The stairwell became a throat and we were the meal being swallowed upward.
Boots hammered stone behind us—dozens, maybe hundreds. Shouts bounced off the walls, distorted into something animal. Elara ran two steps ahead, sword already drawn, eyes scanning every shadow. The volunteers kept tight formation: Torin and Kael at the rear with spears leveled, Mirae darting between pillars for better sight lines, Dax nocking an arrow even as he sprinted.
I brought up the middle, half-turned, waiting for the first face to appear around the bend.
It didn't take long.
A helmeted guard burst into view—black plate, crimson tabard, halberd raised. He saw us and bellowed something inarticulate.
I focused.
*Delete.*
The guard disappeared mid-stride. Halberd clattered down the stairs like a dropped toy.
Two more appeared behind where he'd been.
*Delete. Delete.*
Empty armor tumbled.
But the stairwell was narrow. They kept coming—wave after wave funneling into the choke point. I could delete them faster than they arrived, but each deletion sent a tiny ripple through the air, a faint ozone stink that made my nose wrinkle.
Glitch's box flashed urgently.
```
[Cascade Warning: Repeated deletions in confined space]
Local strain spike: +0.7% per event
Current nexus integrity: 3.4%
Administrative ETA unchanged (72 hours remaining)
But you are accelerating secondary detection.
Lord Varn is en route. Level 68. Relic-class equipment. Personal rift-link detected.
Suggestion: Cease deletions. Conserve strain. Or delete the stairwell itself.
```
"Stairwell delete sounds tempting," I muttered between breaths, "but then we'd be falling through nothing."
Elara shot back over her shoulder, "Keep moving! The postern door is close!"
We hit level 1 at a dead run.
The storage chamber was no longer empty.
Twenty guards—maybe thirty—had formed a hasty line across the exit. Crossbows leveled. Swords drawn. A mage in dark robes stood at the back, hands already weaving violet glyphs that crackled like static.
The mage saw me first.
His eyes widened. "It's him—the Vanisher!"
Crossbow strings snapped.
Bolts flew.
I didn't think. Just reacted.
*Delete the projectiles.*
The volley vanished mid-air. Wooden shafts and iron tips simply ceased to exist. The guards blinked in confusion.
Then I locked onto the entire front rank.
*Delete.*
Fifteen sets of armor and weapons hit the floor in a metallic avalanche.
The remaining guards hesitated—long enough for Torin and Kael to crash into them with spears. Mirae darted low, hamstringing one. Dax loosed an arrow that took another through the throat.
Elara carved a path straight for the mage.
He panicked, flung a bolt of violet energy at her.
She twisted aside. The bolt struck a crate behind her—wood and contents vanished in a perfect sphere of nothing.
I stepped past the melee.
Focused on the mage.
*Delete.*
Gone.
The rest broke.
Some ran. Some dropped weapons and raised hands. Most just stared at the empty spaces where their comrades had stood.
We didn't stop to accept surrender.
We burst through the postern door into gray daylight.
The slope outside was chaos.
More guards pouring down from the main gate. Horns blaring. A massive figure in obsidian plate armor descending the main steps—Lord Varn himself—flanked by six knights in matching relic gear. Their armor shimmered with the same violet-black energy as the rift-anchor had.
Varn raised one gauntleted hand.
The air around him warped. A rift tore open behind him—small, controlled, spitting violet light. From it stepped two more constructs—larger than the ones in the undercroft, armed with greatswords that burned with contained void.
He hadn't come to negotiate.
Elara skidded to a halt at the base of the slope.
"Kai—"
"I see him."
Varn's voice carried like thunder without effort.
"Anomaly. You have trespassed. You have unmade my anchor. You will kneel, or you will be unmade."
I stepped forward, putting myself between him and the others.
"Pass on the kneeling. Bad for my posture."
His helmet visor lifted.
Scarred face. Mid-forties. Eyes the color of storm clouds. No fear—only cold calculation.
"You wield power without understanding. The button was never yours to keep."
I raised an eyebrow. "You know about the button?"
"I know about the fracture you widened. I stabilized it for decades. You have undone centuries of work in days."
"Sounds like a you problem."
He laughed—short, mirthless.
"Then let us see how well your toy fares against true authority."
He thrust his hand forward.
The two constructs charged.
I deleted them mid-stride.
Gone.
Varn didn't flinch.
Instead he closed his fist.
The air around me tightened—like gravity had doubled in a perfect sphere.
My knees buckled for half a second before I focused.
*Delete the compression field.*
The pressure vanished.
Varn tilted his head.
"Impressive. But limited."
He drew a longsword from his back—blade black as oil, edge flickering with violet. The relic armor pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
He advanced.
Each step cracked stone.
Elara moved to intercept.
"Don't—"
Too late.
Varn swung once—casual, almost lazy.
Elara parried. The force sent her skidding back five meters, boots gouging furrows in the dirt.
Torin roared and charged.
Varn backhanded him without looking. Torin flew, crashed against the slope, didn't get up.
I felt something hot and unfamiliar coil in my chest.
Anger.
Not the lazy, sarcastic kind I usually ran on.
Real anger.
"Enough."
Varn paused.
I locked eyes with him.
"You want the button? Come take it."
He smiled—thin, predatory.
Then he lunged.
Faster than anything human should move.
I deleted the space between us.
Reality hiccuped.
He reappeared two meters closer anyway—his armor had some kind of spatial anchor.
Clever.
He swung.
I deleted the blade mid-arc.
The hilt continued forward—useless now—bouncing off my hoodie.
Varn stared at the empty pommel.
Then at me.
For the first time, something like uncertainty flickered in those storm-cloud eyes.
I stepped closer.
"You stabilized the fracture to keep your little empire running. I get it. Power. Control. Tribute. The usual."
Another step.
"But you forgot one thing."
I focused—not on him.
On the armor.
Every plate. Every rune. Every relic enchantment woven into the metal.
*Delete the relic armor.*
Reality groaned.
The obsidian plate vanished layer by layer—pauldrons, greaves, breastplate, helm—until Lord Varn stood in plain linen tunic and trousers, swordless, rift-link flickering weakly at his wrist like a dying bulb.
He staggered.
Looked down at himself.
Then up at me.
"You… cannot—"
I cut him off.
"I just did."
He reached for the fading rift at his wrist—desperate.
I deleted that too.
The violet tear snapped shut.
Varn dropped to one knee.
Not in surrender.
In shock.
The remaining guards—those still standing—froze.
Elara limped back to my side, blood on her lip, eyes wide.
The blue box appeared—calm, almost smug.
```
[High-Value Target Neutralized (Non-Lethal Deletion Variant)]
Lord Varn – privileges revoked
Blackspire rift-link severed
Nexus strain reduced: 3.4% → 1.2%
Administrative ETA extended: additional 48 hours (total 120 hours remaining)
New title unlocked: [Armor Stripper]
Passive effect: +30% deletion precision against enchanted equipment
Side effect: Increased personal notoriety across Aetheria
You have just made a very loud statement, anomaly.
```
I looked down at Varn.
He met my gaze—defeated, but not broken.
"What now?" he rasped.
I shrugged.
"Stay here. Rebuild without the cheat code. Or don't. Your call."
I turned to the others.
"Let's go home."
Elara stared at me like she'd never seen me before.
Torin groaned, pushing himself up. Kael helped him stand.
Dax lowered his bow, shaking.
Mirae just whispered, "He took the lord's armor… with a thought."
We started walking up the slope—away from the keep, away from the stunned guards, away from the man who'd ruled through fear and now knelt in his smallclothes.
Behind us, Blackspire's horns fell silent.
The sky felt lighter.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, Glitch chuckled.
*120 hours.*
Five days.
Plenty of time to figure out what came next.
Or plenty of time for everything to go catastrophically wrong.
Either way, I was still holding the button.
And for the first time, it didn't feel quite so heavy.