The vote did not finish.
The Wheel had paused it, mid-ascension, mid-system confirmation. The world around Saylor had frozen, but not from time manipulation. This was something deeper—a mechanical hesitation. The kind a machine made when it didn't know which rule to follow anymore.
Lucia watched from a ledge above, her chain vibrating with an unknown frequency. The field below her shimmered like broken glass, and at the center stood Saylor Cogni—voted into godhood by Remnants, rejected by the Wheel, and standing atop a throne that had no origin.
> [ELEVATION: DENIED] [RECURSIVE ERROR: COGNI, S. = PLAYER/GOD DUALITY NOT SUPPORTED]
The system messages crackled like whispers through wet wires.
Saylor breathed slowly.
His hands trembled—not from fear, but from convergence. Every Remnant he had bound. Every memory he had stolen. Every god he had seen die. They were all trying to exist in him at once.
He could hear their voices.
One said, You opened the gate.
Another whispered, You weren't supposed to survive.
And one voice—cold, patient, neither Remnant nor god—said nothing at all. It was simply watching.
---
The throne pulsed beneath him. Not a seat, not a crown. Just shards—metal, crystal, code—held together by shared regret.
It had grown from the Wheel's splinters.
And now it wanted something in return.
Brant, still recovering from the last mirror feedback, pushed forward. His armor was cracked, and one of his bindings trailed blood across the platform.
"Saylor," he called. "It's not a throne. It's a tether."
Lucia heard it too. Her chain recoiled the closer she stepped.
> [CHAIN INTEGRITY: COMPROMISED NEAR ROOT NODE]
"If you stay," Brant said, voice shaking, "you won't be you anymore."
Saylor looked at them both.
"I know," he said.
And he sat.
---
The throne reacted instantly.
A burst of recursive fire shot into the sky, freezing time in a ten-meter radius. Reality bent inward like origami folding itself backwards. Lucia was pushed back by the blast. Brant collapsed again, eyes flickering.
Saylor screamed.
Not in pain. In memory.
He was being shown every Field that had ever existed.
Worlds where players died screaming.
Games that never ended.
A version of himself—dead at god 3.
Another—worshipped by the Wheel.
And one, distant, but clear—crowned in ash, not gold.
> [THRONE INTERFACE: MEMORY FUSION AT 67%] [ERROR: PERSONALITY INTEGRITY BREACH]
---
Lucia gripped her chain and launched it forward.
She hit the barrier around the throne. Energy backlash slammed her down. Her vision went white, then black.
She heard a voice inside her mind. One not her own.
"You can't break him out. He already chose."
Lucia opened her eyes to see one of Saylor's bound Remnants standing beside her—silent, face blurred.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
> "Where gods are recycled."
---
Inside the throne, Saylor saw Aetherune.
Not fully formed. Just a shape, a whisper, a concept of something waiting to be born.
It looked like him.
But taller.
Older.
Eyes full of stars and a mouth full of static.
> "You're not a god," the voice said. "You're a recursion trap. You absorb. But you never become."
> "You're the error that writes itself into memory."
Saylor clenched his fists.
> [UNHOLY DEVOTION: STABILITY LOST]
The Remnants screamed inside him. The chain links binding their memories began to dissolve.
He reached out toward the image.
"If I can't be the system..."
"Then I'll rewrite the rules."
---
Lucia crawled across the shattered platform as the throne began to fragment.
Saylor stood.
No longer sitting.
No longer rising.
Just standing, in defiance.
The throne cracked under him. The system froze again.
> [SYSTEM VOTE TERMINATED] [PLAYER REJECTED: TIER Ω ACCESS DENIED] [COGNI, S. — RESET FLAG IMPRINTED]
Brant coughed, barely conscious. "What... what did you do?"
Saylor looked up at the fractured sky.
"I said no."
And the throne exploded.