The Wheel behind them spun faster. It wasn't controlling the battle.
It was reacting to them.
> RULE BREACH: COMBINED THREAD EXECUTION DETECTED INITIATING ADAPTIVE RESPONSE
Saylor's voice echoed.
"Let's see if you can survive two."
Lucia's eyes widened.
"No—"
But the Wheel spun again.
And above them, the sky tore open once more.
The sky split again.
This time it didn't roar—it screamed, like the void itself had teeth. Thread-lightning danced through the atmosphere, searing glyphs into the clouds. The Wheel spun faster than before, spokes rattling so violently it looked ready to collapse—and yet it held, feeding power into the breach.
Saylor stood calmly beneath the storm, arms folded, watching the players like a child waiting for ants to drown in his glass.
"SUMMONING COMPLETE: ENTITY TIER — DIVINE."
"RISE: KALDRITH, THE FORGOTTEN WARD."
The rift vomited a shape.
Where Vorthex had been monstrous in body, Kaldrith was unbearable in presence. He was not flesh, but fragmented architecture—shattered pillars, floating arcane stone, dozens of clocks with broken faces orbiting a void-shaped heart. His limbs were scaffolding. His voice was the ticking of entropy. And he did not land.
He hovered.
Reality curved around him.
Danvers fell to his knees, blood leaking from his nose. "Make it stop—he's inside my head—"
Mira clutched her temples, staggering. "He's freezing time. I can feel it—my body—my thread is slowing—"
Angela raised a hand, and her thread lit up in resistance—but it flickered.
Kaldrith's influence slowed the battlefield itself.
Lucia felt it too—her muscles tightening, breath slowing as if molasses had filled her lungs. Her heartbeat stuttered, her vision warping. The noise in her ears wasn't sound—it was time folding in on itself.
"Lucia," Proxy-Lucia called out, voice thick with static, "I can't move—"
Lucia fought the crushing weight. Her thread flared once. Twice.
Then it shattered the binding field around her.
She screamed and hurled her thread outward—lashing it into the space where Kaldrith's core floated.
The world jolted.
Everyone gasped.
Angela's thread reactivated.
Proxy-Lucia twisted, breaking free.
Mira's steps resumed.
Lucia stood between the two gods, sweat dripping, limbs trembling, thread howling like a whirlwind.
"No more gods," she growled.
Vorthex lunged.
But he was met mid-charge by Danvers and Mira, combining their threads into a ricochet net that redirected his momentum. Angela shot a pulse of stabilizing energy at Kaldrith's orbit, destabilizing his time field just long enough for Proxy-Lucia to leap into range.
"Go for the center!" Lucia shouted.
Proxy-Lucia climbed the scaffolding of Kaldrith's body like a dancer ascending chaos. Each step she took twisted time, but she adapted—folding with it instead of fighting against it.
Vorthex reeled, shrieking as Mira detonated a kinetic burst beneath one of its lower serpents.
Danvers redirected a flurry of stone debris, aiming straight for the god's fractured spine.
then—
Proxy-Lucia reached the core.
She stabbed her crimson thread straight into it.
Kaldrith convulsed.
His gears snapped. His orbit fractured. Time spilled into the open air like boiling oil.
And Vorthex, linked by the Wheel's shared rule, screamed in unison.
Lucia stepped forward, summoning everything.
Threads glowed behind her like a tapestry of rebellion.
The Wheel groaned. Fissures split across its face.
"THREAD UNIFICATION BREACH."
"GOD ENTITIES: NULLIFIED."
Vorthex collapsed.
Kaldrith's floating components broke apart.
Both gods fell—erased by a system that couldn't comprehend unity.
The battlefield stilled.
Lucia gasped for air.
Saylor stared from above.
His expression unreadable. No anger. No surprise. Only silence.
He stepped back onto his platform as it rose once more.
"END OF COMBAT PHASE."
Lucia raised her head. "That's it?"
Saylor looked down at her.
And smiled.
"Let's see what you do without me."
He vanished.
The sky cleared.
The Wheel stopped.
And the players stood in silence.