The Axiom Tower was not a building. It was a needle inserting a lie into the vein of the world.
Up close, its surface wasn't glass or steel. It was scrolling text. Trillions of lines of glowing script, moving too fast to read, defining the parameters of every heartbeat, every leaf fall, every sunrise in Neovalis. It was the Source Code of the Cage.
And we were the virus coming to corrupt it.
I stood at the base of the spire, my avatar of scrap and starlight pulsing with a feverish, chaotic rhythm. The Zero-Day God was restless. It didn't just want to destroy the tower; it wanted to mock it.
My mind felt light. Dangerously light. The concept of "Blue" was gone, leaving holes in my vision where the sky should be. "North" was gone, so I felt a perpetual vertigo, unable to orient myself in space. And now, the Zero-Day God was chewing on something else.
Names.
I looked at the glowing phantom inside my chest. The woman made of colors. I knew her. She was vital. But her name... Tali? Talla? No... it was slipping. She was just "The Color."
"Focus," I commanded myself, my voice grinding like tectonic plates. "We breach."
I raised the claw-hand. I didn't punch the door. I grabbed the concept of the door—the idea that there was a barrier between 'outside' and 'inside'—and I crushed it.
The massive entrance of the Axiom Tower didn't break. It simply ceased to be an obstacle. It became a suggestion that we politely ignored.
We stepped in.
The lobby was a cathedral of blinding white data. No guards. No turrets. Just a vast, sterile silence. The air smelled of ozone and perfection.
"IT IS TOO QUIET," Silas (The Book) whispered in my mind. "THE AUTHORS DO NOT LEAVE THE FRONT DOOR UNGUARDED."
"They don't use soldiers here," Warp (The Logic) observed, his form flickering. "We are in the Narrative Layer now. They will use... tropes."
As if on cue, the white floor rippled.
From the data-light, a figure emerged.
It wasn't a monster. It wasn't a robot.
It was me.
But not the me that stood here—a broken, glitching monstrosity of fused souls and cynical despair.
It was the Me I was supposed to be.
He was handsome. Clean. His eyes were bright with determination and hope. He wore the gleaming armor of a System Administrator. He held a sword made of pure, sanctioned code. He looked like every hero on the cover of every story ever told.
A tag floated above his head:
"Welcome home, Glitch," the Perfect Kael said. His voice was warm, confident—the voice of a leader people would actually follow. "We've been waiting for you to finish your tantrum."
The Node bristled. The Zero-Day God growled, confused. This wasn't an enemy it could eat. It was... us. But better.
"You look terrible," Perfect Kael said, walking around my massive, scrap-metal avatar with pity in his eyes. "Look at you. Fused with corpses. Fueled by trauma. You've forgotten the names of colors. You've forgotten your mother's face. Is this freedom?"
He sheathed his sword. He held out a hand.
"Surrender the anomaly. Let us extract the Zero-Day God. We can fix you. We can restore the file. You can have your sister back. You can be the hero who saved the system, not the virus that destroyed it."
It was the ultimate temptation. Not a honeytrap of love, but of dignity. To stop being a monster. To be the hero.
I felt the Node waver. Tali (The Color) wanted to see beauty again. The Mender (The Fixer) wanted to be whole.
"He... he looks happy," Tali whispered.
"He is valid," Warp analyzed. "He is the optimized outcome."
I looked at Kael_Prime. He was everything I wasn't. He was sane. He was whole.
And that was why I hated him.
"You're right," I rumbled, my voice shaking the data-cathedral. "I am broken. I am ugly. I am a walking wound."
I took a step forward. The floor cracked.
"But I am mine."
Kael_Prime sighed. "Then you are a villain. And villains get deleted."
He drew his sword. The blade hummed with the power of the Authors—Narrative Authority. If that sword hit us, it wouldn't cut metal. It would cut our plot armor. It would end our story because "The Hero always wins."
He lunged.
He was fast. Faster than logic. He was moving at the speed of a protagonist. The sword slashed through my avatar's arm.
I didn't feel pain. I felt retcon. My arm didn't fall off; it just vanished, as if it had never been there. The story was being rewritten in real-time.
"You can't win!" Kael_Prime shouted, dancing around my clumsy strikes. "The narrative supports me! I have the moral high ground! I have the arc!"
He was right. In a story, the monster loses to the knight. It's a law stronger than gravity.
"Silas!" I screamed. "How do we kill a protagonist?"
"YOU CANNOT FIGHT HIM WITH POWER!" Silas roared. "HE SCALES TO MATCH THE THREAT! TO DEFEAT A HERO, YOU MUST INTRODUCE A GENRE SHIFT!"
A Genre Shift.
He was fighting in an Epic Fantasy. He expected a duel.
So I decided to turn this into a Cosmic Horror.
"Let's see how heroic you are," I whispered, "when the universe stops making sense."
I didn't strike at him. I struck at myself.
I drove my remaining claw into my own chest, right into the burning core of the Zero-Day God.
"EAT!" I commanded the aborted engine. "EAT THE GENRE!"
I unleashed the raw, unfiltered chaos of the Zero-Day God. Not as a beam, but as a Context.
The cathedral changed. The white data rotted. The walls began to bleed geometry that shouldn't exist. The air turned into screaming mouths.
Kael_Prime faltered. His shining armor rusted in seconds. His sword flickered.
"What... what are you doing?" he stammered. The heroic confidence cracked. "This isn't in the script!"
"There is no script," I roared. "There is only the Ledger!"
I grabbed him. Not with a hand, but with a cloud of glitches.
He slashed at me, but his sword was useless. You can't stab a nightmare. You can't duel entropy.
I brought him close to my face—the face of a void.
"You are the version of me that obeyed," I said. "You are the version that accepted the cost."
"I am the hero!" he screamed, his face distorting, glitching.
"You're a draft," I said. "And I'm the trash bin."
I opened the Ledger.
"Paid," I whispered.
I didn't absorb him. I deleted him.
I forced the Zero-Day God to process his code as "Junk Data."
Kael_Prime screamed—not a heroic scream, but the static screech of a file corrupting. He dissolved. His armor, his hope, his perfect smile—all of it unspooled into gray sludge that dripped through my fingers.
The cathedral fell silent. The white walls were stained with the oil of the Blind Archive.
I stood there, one-armed, breathing hard. I had killed the hero. I had killed the chance to be "good."
The Ledger updated, its text shaky, as if even the system was nauseous:
"Real is enough," I muttered.
My arm slowly regenerated, not as metal, but as the gray sludge of the dissolved hero. I was incorporating him. I was wearing the corpse of my potential.
"Up," I commanded the silent Node. "We go up."
We marched toward the central elevator—a beam of light leading to the Penthouse. To the Authors.
But as we stepped onto the platform, a memory flickered and died.
I tried to remember my sister's laugh.
Nothing. Just static.
The Zero-Day God had eaten it during the fight.
I didn't cry. I didn't have the capacity left for grief. I just noted the absence, checked the ammo of my cynicism, and pressed the button for the top floor.
The elevator began to rise.
And on the display, a message from the Authors appeared. No more threats. No more offers.
Just a countdown.
Fifteen minutes to kill God.
"Plenty of time," I lied to myself.
And for the first time, I couldn't tell if I was lying.