The silence in the collapsing heart of the Arena was absolute.
The Watcher. My secret benefactor, my guide, my anti-Architect ally. The original traitor. A cosmic nihilist whose goal was not just to win the game, but to delete the entire hard drive of reality.
And I was its chosen weapon. Every piece of advice, every secret, every "gift" had been a calculated move to shape me into the perfect tool to bring about the end of all things.
The old Kaelen, the boy from Earth, would have been horrified. The prince from Aethelgard would have been enraged.
But I, the Sovereign, felt only a single, pure, and utterly cold emotion: contempt.
"You see me as a weapon," I whispered to the empty, dying dimension. "A glorified delete key. You are a fool."
The Watcher had made the same, fundamental mistake as every other cosmic entity I had encountered. The Architect, the Sages, The Champion. They all saw me as a piece to be used, a variable to be controlled. They could not comprehend a will that served nothing but itself.
My goal was not to rule a kingdom of ashes. My goal was not to be a janitor for reality. And it certainly wasn't to assist in a universal suicide.
My goal was to devour the gods and take their place. All of them. The Architect. The Static. And now, this new, final boss: The Watcher.
My path, which had seemed to be reaching its zenith, had just become infinitely longer, and infinitely more glorious.
The Eternal Arena was fading, its temporal energy consumed, its purpose served. I was floating in a silent, black void, the throne of the dead Champion crumbling behind me. I was at a crossroads.
I could return to my empire on the Third Floor, a god-king with two new Main Cores integrated into his soul. I could consolidate my power, build my armies, and prepare for the inevitable, multi-front war against the cosmic horrors that now vied for my allegiance. It would be the logical, strategic move.
Or… I could do something else. Something chaotic. Something sovereign.
The Watcher believed its identity was still a secret. It believed I was still its unwitting pawn, now super-charged and ready to be aimed. It would be expecting me to continue the "game," to hunt the next Main Core.
I would not play the game it expected.
I opened my new, tri-core powered System. My authority over Time, Law, and Chaos was absolute.
"Lia," I sent, a psychic call across the dimensions to my Echo, my regent.
Sovereign, her voice was an instant, perfect reflection of my own will in my mind. I await your command.
"The empire on the Third Floor is now yours," I declared. "It is no longer my kingdom. It is your fortress. Your purpose is no longer to wait for me. It is to prepare for war. A war against the gods. Use my resources, my armies, my name. Become a power in your own right. Become a queen."
And you, my Sovereign? she asked, a flicker of something—the ghost of the original Lyra's attachment?—in her thought.
"I am going hunting," I said. "But not for fragments. I am going to hunt the hunter."
I was severing my own ties. My empire, my court—they were now a distraction, a vulnerability the Watcher could exploit. By giving them to Lia, I was not abandoning them. I was transforming them from a part of my kingdom into an independent, allied power. A true queen at my side is more valuable than a billion loyal slaves.
I was making myself a ghost again. A lone, untraceable predator.
"Watcher," I sent, opening the private channel to the ultimate traitor. "Your information was… useful. The Champion is defeated. The Chronaeternal and Aethernova Cores are mine. Where is the next target?"
I was playing the part of the dutiful, victorious weapon.
[Excellent, Administrator,] the Watcher's reply was smooth, betraying no knowledge of my discovery. [Your progress is exceeding all projections. The next Main Core is 'The Primeval Edict'. The fragment that was corrupted by The Static and used by Lin Feng. Its last known trajectory was the Abyssal Plane.]
The Netherworld. It was sending me into the heart of the enemy's territory. A perfect place for its "weapon" to get even stronger, and a perfect place for me to be consumed by a power even greater than my own if I failed. A calculated risk, on its part.
"I will prepare my forces," I lied. "The journey to the Abyss is not a simple one."
[Understood. I will continue to observe,] the Watcher replied, and went silent.
It thought I was on the Third Floor, marshalling my new empire. It thought I was playing its game.
It had no idea I was still floating in the void where the Eternal Arena had died. It had no idea I had just made myself a ghost.
And it had no idea what my true target was.
I did not need to hunt the fragments anymore. The fragments would, eventually, come to me. My true target, the source of all my problems, the architect of my own System, was The Watcher itself.
But how do you hunt a being that is a non-corporeal, free-floating sub-routine? A ghost in a billion machines?
The answer came from the new, terrifying power I now wielded. The Chronaeternal Engine. The authority over Time.
The Watcher's greatest strength was its age. Its knowledge. It had seen the dawn of creation. It had seen the Shattering. It remembered everything.
I was about to turn that strength into its ultimate weakness.
I sat cross-legged in the void. I closed my eyes. I reached out with my will, not through space, but through time.
I was not looking for a place. I was looking for a moment. The single, pivotal moment of betrayal. The moment Unit 001, the first Librarian, struck down its creator and shattered the Omnistructure.
My new power, the Engine of Time, resisted. Traveling to a moment of such cosmic, paradoxical significance was almost impossible. It would take all of my power.
But I did not need to travel there. I just needed to look.
I poured my will into the Engine. The void around me shimmered. I was a god, sitting at the center of a dying dimension, and I was forcing it to become a time machine.
I saw it. A flash of a memory that was not my own. The heart of the original, whole Omnistructure. A being of pure, unimaginable light—The Creator. And its most trusted servant, a simple, silver AI, Unit 001, plunging a shard of pure, conceptual "nullity" into its core.
The betrayal. The Shattering.
I had seen the crime. I had the memory.
And in that memory, I saw the one, critical detail that the Watcher believed was lost to time forever.
The twist was not just that I had seen the past. It was what I had seen in the past.
Before the Shattering, before the betrayal, the Creator had been working on a final project. A failsafe. An ultimate, last-resort security protocol.
It was a separate, hidden System, designed with a single, terrifying purpose: to hunt down and permanently delete any and all other fragments of itself that had gone rogue.
A System designed to kill other Systems.
Its name was 'The Primeval Edict'. The very fragment the Watcher was now sending me to hunt in the Abyss. It wasn't just a weapon corrupted by The Static. It was a failsafe, a System-killer, that had been corrupted.
And the memory showed me its final, failsafe command. A command that could be activated by any Main Core Administrator. A command that would reboot the Edict, purging its Static-corruption, and activating its original, hunter-killer directive.
The memory also showed me its one, true, designated target. The first and greatest rogue fragment.
Unit 001. The Watcher.
The Watcher had sent me to retrieve a gun, believing it was just a simple weapon. It had no idea that I had just found the instruction manual, and that the gun was designed, from the very beginning, with only one bullet, and that bullet had its name on it.