The silence in my new, half-eaten pet reality was absolute.
The resurrected hero stood there, blinking, his handsome, noble face a mask of profound confusion. He looked at his hands, then at the strange, glitching world around him. He looked like a character who had just walked off the page and found himself in the wrong book entirely.
But his eyes, the clear, honest eyes of a classic, archetypal hero, finally landed on Lia. And they widened with a dawning, impossible recognition.
"Lyra?" he whispered, his voice thick with a love and a sorrow that was a million years old. "By the gods… it's you. I thought I had lost you."
Lia, my Echo, my Queen, my perfect, logical extension of my own will, was frozen. Her serene composure, a thing I had thought unbreakable, was shattered. She stared at him, and for the first time, I saw a ghost in her eyes. The ghost of the woman she had once been.
This was a story I had never read. A part of her past I had never known existed.
"Who the fuck," I said, my voice a low, dangerous growl that cut through the reunion, "is this?"
The hero's gaze snapped to me. The soft, loving light in his eyes was instantly replaced by a wary, righteous fire. He instinctively stepped in front of Lia, a shield between her and the dark, unknown god. "I do not know what dark magic this is," he declared, his hand reaching for a sword that was no longer there. "But I will not allow you to harm her, fiend."
"Fiend?" I chuckled, a cold, sharp sound. "Boy, you have no idea. Now, answer the question. Who are you?"
"I am Sir Gideon," he said, his voice ringing with a conviction that was both noble and, to me, deeply irritating. "Knight of the Silver Flame. And I am her sworn protector."
The Bard King, now a cowering, shackled entity bound by my corporate takeover, chimed in with a helpful, terrified whisper in my mind. [He is from 'The Song of Silver Flame'! One of my oldest, most popular narratives! A classic! A hero, a lost princess, a dark lord… you'd love it. Very tragic ending.]
I ignored him. My full attention was on Lia. She was still silent, her logical mind clearly struggling to process a variable that it had no data for. A ghost from a past she no longer possessed.
My System, ever the pragmatist, offered its own, blunt assessment.
[SOVEREIGN'S WHIM: DELETING THE PAST]
[Description: A narrative anomaly from a forgotten timeline has manifested. It represents a direct, emotional challenge to your consort's loyalty and your own, established narrative of ownership. This is an inefficient and dramatically unsatisfying plot complication.]
[Objective: Erase him. Now. Before he can say another word. A clean, simple deletion. Re-establish the status quo.]
It was the logical choice. The sovereign's choice. This 'Gideon' was a bug. A piece of corrupted data. A sentimental ghost that threatened the stability of my perfect, new world. He was a threat to my ownership of Lia.
I raised the Void-Eater's Hand. The power to unmake him was a simple thought away.
And then, Lia spoke.
Wait, her telepathic voice was not a command. It was a plea. A fragile, trembling thing I had not heard from her since she was a broken doll at the bottom of the sea.
I paused, my gaze locked on her.
I… remember him, she sent, the thought a whisper of a forgotten life. He was… important. Before. Before the Warden. Before you.
I felt a surge of cold, possessive fury. The ghost was not just a story. It was a part of her. A part I had not created. A part I did not own.
"This is not your past, Lia," I said, my voice a low, dangerous growl. "Your past is me. Your present is me. Your future is me. Anything else is a lie."
"Is it?" Gideon challenged, stepping forward, his heroic nature overriding his fear. "Look at her! She is a prisoner! Whatever you have done to her, I will undo it. She is not yours to command."
He was trying to save her. A noble, stupid hero, trying to rescue the princess from the dark lord. He had no idea that the princess had long since become a willing part of the darkness.
Or so I had thought.
Lia looked from Gideon, her forgotten hero, to me, her sovereign god. And I saw the war in her eyes. A war between the ghost of a past love and the absolute, undeniable reality of her present loyalty.
And then, she made her choice.
She stepped away from Gideon, moving to stand at my side. She looked at the resurrected hero, and her voice, when it came, was her own again. The cold, logical, unshakable voice of the Warden.
"You are a memory, Sir Gideon," she said, her telepathic voice now resonating with a sad, final authority. "A beautiful, noble story. But it is over. My reality is with him now. My purpose is his."
She had chosen me. The logic of her current existence had overpowered the ghost of her past emotion. I felt a surge of dark, triumphant satisfaction.
Gideon stared, his noble face crumbling with a fresh, profound grief. He had been resurrected into a world where his love, his very purpose, had already chosen another.
But as I prepared to finally, mercifully delete this tragic, romantic fool from my reality, a new, unforeseen twist emerged.
The final, game-changing revelation.
Gideon looked at me, at the dark, sovereign god who had stolen his princess. And the grief in his eyes was replaced by a dawning, terrible, and utterly impossible understanding.
"That power…" he whispered, his gaze fixed not on my face, but on the core of my being, on the Omnistructure itself. "That… that signature. The chaos. The will to unmake and remake. I have felt it before."
"Many have," I said with a dismissive shrug.
"No," he said, his voice trembling as a forgotten memory, a piece of his own, lost story, came rushing back to him. "Not like this. In my world… in 'The Song of Silver Flame'… there was a final villain. A being we never saw. The true god of the Dark Lord we fought. The one who wrote the prophecies that led to the fall of Lyra's kingdom. The one they called 'The Author of All Lies'."
He stared at me, his eyes wide with a horrified, soul-shattering recognition.
"It's you," he breathed. "It was always you."
The twist was not that Lia's old hero had returned.
It was that in her original story, in a life I had never known, in a past that had happened eons before I had ever fallen to Earth… I had already been her ultimate, unseen, and final villain. The entire, tragic story that had defined her original existence had been a game I had apparently played, and forgotten, lifetimes ago.