The Source Field pulsed like a living heart as Leon stood amidst the digital storm of echoing voices and fragmented timelines.
All around him, flickers of corrupted realms and half-forgotten code bled into view realities that had once been full-fledged worlds, now collapsed into data scars.
The message burned in his vision:
OBJECTIVE: Awaken the First Seven Fractured Players.
Progress: 0/7
Beside him, Astra remained silent. Not out of fear but reverence.
"These aren't just players," she murmured. "They're legends that were never allowed to end."
Leon nodded. "And now, they'll be given a new purpose."
He reached out to Lira//Null. Her code flickered caught between memory and madness.
"Where do I start?" he asked.
She raised a broken hand, pointing toward the swirling maelstrom of failed quests behind them.
"Begin with the Healer Who Watched the World Die."
Subrealm: Ruins of Serathas
It was a shattered kingdom.
Ash rained from a lifeless sky as Leon stepped into a time-stalled memory loop. He moved through a forgotten city where statues wept blood and buildings hovered mid-collapse, frozen in decay.
At the heart of the ruins knelt a woman in white robes her hands glowing faintly over the husk of a long-dead child.
She hadn't moved in centuries.
Name: Sariah
Class: Epoch Healer
Status: Locked in loop: "Last Hope"
Level: N/A
Designation: Fractured One [01/07]
Leon stepped forward. "Sariah."
Her eyes lifted slowly red from tears, yet wide with shock.
"No one… no one ever comes here anymore. They promised to patch this zone…"
"They didn't," Leon said gently. "But I'm not here to patch. I'm here to awaken you."
She looked down at the child.
"I couldn't save them. The game froze the outcome. I wasn't meant to succeed. Just to fail and repeat."
Leon knelt. "You were always more than a scripted role."
He placed a hand on her shoulder and the world shattered like glass.
The loop ended.
Sariah stood, no longer broken. Her robes now pulsed with golden veins of code, her eyes reflecting galaxies.
Fractured One 01/07 Awakened: Sariah, the Epoch Healer.
Specialty: Restoration of Dead Code, Memory Revival, Emotional Continuity Threads.
Current Power Level: Ascending.
"I remember now," she whispered. "The others. We were prototypes. Promised endings, then left behind."
Leon nodded. "Then help me write the conclusion you were denied."
Elsewhere: A Throne of Blades
The Forgotten King stirred.
His throne a mass of rusted swords and broken contracts sat atop a peak made of grief.
One of his many eyes opened.
"She's awake," he growled.
Another voice answered silken, bitter, ageless.
"She remembers you, my king. They all do."
The Forgotten King rose slowly.
"Then let them gather. Let them awaken. I will be waiting. And when they come for me… they will find the Final Patch already written."
Back in the Source Field, Sariah joined Leon and Astra.
"We'll need power beyond this world," Astra warned. "The next fractured is more than a ghost. He's the one who broke the Time Domain itself."
Leon narrowed his eyes. "Then let's go find him."
The screen flashed:
Next Target:
The Time-Drunk Blade: Chronos Vayne
Vayne, the Time-Drunk Blade
The gateway shimmered like a broken mirror time fractured around its edges, warping Leon's reflection as he and Sariah stepped through.
Astra stayed behind in the Source Field, anchoring their path. "Careful," she had warned. "Vayne doesn't just bend time he bleeds it."
Subrealm: The Spiral Clockscape
There was no ground. No sky. Just floating gears and crumbling hourglasses suspended in spiraling loops of time.
Each step Leon took echoed across every moment of his life.
The realm twisted unpredictably. One second, he was a child. The next, an old man. Then younger than ever. Time wrapped around his soul like a noose.
Sariah placed a calming hand on his shoulder, her voice distant and gentle.
"Don't fight the current. Let it pull you toward him."
Leon breathed deeply and let go of control.
A flash.
He stood atop a gear the size of a city.
And there at its center sat a man in a blood-soaked tuxedo, balancing on a blade tip, swirling a drink made from liquefied seconds.
Chronos Vayne.
Fractured One 02/07 Located
Designation: The Time-Drunk Blade
Condition: Temporally Dissociated / Sanity: [???]
"Leon," Vayne drawled with a smirk that bent reality. "The only player who broke the ending before it was even written."
Leon stood firm. "You know why I'm here."
"Oh, I know. You're rebuilding a team of broken gods, shattered heroes, corrupted stories. But let me ask you something…"
Vayne leaned forward, eyes blazing with spiraling clocks.
"Why not just stay broken?"
He snapped his fingers.
Time exploded.
Temporal Fracture: Duel of Infinite Variations
Leon was split across timelines—ten thousand versions of himself, each locked in battle with a different Vayne.
Some fought with swords. Others with code. Some with words.
One with silence.
Vayne whispered into all of them:
"You were better as a failure." "You'll never survive the King." "You're rewriting nothing but a prettier grave."
Leon, in every timeline, fell.
Stabbed. Burned. Erased.
And then one version stood.
The one who listened, not fought.
"You're not trying to stop me," Leon said calmly, his voice echoing across the multiverse.
"You're trying to see if I'm ready."
Everything froze.
Vayne tilted his head, wine glass cracking mid-air. "You really are the Architect now."
He lowered his blade.
"Alright, Hero. Let's see what we can break together."
Fractured One 02/07 Awakened: Chronos Vayne, the Time-Drunk Blade
Specialty: Temporal Dissonance, Reverse Fatewalks, Paradox Crafting.
Current Power Level: Non-Linear Ascending.
He joined Leon and Sariah, twirling his blade like a conductor's baton.
"Who's next?" he asked with a grin.
Leon answered without hesitation. "The one who built death into a story The Eulogist."
Vayne raised a brow. "Ah. You really are going for the broken ones."
Elsewhere: Throne of Blades
The Forgotten King's throne rumbled.
"They've awakened two," he said darkly.
"Three," whispered the shadows. "The third stirs already."
The King stood, swords singing behind him.
"Let them come. Let the Seven Fractured rise. I will not sit idle while the Architect tries to reclaim the End."
The Eulogist's Elegy
The air grew still.
Not quiet.
Still like sound itself refused to exist.
Leon, Sariah, and Vayne stood before a valley of white gravestones that stretched endlessly in all directions. There was no sky. Just a pale sun that refused to move, frozen at the hour of mourning.
At the center of the valley stood a lone chapel made of bone and broken quills. Every inch of it was engraved with names real ones, false ones, erased ones.
Leon's breath caught in his throat.
This was the Grave of Forgotten Tales.
Fractured One 03/07 Located
Designation: The Eulogist
Status: Bound in Silence / Authority Level: Obituary Class
Inside the chapel, a figure sat hunched over a cracked lectern. Robed in black, faceless but not formless its cowl constantly reshaping with memories that no longer existed.
As Leon stepped forward, the world dimmed.
Each step he took erased something.
A childhood laugh. A forgotten scar. A name whispered by a mother long gone.
Sariah cried out behind him. "Leon your soul is unraveling!"
Vayne reached out. "He's writing your eulogy as you walk."
Leon didn't stop.
He knew what this place was.
This was where abandoned stories went to die.
Where dead dreams found a home.
And The Eulogist was their keeper.
He reached the lectern.
The figure raised its head no eyes, no face, just an eternal quill bleeding ink made of grief.
"You do not belong here, Architect," it intoned. "You are unfinished."
Leon placed his hand on the quill.
"I've rewritten myself more times than you've buried."
A shiver ran through the chapel. The graves groaned. Pages of unwritten eulogies flew from the altar.
The Eulogist hesitated.
"Do you wish to remember?"
Leon's voice was steady. "No. I wish to resurrect what was left behind."
The quill ignited with golden flame.
Suddenly, names poured from the Eulogist's body lost friends, forgotten sacrifices, unsung heroes of all Systems and Realities.
Memory Protocol Breach: Architect Authorization Confirmed
Rebinding Fractured One 03/07…
A thunderous pulse exploded from the chapel. Gravestones cracked open no bodies inside, only ideas. Concepts. Possibilities once discarded.
The Eulogist screamed not in pain, but in release.
It fell to one knee, its cowl unraveling to reveal a glowing humanoid form with ink-streaked skin and sorrowful eyes.
"Leon…" it whispered. "You gave them back to me."
Leon knelt beside them. "We need you. The Forgotten King will erase us all if we let him write the ending alone."
The Eulogist nodded, standing tall now, eyes aflame with purpose.
"Then let us write a eulogy not for the dead, but for the fate that tried to bury us."
Fractured One 03/07 Awakened: The Eulogist, Scribe of the Unremembered
Specialty: Memory Resurrection, Concept Binding, Obituary Reversal
Current Power Level: Grievance Ascendant
As the trio turned to leave, Vayne chuckled.
"Three down. Four more to go."
Leon glanced toward the horizon where crimson petals were falling from a blood-red sky.
"Next," he said, voice low, "is the one who turned betrayal into a System of its own."
Sariah frowned. "You mean…"
Leon nodded.
"Yes. We find The Red Oathkeeper next."