Far to the west of Hollowbone, past the Stormquartz Vale and across the dead sands of the Dread Mirage, stood a crimson palace wrapped in thorns of steel and rune-fire. The locals called it the Bastion of Bloom, though few dared speak its true name: The Red Queen's Cradle.
Inside, a girl stood before a lake of glass.
She looked no older than twenty, barefoot, her long auburn hair trailing like wildfire across the obsidian floor. Dozens of mana-thorns floated behind her like ribbons, each tipped with a glowing eye. Her name was Seraphyne, the Red Queen. And she had just seen Nyx.
Projected before her in the mirrored lake was the Hollowbone battle replay—Vector-03 collapsing into silence. She watched it all: the recursive blade, the gravity rewrite, the final uninstall command.
"Fascinating," she whispered. Her voice echoed with thousands of digital whispers beneath it. "The Code Architect is real."
Behind her, an automaton scribe hovered nervously. "Your Majesty, the Iron Citadel has declared him a global-class anomaly. Should we—"
"Silence," she said. "I was waiting for something like him."
Seraphyne turned from the mirror and strode through her throne chamber. At her touch, runes bloomed across the walls like living circuits. She entered her war room—a floating sphere of red data threads and twitching logic runes suspended over a pool of screaming souls.
SYSTEM: QUEEN-NODE INITIATED
COMPILING STRATEGY TREE…
TARGET: CODE ARCHITECT [NYX]
PRIORITY: INTERFACE / ABSORB / MUTATE
She smiled.
"I want him brought to me. Alive. Untouched. Unedited."
"By what force, Your Majesty?" the scribe asked.
She extended her hand.
A dozen data-thorns plunged into the pool below. From its depths, forms rose—warriors wrapped in red glass, Aetherbit assassins, logic beasts designed to hunt anomalies in broken space. The Red Queen's elite.
"Deploy the Bloodgarden Protocol."
Back at Hollowbone…
Echo burst into the main hall. "Nyx—divine thread activity is spiking in the west. Multiple unknown operators syncing to you by name."
Lyra gasped. "Are they teleporting here?"
Nyx opened his palm. The Root Anchor pulsed—showing ripples in the code.
"No. They're calling me into their field. And the invitation's not encrypted."
Incoming Signal: RED QUEEN HANDSHAKE
Status: No encryption / No hostility / Challenge Flag: ACTIVE
"A duel," Nyx muttered.
Echo frowned. "Or a trap. The Bloodgarden Protocol is older than the gods. It turns battlefields into sentient arenas."
Nyx stared into the crimson glyph floating in the air.
Then he smiled. "Good. I was getting bored."
He stepped into the glyph and vanished.
The Queen had risen.
And the Architect was answering.