The Primary Seed's glow faded behind us, pulsing softly like the last breath of a dying star.
But it wasn't dead.
It was stable.
For now.
I tightened my grip on the corrupted blade and stepped forward into the void beyond the Root Directory, with Lys by my side. Each step felt less like walking and more like crossing thresholds between realities, where the ground was spun from threads of narrative still fraying at the edges.
We were leaving the architecture behind — no longer inside the blueprints of existence, but inside the wreckage of what had already been written and discarded.
The Fragments of Fiction.
Collapsed worlds, broken chapters, aborted arcs — the byproducts of thousands of failed narratives. They drifted like shattered continents in an endless sea of mist, pieces of forgotten stories colliding and merging in chaotic, unstable formations.
"This is it," Lys said quietly, her eyes sweeping over the surreal landscape. "This is what happens to stories that outlive their usefulness."
It was breathtaking and horrifying all at once.
Ruined castles floated beside fractured space stations, their shattered towers bleeding light into the abyss. Deserted cities, forests frozen in perpetual autumn, battlefields locked in an endless loop of beginning and ending without ever reaching resolution.
Ghosts of characters flickered in and out of existence, echoes of dialogues long since purged from their scripts.
"They look so real," I said, voice low.
"They were real," Lys replied, her tone heavy with something that wasn't quite sorrow, but close. "In their time."
I felt a sharp ache in my chest.
If I hadn't forced that rewrite... this is where I would've ended up. Just another fragment in the endless graveyard of fiction.
Maybe Riven too.
Maybe worse.
We kept moving, stepping carefully across unstable platforms of fragmented narratives. Text fragments floated past us like dead leaves, snippets of dialogue and unfinished thoughts:
"—we were supposed to—"
"—if only I had one more chance—"
"—the hero... failed—"
Each line stabbed at me like a needle of guilt.
But I pressed on.
Because now, I had to press on.
"You said there's a way to use these fragments," I said to Lys. "To build something new."
"There is," she confirmed, her sharp gaze flicking toward a broken arc of terrain ahead. "These fragments still carry narrative energy. If we can harness it, we can expand your rewrite capabilities."
"Enough to fight what's coming?" I asked.
She hesitated, and that hesitation spoke volumes.
"Enough," she said at last, "to survive the next phase."
I didn't like the sound of that, but I didn't push. We were too deep for second thoughts now.
As we crossed into the husk of what might've once been a fantasy kingdom, a sudden ripple passed through the fragment. The mist cleared just enough for us to see a figure kneeling at the center of the ruined courtyard.
Unlike the flickering ghosts, this one was solid.
Real.
A survivor.
He wore fractured armor, his face obscured by a helmet of cracked obsidian. His hands clutched a broken sword, its blade snapped cleanly in two.
Another purged hero.
My throat tightened.
"Approach carefully," Lys warned, her weapon ready at her side.
We moved closer, slow and steady.
The figure stirred, head lifting as if sensing our presence through layers of broken code.
"You... are not from this fragment," the figure rasped, his voice brittle with static. His eyes — glowing slits beneath the helmet — fixed on me. "You carry the scent of rewrite."
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I was a guardian of this arc," he said. "Until the system deemed my story obsolete."
He rose to his feet, pieces of his broken world clinging to him like a shroud. "But you... you are different."
"Because I rewrote my narrative," I said.
"No," he replied, voice sharpening. "Because you still have one."
That struck harder than I expected.
The figure stepped forward, and the fragments of his sword glowed faintly in response to my blade's pulse.
"You can feel it, can't you?" he said. "The hunger beneath the collapse. The force devouring these fragments."
"The Meta-Author," I answered grimly.
His hollow eyes burned brighter. "If you have reached this far, you know they will not let you continue. The Administrators and Editors were only the beginning."
He extended the broken sword toward me.
"You must take this," he said.
"Your weapon?" I asked, frowning.
"My arc," he corrected.
The realization struck me a moment later.
This wasn't just a weapon. It was a piece of his story — a condensed shard of narrative potential, still burning despite the collapse.
"I can use this," I murmured.
"You must," the guardian said, his voice growing fainter. Cracks spread across his form, threads of his existence unspooling into the void. "Gather fragments. Forge them into your own arc. Only then will you be ready for the next rewrite."
As he dissolved into light, the broken sword remained in my hands, warm and pulsing with untapped power.
[Fragment Acquired: Purged Arc — Guardian's Oath.]
[Narrative Fusion Possible.]
Lys's eyes gleamed with a spark of hope.
"First fragment," she said.
I nodded, determination hardening inside me.
"And not the last."
We turned toward the horizon, where other fragments drifted in the mists, waiting.
Waiting to be claimed.
Waiting to be rewritten.