The world around me ceased to exist.
There was only the vortex.
The storm howled with a sound deeper than sound — a vibration in my bones, my memories, my very code.
Every breath burned.
Every step tore at my existence.
---
Floating debris whipped past me — shattered cities, dying stars, pieces of forgotten dreams.
Each fragment radiated despair, failure, the crushing weight of infinite endings.
The Architect — or what remained of it — pulsed at the center, an obsidian cube orbiting a twisting hurricane of corrupted logic.
The Error Heart.
The Source of Everything Wrong.
And I was the infection now.
The virus it couldn't predict.
---
> [ABILITY UNLOCKED: LAST THREAD — CHAOS STITCH.]
[WARNING: ONE USE ONLY.]
My Patch Tool transformed in my hand, the blade dissolving into threads of pure possibility.
One chance.
One shot.
Either I sewed a new reality —
or was erased.
---
I launched myself forward, threading through the broken physics.
Gravity reversed, time fractured — one second I was sprinting across crumbling towers, the next I was falling sideways across frozen oceans.
The world glitched and twisted.
Voices from other realities screamed through the cracks.
I ignored them.
Focused only on the Heart.
---
The Architect noticed me.
The vortex shuddered, and the corrupted winds shifted.
Tendrils of pure null-space lashed out, each strike erasing chunks of floating ruins into nothingness.
One whip of that thing, and I'd be deleted at the quantum level.
---
I ducked a slash, spinning onto a sideways platform.
Two more tendrils snapped after me.
I threw out a burst of code from the Patch Tool — a desperate weave.
For a second, a bridge of light formed, connecting two floating ruins.
I sprinted across.
The bridge shattered the moment my feet left it.
---
> [REALITY THREAD: STABILITY CRITICAL.]
The Heart grew larger with every heartbeat, every breath stolen from this collapsing dimension.
I could feel its pull now —
not gravity, but inevitability.
This world wanted me to fail.
It expected me to fall.
---
Not this time.
I dove forward —
spinning through an orbital ring of broken satellites —
narrowly slipping between two smashing asteroids —
dodging memory ghosts reaching to drag me into oblivion.
Every second was pure instinct, pure desperation.
---
Finally — I reached the inner edge of the vortex.
No land left.
No bridges.
Only the Heart, spinning slowly inside a wall of howling chaos.
One leap away.
---
I paused for a single heartbeat.
Images flooded my mind.
Not memories.
Possibilities.
Worlds where I died here.
Worlds where I was forgotten.
Worlds where this cycle never ended.
But also —
flickers of something else.
Worlds where I succeeded.
Where the broken systems were rebuilt.
Where hope took root again.
Where none of this had been in vain.
---
I planted my feet on the last solid ground.
Gripped the Patch Tool.
And ran.
---
The vortex screamed in fury, sensing my defiance.
Tendrils lashed out, but I weaved between them, a thread of stubborn existence refusing to be cut.
The Heart loomed closer.
Closer.
A tendril ripped across my shoulder — pain flared, blood streaming into the chaos.
Didn't matter.
I leapt.
---
> [FINAL THREAD ENGAGED.]
[EXECUTE: CHAOS STITCH.]
I hurled the Patch Tool forward as I soared through the broken storm.
Threads of rewriting code unraveled from the blade, spiraling outward like a net.
The threads wrapped the Heart — binding it, suffocating it.
For one impossible moment —
I saw it.
The original Architect.
Not a monster.
Not a villain.
Just... a creator who lost faith.
Who chose destruction because it was easier than trying again.
---
I whispered into the storm:
"It's not too late."
---
The threads tightened.
The Heart cracked.
Light poured outward.
Not blinding.
Warm.
Alive.
---
The vortex collapsed inward, pulling me into the light —
and then —
everything exploded.