The Architect.
The old boss. The cosmic game developer who had tried to delete me, then harvest me, and who I had last seen getting his multiversal admin privileges revoked by the Janitor.
He was back. And he had found new puppets. My old brother and my old fanatical priestess. A holy alliance, a "purity" crusade. It was a classic corporate move: a failed company (The Architect's old plan) rebranding itself with a new, friendly-sounding mission statement.
"So," I said, leaning back in my obsidian throne, the wedding invitation dissolving into dust in my hand. "The competition is trying to stage a comeback. How cute."
The Champion, my stoic, time-bending enforcer, looked at me. His expression, as always, was unreadable, but I could feel his silent question. Is this a threat?
"A threat?" I chuckled. "My friend, this is not a threat. This is an opportunity. A hostile merger opportunity."
Lia, my consigliere, processed the new data with her perfect, cold logic. The Architect's power, while immense, is based on order and control, she sent. His new alliance is an attempt to build a stable, predictable power base in the lower Tower. He is trying to build a rival company on our turf.
"Exactly," I said. "And what do we do with rival companies?"
I looked at my terrified, newly-promoted Second-in-Command, Grak. "Grak. A pop quiz. Your new boss is faced with a rival faction trying to move in on his territory. What's the first thing your new boss does?"
Grak trembled, his mind racing. "Uh… send the boys to break some kneecaps, Boss?"
"Wrong," I said, a slow, predatory grin spreading across my face. "That's what a thug does. I am not a thug. I am a businessman."
I stood up, my voice ringing with the authority of a CEO about to announce a new, aggressive market strategy. "The first thing we do is devalue their assets. We make their entire operation worthless. We start a rumor that their 'holy alliance' is a sham, that their 'divine sponsor' is a fraud, and that their entire crusade is built on a foundation of lies."
I looked at Lia. "You are the Warden, the arbiter of Floor 2. Your word is law there. Send a message to the city of Nocturne. An official 'Guardian's Edict'. Announce that Saintess Valerie has been declared a heretic, that she has made a pact with a 'rogue, unsanctioned cosmic entity', and that the Alabaster Legion's holy charter is hereby revoked. Turn her entire world against her. Let's see how holy her crusade is when she's a wanted fugitive."
Consider it done, Lia replied, a flicker of my own, cruel amusement in her thought.
"Next," I said, turning to The Champion. "Valerius. My brother. His power comes from his 'legitimacy', his claim to the Ravencrest throne. We need to destroy that."
I opened my System. I pulled up a very old, very forgotten file. The memory of the true Kaelen Ravencrest, the one who knew the secret of Lyra's true, Silvermoon heritage.
"Champion," I said, "You are a being who can bend time. I am a being who can forge concepts. We are going to do something new. We are going to engage in a bit of... historical revisionism."
I used the Creation Engine, not to build an object, but to forge a memory. I took the truth of Lyra's origin and I wove it into a new, compelling narrative. A story of a secret, stolen princess.
Then, I handed this forged "true memory" to The Champion. "Go to Aethelgard-1," I commanded. "Not as a warrior. As a ghost. A ghost of Christmas Past. You will not be seen. You will not be heard. You will simply... insert this memory into the mind of every noble, every historian, and every citizen of that pathetic little kingdom. You will not give them a rumor. You will give them a new, undeniable truth. You will make them remember that their king, Valerius, is the son of a usurper who built his dynasty on a lie."
The Champion nodded, a grim, silent understanding in his ancient eyes. He vanished in a shimmer of temporal energy.
I had just launched a two-pronged, conceptual assault on the very foundations of my enemy's alliance. I had destroyed their religious authority and their political legitimacy in one fell swoop.
"And now," I said to Grak, "we go make some money."
The Mechanist's Union was a district of towering, smoke-belching factories and humming power conduits. It was a place of industry, of logic, of desperate, terrified gnomes.
Master Artificer Cogsworth, their leader, met us at the gate. He was a tiny, ancient gnome with a magnificent, oil-stained beard and eyes that held the frantic, sleep-deprived terror of a man whose life's work was about to explode.
"The Sovereign!" he squeaked, bowing so low his beard scraped the floor. "You came! The Forge-Star… it is… it is unstable! The containment field is failing! It could go supernova at any moment!"
"Relax, relax," I said, patting him on the head with a condescending cheerfulness. "The Sovereign's Syndicate is here. We solve problems. For a price, of course."
We entered the heart of their operation. The Forge-Star was a terrifying, beautiful sight. A miniature sun, a captive ball of pure, chaotic, stellar energy, held in place by a cage of humming, cracking, and clearly failing arcane technology.
I looked at the star. My [Eye of Scrutiny], now a tool of divine-level analysis, saw the problem immediately. It wasn't a mechanical failure. The star wasn't just unstable. It was… sick. Infected.
My System, my loyal consigliere, provided the final, chilling diagnosis.
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE: 'THE FORGE-STAR']
[ENTITY: CAPTIVE, NASCENT 'CELESTIAL CONCEPT'.]
[STATUS: INFECTED.]
[INFECTION TYPE: 'THE STATIC'.]
The twist was not just that the star was dying. It was what was killing it.
The Static, the ultimate, world-consuming enemy, the one I thought was locked in a cosmic war with the rebooted Primeval Edict, was not a distant threat.
It was here. A tiny, insidious splinter of its being, a single, microscopic spore of the void, had found its way into this new reality. And it had taken root. It was not launching a grand, cosmic invasion.
It was starting small. It was poisoning a city's power supply.
And the final, horrifying piece of the puzzle was the realization of how it had gotten here.
[ANALYZING INFECTION VECTOR...]
[The 'Static' spore's conceptual signature is bound to a residual karmic trace.]
[TRACE IDENTIFIED: THE SOUL OF THE LICH KING.]
[CONCLUSION: When you destroyed the Lich King, a willing agent of The Static, a single, microscopic fragment of its essence must have latched onto your own soul as you absorbed the Infinity Shard. You were the carrier. You brought the plague to Nexus Prime yourself.]
[And you have just spent the last week spreading your own, sovereign aura across this entire city.]
[PROBABILITY THAT OTHER 'STATIC' SPORES HAVE ALREADY SPREAD: 100%.]