[PHASE THREE – INITIATED]
Warning: System Integrity 42%
World Stability: UNDEFINED
Trial Type: "Faction War – Broken Crown"
Objective: Control or Collapse the Source.
I don't remember falling asleep.
But I remember waking up.
Not to the smell of smoke or the sound of Reapers.
To data.
Lines of code ran through the air like veins—pulsing purple and gold. Every step I took left behind glowing footprints. The grass beneath my feet glitched in and out of existence.
This wasn't a graveyard anymore.
This was a code jungle.
And I could feel it breathing.
Trinity's voice echoed from behind a pillar of corrupted stone.
"Trey."
I turned. Her Mark was stable, but the flame around her body shimmered blue now—like her power had evolved with the new phase.
"You feel it too?" she asked.
I nodded. "The Game's broken. And we're the ones holding the cracks together."
[Lucid System Key Perk Activated]
You can see hidden factions, glitched assets, forbidden zones.
Reality is now editable… at a cost.
A burst of static in the air interrupted us.
Orion appeared in a flash of bone-code and ash.
"You two," they said breathlessly. "We have a problem."
"What kind of problem?" I asked.
Orion didn't answer.
They just pointed.
We followed their gaze—
And saw it.
A floating monolith, half-Reaper and half-Olympian in design, rising out of the glitchscape.
At its base: players.
Fighting.
Bleeding.
Dying.
And at the top?
Sable Ryn.
Her black crown now fully formed.
A Watcher sigil burned gold into her forehead.
A broken Reaper mask fused to her right cheek.
And behind her…
Reapers kneeling.
Not attacking.
Not resisting.
Obeying.
[Sable Ryn – Role: Crowned Null]
Faction: Independent
Status: Unstable Queen
Current Goal: Seize the Core. Rewrite the Game in her image.
"She's ahead of us," Trinity whispered.
I clenched my fists, soul threads whipping into the air around me like smoke.
"She's not just ahead," I said. "She's rewriting the rules before we can."
A system notification blinked across the sky for all Players to see:
⚔️ PHASE 3 FINALE UNLOCKED
Two Paths to Victory:
🔱 Claim the Core – Rewrite the Game
⚰️ Break the Chain – End All Trials Permanently
The first team to reach the Core decides the fate of every soul inside.
Trinity turned to me.
"What's the play, Trey?"
Orion added: "If we split up, we die. If we charge, we burn."
I closed my eyes.
Tried to remember Keon's voice.
"Don't play their rules…"
Write your own.
When I opened them, I smiled.
"We don't split."
"We don't charge."
"We corrupt it from the inside."
[New Strategy Created: Codeblooded Heist]
Objective: Infiltrate the Core through corrupted backdoor discovered in Chapter 18.
Risk: Extremely high.
Reward: Rewrite the rewrite.
Trinity stepped beside me.
Orion summoned their weapon.
And the three of us stood together, facing the corrupted throne of the Game itself.
We were no longer Players.
We were the virus they never coded for.