The peak of the memory root pulsed with images that defied logic. It wasn't just showing what could've happened—it was showing what never should have. A version of the world where the system was never created, where Nexus Core never existed, where every player, every war, every death… never happened.
Kazen climbed the shifting stairs toward the peak, each step dragging his mind into alternate realities. One showed him as a normal student, another as a failed coder, another where he died before ever logging in.
He forced himself forward, ignoring the memories clawing at him.
Behind him, Oroth fought off wave after wave of corrupted flashbacks—literal projections of players consumed by their regrets. Rael deflected collapsing identities with his glaive, pushing through collapsing fragments of logic.
Patchling floated over the battlefield, whispering lines of broken code into the wind, trying to counter the ever-expanding breach.
At the summit, Kazen found User Zero.
He stood beside the core of the root—a heart-shaped crystal pulsing in and out of existence. Each pulse rewrote history a little more. Entire player names vanished from the world logs. Entire zones flickered out.
"You built all this," Kazen said quietly. "From stolen moments."
User Zero didn't respond with words. He raised his hand, and the unreality breach opened fully.
Kazen was pulled into a white void. No interface. No system. Just *absence*.
A voice echoed—not User Zero's, but something older.
you do not belong
Kazen spoke back.
"Neither does he."
He activated the last of his system—his true admin access.
> Admin Key Unlocked: Zero Rejection Protocol
> Action: Restore Base Timeline
The world outside paused. The tower cracked. User Zero turned sharply, surprised.
From the base, Oroth threw a shard of proto-code into the air. Rael surged forward, slamming the anti-fragment glaive into the tower's core.
The memory root shattered.
Reality reasserted itself.
Kazen landed back in the real world, gasping. The void gone. The root destroyed.
User Zero was gone.
But the breach remained—open, unstable, and growing.
Patchling's voice came over the system channel.
"This isn't over. Something woke up inside that void."
And far beyond the known world, something else stirred.