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: The Monarch Awakens*
The void was not silent. It pulsed.
Fiona stood at the edge of the *Nexus Vault*, the last stable bridge between magic and machine. The stars above shimmered like data points in a broken system, and beneath her boots, the floor pulsed with power—an ancient circuit, alive and breathing with forgotten code. This was her domain. Her creation. Her burden.
She was the *Monarch of MagicTech*—a being forged from the collapsing union of two dying forces. The last sovereign of logic and spellwork. A mind of clarity. A soul of chaos.
And something was wrong.
A low hum echoed through the Vault, the kind that didn't come from any known source—more like a feeling. Something ancient was pressing in on her domain from the outside. Something old enough to remember when monarchs were gods.
Fiona moved through the inner chamber, her armor shifting with her—thin plates of stardust alloy over a body laced with glowing tattoos, each one a living circuit inscribed with forbidden spells. She raised her right arm. Her gauntlet flickered to life, projecting a complex interface of magical glyphs layered over neural command lines.
"System scan," she whispered.
Lines of glowing data flowed through the air, but the results didn't make sense. Readings showed energy fluctuations across *eight monarch realms*—including three that were believed to be dead or sealed. One reading pulsed brighter than the rest.
*Davian. Space-Time. Active.*
She frowned. "That's impossible."
Before she could process it, the Vault trembled. A jagged tear split the chamber, right down the middle—*a rupture in reality itself*. It wasn't a portal. It wasn't even a crack. It was a wound.
Raw code and arcane energy screamed into the space, lashing out like electric vines. Alarms triggered. Drones flickered. The floor glitched beneath her Fiona didn't run. She raised both hands and *rewrote* the breach with raw force. Her mind snapped into overdrive, calculations running alongside incantations. Digital sigils spun from her palms, linking with unstable energy and redirecting it into a stabilizing matrix.
The rupture fought back.
Something was trying to come through.
Then… a voice. Not heard. *Injected.* Directly into her mind.
> "The Monarchs must rise… or fall."
It was deep. Ancient. Cold.
Then silence.
The rupture sealed with a sharp snap of collapsing space. The Vault dimmed. Systems shut down one by one.
Fiona stood in the quiet.
That voice wasn't a warning. It was a challenge. A game had started—and she had just been forced into the first move.
She turned, eyes glowing. "Activate Archive Mode. Summon all known monarch frequencies."
A single, pulsing light appeared in the dark.
There were others.
She was no longer alone.
And the war of monarchs… had begun.