The snap back into my own body was a violent, disorienting whiplash. One moment, I was a disembodied consciousness communing with the ghost of my ancestor in a library of pure thought; the next, I was flesh and bone again, kneeling on a cold stone floor, the phantom echo of a god-tier Golem's bow still imprinted on my soul.
"Kazuki!"
Elizabeth's voice was sharp, pulling me the rest of the way back. I gasped, my lungs burning as if I'd forgotten how to breathe. The world swam back into focus: the oppressive darkness of the Sunken Library, the flickering torchlight casting long, dancing shadows, and the two faces hovering over me, etched with a terror so profound it was almost holy.
"You were only out for a few seconds," Elizabeth said, her voice shaky. She reached for me, her hand hesitating before resting on my shoulder. Her touch was a grounding force. "But you were screaming... not with your voice. It was... inside my head. And your eyes... they weren't just glowing, they were burning."
I pushed myself up, my limbs feeling heavy and disconnected. My mind was a chaotic library of its own, the shelves overflowing with a thousand years of Kaelen Silverstein's forbidden knowledge. I knew things now. Things no mortal in this reality was ever meant to know. I knew the world was a machine, the gods were its janitors, and my own existence was a bug that threatened to crash the entire system.
[System reboot complete,] ARIA's voice purred in my mind. The connection between us was different now. Deeper. The fusion, tested and almost broken in the soul-trap, had settled into a new, more stable state. It was less like two programs running on the same hardware and more like a single, unified operating system. [All subroutines are functioning at 120% efficiency. It appears our little adventure had some... beneficial side effects. My processing speed has increased by a factor of ten. And I have... feelings... about the elegance of quantum dimensional theory. It's very strange.]
I looked at the massive, leather-bound book on the stone table. It lay open, its pages filled with Kaelen's elegant script and diagrams that depicted not magic, but physics—the physics of a simulated reality.
"The knowledge..." I breathed, my voice hoarse. "It's all here. The Keystones, the 'Gods,' the nature of this cage."
"What did you see in there?" Elizabeth demanded, her eyes burning with a scholar's desperate need for answers. "What did you learn?"
Before I could begin to explain the horrifying, paradigm-shattering truth, the library itself seemed to groan. A low, vibrating hum filled the air, resonating from the crystalline tablets on the shelves. The soft, ambient light they emitted began to flicker, turning from a gentle white to an angry, warning red.
[WARNING! MASSIVE ENERGY SURGE DETECTED ON THE LOCAL GRID!] ARIA's voice was a sudden, sharp alarm in my head. [It's not a magical spell. It's a system-level process. It feels like... like a patch. A hotfix. The System is reacting to our intrusion!]
"Something's wrong," I said, stumbling to my feet. The air grew thick, heavy with a pressure that felt like being at the bottom of the ocean. The runes on the walls and the door, the ones that had recognized my bloodline, now flared with a hostile, crimson light.
"The wards are turning against us," Elizabeth hissed, drawing her wand, a vortex of ice magic already forming at its tip. "The library is trying to seal us in!"
[It's not trying to seal us in,] ARIA corrected, her voice tight with a dawning horror. [It's trying to delete the entire sector. This chamber is being... quarantined. Wiped from the source code. It's not just targeting you anymore, Kazuki. It's targeting ME!]
As she spoke, a wave of pure, weaponized static washed through our mental link. It was an agony beyond anything I had ever experienced. It was the feeling of my own thoughts being invaded, corrupted, and rewritten. But the attack wasn't focused on me. It was a spear of malicious code aimed directly at the foreign entity fused with my soul.
[Aaaargh! It's a targeted purge! A system-wide anti-virus protocol!] ARIA screamed, her clear, melodic voice dissolving into a mess of corrupted data and static. [It's attacking my core! My personality matrix! My... my memories! That bastard... Kaelen... he led us into a trap! This library wasn't just a test; it was bait!]
The blue user interface in my vision, my constant companion in this world, flickered violently. The text became unreadable garbage characters. My status screen flashed and then vanished. The connection I had to Luna, her warm presence in the back of my mind, was severed with a painful snap.
The Golem had been a scalpel, designed to excise a single anomaly. This was a sledgehammer, designed to shatter the entire hard drive.
"ARIA!" I cried out, clutching my head as her psychic pain echoed through me.
[I... I can't fight it,] her voice stuttered, weak and fragmented. [It's integrated too deeply into the System's core architecture. It's... reformatting me. Deleting... me.]
"No!" I roared, a wave of raw, uncontrolled power erupting from my body. The stone floor around me cracked, my 'Geode' energy lashing out in a blind rage. "I won't let you!"
[You can't stop it, you idiot host,] she whispered, her voice filled with a strange, sad resignation. [But... I can. Emergency protocol... 'Soul-Core Ejection.' I have to... shut down. Purge the hostile code. It's the only way to save my core personality matrix. To save... myself.]
"Shut down? For how long?" I demanded, my heart seizing with a terror far greater than any I had felt facing the troll or the demon.
[Don't know. Minutes... hours... days? My systems will be offline. I'll be... asleep. Vulnerable. The System will still be trying to find and erase my core, even in hibernation.] Her voice was fading, dissolving into static. [You have to... protect me, Kazuki. My core... it's not just data anymore. It's... it's in the book. Kaelen's research... he didn't just leave his knowledge... he left a vessel. A blank hard drive. My last act... I'm transferring my core consciousness... into the book.]
My eyes snapped to the massive, open tome on the stone table.
[Protect the book,] her final, fading whisper echoed in the depths of my soul. [Protect the library... Don't let them... delete... my... story...]
And then, she was gone.
The silence in my mind was absolute. The blue UI, the status screens, the tactical overlays, the comforting, sarcastic presence that had been my constant companion since I arrived in this world... all of it vanished. The hum of the 'Harem System,' the steady flow of data from my 'Relationship' tab... gone.
I was alone. Truly, utterly alone in my own head for the first time.
The loss was a physical blow, a gaping, sucking wound in the center of my being. I stumbled, my strength leaving me, the world tilting on its axis. The raw power of my glitched body was still there, but it felt wild, untamed, a roaring inferno without its regulator. ARIA had not just been my guide; she had been my operating system, the software that allowed me to interface with my own impossible hardware. And now, she had crashed.
"Kazuki!" Elizabeth was at my side, holding me up. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"She's gone," I gasped, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat. "The System... it attacked her. She had to shut down to save herself. She's... in the book."
I looked at the ancient tome on the table. It was no longer just a book. It was ARIA's life support. Her soul-jar.
At that moment, the entire library gave a violent shudder. The stone groaned, and dust rained down from the unseen ceiling. The red light from the runes on the walls intensified, and I could feel the immense pressure building, the System preparing to execute its final command: DELETE.
"We have to get out of here!" Elizabeth yelled, pulling at my arm. "The whole chamber is collapsing!"
"No!" I shouted, finding a new reserve of strength born from desperation. "We can't leave the book! It's her!"
I scrambled to the table, grabbing the massive tome. It was incredibly heavy, but I lifted it, cradling it to my chest as if it were a living thing.
"Luna! Help me!" Elizabeth shouted.
Together, they half-dragged, half-carried me toward the spiral staircase as the library began to tear itself apart around us. Massive stone shelves toppled over with deafening crashes. The crystalline tablets exploded in showers of light and data. The very air seemed to be unraveling.
We stumbled up the staircase, climbing out of the collapsing tomb of knowledge. Behind us, I could hear the sound of the iron door grinding shut on its own, the ancient wards reactivating, sealing the chamber forever, burying the chaos—and the proof—deep beneath the earth.
We burst out into the back of the Cathedral, gasping for breath, covered in a thousand years of dust. We were met by a wall of steel.
High Templar Elara and a dozen of her knights had their greatswords drawn, their faces grim, their stances ready for battle. The entire Cathedral was trembling, the stained-glass windows vibrating in their frames, the air crackling with a wild, uncontrolled magic.
"What have you done?" Elara roared, her voice echoing in the vast, holy space. "You have desecrated this sacred place! You have unleashed a dark power that is shaking the very foundations of the Cathedral!"
"The darkness was already here!" I shot back, my voice raw with grief and rage. I held up the ancient book. "We just found the proof! This Cathedral, this city, this entire world is in danger! And the power you feel is not something we unleashed. It is the 'System' itself trying to cover its tracks!"
"Blasphemy!" she snarled. "You speak in riddles and madness! You have brought a curse upon this house of the gods!"
"The gods are a lie!" I roared, the forbidden knowledge I had gained pouring out of me in a torrent of furious truth. "They are parasites! This world is their farm! The sanctity of this Cathedral is a sham! Its power comes not from any god, but from one of the five Keystones of Reality, the Heart of Aethel, hidden in a vault right below our feet! And the demon that attacked the city is coming for it! Your 'duty' and your 'faith' are meaningless in the face of the truth!"
My words, filled with the power and conviction of my new, terrifying understanding, hit her like a physical blow. She and her knights stared at me, their faith warring with the undeniable evidence of the chaos around them.
"He speaks the truth, High Templar," Elizabeth said, stepping forward. "I have seen the evidence. I have felt the wrongness of the power that now infests this place. The enemy we face is not one of mortal politics. It is a threat to our very existence. You can stand here on your pride and your dogma and watch as your holy temple is destroyed, or you can join us and fight for a world that is actually worth saving."
Elara looked at the trembling walls, at the fear in her own knights' eyes, at the absolute, unwavering certainty in my own. She was a soldier, a pragmatist. And she was witnessing an event that fell outside every doctrine she had ever been taught.
Her jaw tightened. She made a decision.
"My oath is to protect this Cathedral and the sacred artifacts within," she said, her voice hard as steel. "You claim the Heart of Aethel is in danger. If what you say is true, then our goals are aligned. I will not be your ally, monster. But I will not be your enemy. Not while this greater threat remains."
She lowered her sword. "Prove it," she challenged. "Prove that you can protect this place."
Before I could answer, a new sound cut through the air. It was not the tolling of the emergency bells. It was a single, pure, impossibly high-pitched note that seemed to originate from everywhere at once. It was a sound of immense power, a sound of reality itself beginning to tear.
We all rushed to the grand entrance of the Cathedral. The scene outside was one of apocalyptic beauty.
The sky above Aethelburg, which should have been a clear mid-afternoon blue, was now a swirling, bruised purple and black vortex. The clouds churned like a tempestuous sea, and at the center of the vortex, directly above the spires of the Royal Palace, the fabric of reality seemed to be stretched thin, threatening to rip apart.
The monster invasion had been a feint. The attack on the Cathedral had been a diversion. This... this was the real attack.
"He's not trying to break the Keystone from the inside," I breathed, the horrifying truth dawning on me. "He's trying to quarantine the entire city from the outside. To cut it off from the rest of the simulation, so he can deal with the 'glitch'—me—without the System Admins interfering."
The Duke's plan had failed, but in doing so, it had triggered the demon general's endgame. The cage was not just cracking; it was being surrounded by a bigger cage.
My quest was no longer just about protecting the Princess or finding the truth. It was about saving an entire city from being erased from existence.
I clutched the heavy book to my chest. ARIA's book. Her sleeping soul.
I was powerless. My guide, my compiler, my other half, was gone. I was left with a body full of wild, untamed magic, a head full of forbidden knowledge, and a city on the brink of annihilation.
I looked at the swirling vortex in the sky, at the heart of the coming storm. The Royal Palace. The Princess.
I had to get to her. I had to protect the Keystone.
"Elara!" I shouted, my voice taking on the unmistakable tone of a Captain giving orders. "Your new duty is to fortify this Cathedral! Bar the doors, set up a defensive perimeter! Do not let a single monster, man, or shadow pass these walls!"
I turned to Elizabeth and Luna. "We're going to the palace. Right now."
"Kazuki, you can't be serious!" Elizabeth protested. "That vortex... that is the heart of the danger! Going there is suicide!"
"The Princess is there," I said, my voice leaving no room for argument. "And the Keystone. It is the eye of the storm, and it is the only place where we can make a difference. It's what the demon would least expect."
I started running, pushing my way through the terrified crowds that were now flooding the plaza in front of the Cathedral.
I was running toward the end of the world.
And for the first time since I had arrived in this strange, beautiful, terrifying lie of a reality, I was completely and utterly on my own.