The moment the four of them touched the Original Pen to the altar, it didn't generate a burst of light, but a sigh of reality. In New Eden, the citizens felt a collective shiver; the violet sky trembled, and for a brief second, everything solid became translucent. When stability returned, the universe was no longer the same. The Superior Realm had been formally deleted, and its mass of data recycled to sustain the new Shared Pattern.
However, creation is not a clean process, especially when the "inkwell" is made of obsidian blood and Void residues.
"It is done," Lyra whispered, her hands still trembling over the altar of dead stars. "The system is running. Time has resumed flowing, but our writing was... too fast. There are compilation errors."
Yun Caos rose from the Empty Throne. He felt vast, his consciousness extended over trillions of kilometers, but sharing the burden with Meilin, Shara, and Lyra had allowed him to keep the core of his identity. He still remembered who he was, though he now saw the world as a set of code lines and narrative intentions.
"Yun, look at the edges of New Eden," Shara said, her voice resonating with a concern that crossed dimensions.
Through the omnipresent vision of the Throne, they saw the problem. Where the new reality met the remnants of the old, the space had not merged perfectly. Instead, Glitch Zones emerged—areas of visual and physical static where matter behaved erratically. Quartz trees growing downward, fire that froze, and time itself moving in five-second loops.
And from within these zones, something was crawling out.
"Discarded Drafts," Meilin hissed, her black plasma wings once again glowing with intensity. "The Seven Architects threw away millions of versions of the world before reaching their 'perfection.' Now that their file system has crashed, these versions are trying to manifest."
On the borders of New Eden, creatures made of incomplete sketches—beings with multiple unfinished faces, limbs of smoke, and voices that sounded like tearing paper—began to attack the Void-Born settlements. They were not motivated by malice, but by an existential hunger; they wanted to "steal" the definition of Yun's citizens to complete their own forms.
"If they enter the city, they will corrupt the database of our protected ones," Lyra explained, projecting a map of the incursions. "A single touch from these drafts can turn a Void-Born into a heap of meaningless scribbles."
Yun gripped the Original Pen. His first act as co-author would not be rest, but Debugging.
"We will not allow the discarded past of the Architects to destroy our present," Yun declared. "Meilin, you lead the strike force. Burn the static. Shara, use your network to stabilize the citizens; if their identity is strong, the Glitch cannot touch them. Lyra, stay with me here at the Throne. I need you to identify the origin nodes of these zones so I can erase them permanently."
Meilin did not wait. She dove from the Blank Space directly into the largest conflict zone in New Eden's eastern sector. She hit the ground like a meteor of black fire, and her mere presence began to incinerate the surrounding static.
"Go back to the trash of history!" Meilin roared, her plasma daggers slicing through a sketch-giant trying to devour a housing tower.
At the Throne, Yun closed his eyes. He dipped the Pen into the Obsidian Inkwell and began drawing "Error Correction" lines over the map of the universe. Every movement of the Pen required absolute concentration; he had to be precise not to erase real life along with the Glitch.
"Revision: Layer Stability!" Yun wrote.
On the battlefield, the citizens felt a wave of firmness. The colors of the world became more vibrant, and the static began to retreat. But the drafts were persistent. From a particularly deep Glitch zone, something emerged that made Yun hesitate: a version of himself, unfinished, but carrying all the rage he had felt on the day he was first betrayed.
It was the Draft Yun, an echo from a timeline the Architects had deleted because he was "too violent to be controlled."
"So... this is the new author?" the Draft asked, his voice a distortion of hate. "Let me show you how a story that should never have been written ends."