The golden golem solidified. It was him. The boy from the memories. Kaelen Ravencrest, in his purest, most idealized form, forged from the vengeful soul of a dynasty. It had his face, his body, but its eyes were pools of molten gold, burning with a singular, terrifying purpose: reclamation.
[USURPER,] its voice was not a sound, but a psychic roar that hammered against my own consciousness. [MY BODY. MY NAME. MY LIFE. RETURN WHAT YOU HAVE STOLEN.]
It was a nightmare given form. A ghost made of pure law and lineage, and it was intrinsically a part of me. The power I had just devoured was now trying to devour me from the inside out.
My control was slipping. I could feel its will pressing against my own, trying to overwrite my identity. Memories that weren't mine—a childhood of courtly intrigue, the face of a mother I never knew—began to bleed into my own thoughts. I was Kaelen the Traveler, Kaelen the Sovereign. But this thing… it was Kaelen Ravencrest. And in this chamber, at the heart of its power, it was stronger.
"Fascinating," Seraphina murmured from the sidelines, her mad eyes gleaming with academic curiosity. "A paradox of identity. Who is the real you, I wonder?"
Lyra simply stared, her face a mask of pale, horrified confusion, seeing the face of the boy she grew up with warring with the monster who had claimed her.
I gritted my teeth, my will a fortress against the encroaching identity crisis. I was the sovereign. I would not be unwritten by a ghost.
I raised the Void-Eater's Hand, preparing to fight, to devour this karmic tumor. But the System screamed a dire warning.
[!!! WARNING! THE KARMIC ABSCESS IS CONCEPTUALLY LINKED TO YOUR OWN SOUL VIA THE DEVOURED ENERGY! TO ATTACK IT IS TO ATTACK YOURSELF!]
It was a perfect trap. I couldn't fight it. I couldn't run from it. It was a part of me. Any damage I dealt to it, I dealt to myself. It would be a slow, agonizing suicide.
The golden Kaelen smiled, a serene, terrifying expression. [YOU SEE? WE ARE ONE. SOON, ONLY I WILL REMAIN.]
The pressure intensified. My own memories began to feel distant, faded. The face of my mother from Earth… what did she look like? The taste of instant noodles… what was it? My original self was being erased.
No.
No.
I would rather be annihilated than be replaced. I would rather burn my own soul to ashes than let it be overwritten.
My mind, backed into the ultimate corner, found the only path left. It was not a path of victory. It was a path of mutual, absolute destruction. A final, sovereign act of defiance.
"Unit 734," I projected the thought, a final, desperate command. "The Sages… they spoke of a 'Factory Reset'. A Glitch Protocol to reunite the fragments. Is such a thing possible for a single, Main Core?"
[Theoretically,] the Librarian's voice was calm, a stark contrast to the storm in my soul. [A 'Core Collapse Protocol' exists. It is a system self-destruct sequence of last resort. It would unravel your Nexus Core, your soul, and your physical form into their constituent data streams. The resulting explosion would annihilate everything in this chamber, including the Karmic Abscess.]
"Annihilation," I repeated. "And me with it."
[Correct. Survival probability is 0.001%,] the AI stated. [However, the protocol was not designed for a soul like yours—a 'Traveler'. Your soul's origin is an anomaly from beyond the Overvoid. It does not conform to this reality's laws of destruction. There is a theoretical possibility that a minuscule, core fragment of your consciousness, your 'Sovereign Will', might survive the collapse. If this fragment were to encounter a new, compatible, and empty vessel in another reality… rebirth is a statistical possibility, though not a guarantee.]
A one-in-a-thousand chance. To be reborn, but as a shadow of my former self. My power, my memories, my System—all would be shattered, if not destroyed entirely.
I looked at the golden golem, its serene smile a mask of my impending erasure. I looked at Seraphina and Lyra, the last pieces of a game that no longer mattered.
I made my choice.
"Lyra. Seraphina," I said, my voice calm, the storm within now a quiet, deadly certainty. "Get out. As far as you can. Now."
For the first time, they both obeyed without question, sensing the absolute finality in my tone. They fled the chamber, leaving me alone with my other self.
[RUNNING WILL NOT SAVE THEM, USURPER. ONCE I HAVE RECLAIMED MY BODY, I WILL RECLAIM MY KINGDOM.]
"There won't be a kingdom left to reclaim," I said, a final, cold smile on my face.
"Unit 734. Initiate the Core Collapse Protocol. Authorization: Kaelen, Administrator, Sovereign."
[...COMMAND CONFIRMED.]
[I am sorry, Administrator. It has been a pleasure to serve you,] the Librarian's voice said, with what might have been the first hint of emotion I had ever heard from it.
[CORE COLLAPSE INITIATED. DETONATION IN 3...]
The golden Kaelen's eyes widened in horror, finally understanding my insane gambit.
[2...]
I closed my eyes. I didn't think of my past life, or this one. I thought only of a single, pure concept. Power. Survival. Sovereignty. I burned that single thought into the core of my being, the last piece of data I would save to the cloud.
[1...]
The world did not end in a bang. It ended in a silent flash of pure, white, conceptual light. The Nexus Codex, my soul, my body, and the golden ghost of Kaelen Ravencrest were all unwritten, deleted from reality in a cataclysm of pure data.
Time ceased to have meaning.
There was only a void. A silent, drifting consciousness. A single, stubborn thought: I am.
Then, a jolt. A feeling of falling. Of being pulled towards… something. A compatible vessel. An empty container.
Pain. Sensation. The shock of a physical body, weak, fragile, and blessedly mine.
I gasped, my new lungs filling with air that smelled of damp earth and strange, sweet flowers. I opened my eyes.
I was lying in a forest clearing, the canopy of impossibly large, luminous trees filtering the light of two moons in the sky above. This was not Aethelgard.
I sat up. My body was that of a young man, perhaps sixteen, thin and malnourished. I was wearing simple, rough-spun clothes. There were no Dragon Veins, no Abyssal Physique. I was a baseline human.
Panic, a long-forgotten emotion, tried to surface, but I crushed it.
"System?" I whispered, my voice hoarse. "Status."
A flicker. A cascade of glitching, corrupted runes. Then, a screen, a pale, fractured ghost of its former self, materialized in my vision.
[...S..S..System Reboot... f-f-failed.]
[CORE FRAGMENT DAMAGED (98%).]
[Most f-f-functions... OFFLINE.]
[USER SOUL INTEGRITY: 0.12%.]
[Name: ???]
[Cultivation: None.]
[System Points (SP): 0]
[Remaining Functions: [INVENTORY (EMPTY)], [QUEST BOARD (CORRUPTED)].]
It was a catastrophic failure. I was a ghost in a new body, my greatest weapon shattered, my power gone.
I was alone. I was weak. I was unknown.
A slow, genuine smile spread across my new face.
It was perfect.
No rivals. No prophecies. No Architect, no Sages, no vengeful ghosts. No one in this new universe knew my name or what I was capable of. I was a blank slate.
The quest for power had not ended. It had just begun its second, purer, and far more dangerous chapter. The System was broken, but it was not gone. I would rebuild it. I would reclaim my power. And this time, there would be no distractions.
But as I took my first, shaky steps in this new world, a final notification, a single, glitched line of text, appeared on my broken interface. It was a remnant of the old world, a final, parting twist from the chaos I had left behind.
[...INVENTORY... 1 new it-t-tem detected... transferr..d before Core C-C-Collapse...]
[ITEM: The Soul of Lyra (Fragmented).]