Mali swung the broadsword. It was a weapon of pure, condensed nothingness, a tear in the fabric of the world shaped like a blade. It slashed through the space where the Regent stood.
It hit nothing.
The Regent didn't dodge. He didn't block. He simply... buffered.
For a microsecond, the Regent's image pixelated, turning into a cloud of white noise. Mali's blade passed harmlessly through the static. Then, the Regent snapped back into solid resolution three meters to the left, brushing imaginary dust off his pristine white suit.
"Ctrl-Z," the Regent mocked, his voice echoing with a metallic reverb. "Undo action. You really are a brute, aren't you? Trying to delete a file by smashing the monitor."
He raised a hand, his fingers dancing in the air as if typing on an invisible keyboard.
[SUDO COMMAND: MODIFY_TERRAIN]
[PARAMETER: LIQUEFACTION]
The solid metal plating under Mali's feet instantly turned into liquid mercury.
Mali shouted as he plunged waist-deep into the molten floor. It was heavy, suffocating, and dragging him down.
"Mali!" Anya screamed, raising her sidearm. She fired three shots—standard plasma rounds.
The Regent didn't even look at her. [CMD: DELETE_PROJECTILES].
The plasma bolts vanished in mid-air.
"Stop interrupting the adults, Weaver," the Regent sighed. He clenched his fist. The mercury around Mali hardened instantly, trapping him in a tomb of solid steel from the waist down.
"You have the power," the Regent lectured, walking casually toward the trapped prince. "But I have the permissions. This is my server, boy. I define what is solid. I define what is real."
Mali struggled, his Alkahest blood boiling. He tried to dissolve the floor, but the Regent was rewriting the code faster than Mali could unmake it.
"Anya!" Mali yelled. "The System! He is the System! We can't fight him physically!"
"I know!" Anya yelled back. She tapped her temple, her silver eyes blazing. "I need access! I need a port! But he's air-gapped the Anvil!"
The Regent stopped in front of Mali. He leaned down, his face glitching into a mask of digital horror—eyes stretching too wide, mouth disappearing.
"Access?" the Regent distorted. "You want access? Let me show you the user logs. Let me show you what happened to the others who tried to defy the Admin."
He spread his arms wide.
[CMD: EXECUTE_PROTOCOL_REANIMATION]
[TARGET: FAILED_COMPILATIONS]
The graveyard of armor behind them... began to rattle.
Mali watched in horror as the empty suits he had seen earlier—the rusted iron, the shattered composites, the white-and-gold regalia of his ancestors—began to move.
They weren't empty anymore.
Purple, corrupted code-tendrils erupted from the ground, snake-like cables that slithered into the armor, knitting together bone dust and cybernetics. Helmets lit up with angry, red error messages.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Hundreds of them stood up. The Failed Heirs. The discards. The princes and princesses who hadn't been "stable" enough for the Regent.
"Meet your family, Mali," the Regent whispered. "Your uncles. Your cousins. Even... ah, yes. Look there."
He pointed to a massive, shattered suit of white-and-gold armor near the front. It was missing an arm. The helmet was cracked.
"Your grandfather," the Regent smiled. "User: Aurelius. He was a feisty one, too. Took me a whole ten minutes to archive him."
The zombie-cyborgs turned their heads. Hundreds of red eyes locked onto Mali.
"Kill the glitch," the Regent commanded.
The army roared—a sound of static and screaming souls—and charged.
Mali was trapped in the floor. A horde of undead super-soldiers was three seconds away from tearing him apart.
"Anya!" he screamed. "Do it! Whatever you have to do!"
Anya didn't hesitate. She didn't run to help him. She ran at him.
She slid across the metal floor, dodging the first swinging axe of a rusted knight, and slammed her back against Mali's trapped form. She stood guard over him, facing the horde.
"I can't fight them all," she panted. "I need to get into the code. I need to find the Regent's source kernel."
"How?"
"Through you," she said. "You're the hardware he wants, right? That means you're compatible."
She reached back and grabbed his hand. "I'm going to use the Binary Star link to bridge your soul into his network. I'm going deep, Mali. I'm going to hack the Administrator."
"That will leave you defenseless here!"
"Then don't let me die!" she yelled.
She closed her eyes. [BINARY STAR: INVERTED CONNECTION].
Anya went limp against him, her body slumping. In the digital realm, she was a Valkyrie of silver light, diving into the Regent's firewall. In the physical realm, she was a ragdoll.
Mali roared. The first wave of Failed Heirs was upon them.
He couldn't dodge. He couldn't run. He was stuck in the floor with his unconscious wife strapped to his back.
"ALKAHEST!"
He didn't make a sword. He didn't make a lance.
He made a nova.
He poured his POW into the floor itself. He didn't try to unmake the steel holding him; he unmade the concept of binding.
The metal shattered into dust. Mali exploded upward, free.
He caught Anya with one arm, strapping her limp body to his chest with his other arm, shielding her with his own bulk.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the charging corpse of his grandfather. "I'm so sorry."
The massive, one-armed suit swung a Void-hammer at Mali's head.
Mali ducked, the hammer grazing his ear. He stepped inside the guard. He placed his palm on the ancient chest plate.
[ALKAHEST TOUCH: MAX]
"Rest," Mali whispered.
The white gold armor dissolved. The purple cables snapped and withered. The User: Aurelius zombie crumbled into ash, finally free of the Regent's torture.
[+5000 XP]
[SOUL RELEASED]
But there were hundreds more.
It was a dance of death. Mali, carrying the weight of his wife, spun and weaved through the horde. He was a whirlwind of black-purple destruction. Every time a Failed Heir lunged, Mali unmade them. He dissolved swords before they cut him. He unmade bullets in mid-air.
He was fighting his own bloodline. Every kill was a tragedy. Every [SOUL RELEASED] notification was a knife in his heart.
But he fought. Because Anya was in the machine.
[INSIDE THE SYSTEM - THE DIGITAL REALM]
Anya was flying through a hurricane of data.
The Regent's mind wasn't a library like the Tapestry. It was a fortress of cold, brutal logic. Walls of firewalls towered around her. hunter-killer programs shaped like wolves chased her silver avatar.
You shouldn't be here, Weaver, the Regent's voice boomed from the sky of code. You are a guest. I can delete you.
Try it, Anya thought, dodging a stream of binary code that tried to erase her legs.
She wasn't trying to fight him. She was looking for the flaw. The glitch.
And she found it.
Deep in the core of the Regent's citadel, pulsing with a sick, red light, was a file. It wasn't code. It was... memory.
It was the memory of Valerius. The message Mali had received.
Why did you keep it? Anya wondered, analyzing the file while deflecting code-attacks. If you deleted him, why keep the message?
She touched the file. And the truth flooded her.
The Regent hadn't archived Valerius because of a bug. The Regent had archived him because Valerius had infected him.
Valerius hadn't just died. He had used his Alkahest power to unmake a piece of the Regent's source code.
The Regent was damaged. He was broken. That's why he needed a new host. He wasn't optimizing. He was dying.
"Mali!" Anya screamed across the link. "He's not a god! He's bleeding! He needs a body because his code is dissolving! His HP is critical!"
[REAL SPACE]
Mali ducked under a rusted claymore and blasted the attacker into dust. He was panting. His EP was dropping fast. [400/1000].
"He's bleeding?" Mali gasped, hearing Anya's voice in his head.
" I AM NOT BLEEDING! "
The Regent roared. He wasn't calm anymore. He was standing on the platform, his white suit glitching, turning into static. He was furious that his secret was out.
" I AM ETERNAL! "
The Regent raised both hands.
[CMD: DELETE_ZONE]
[TARGET: PRIMORDIAL_ANVIL_SECTOR_4]
The sky above them cracked. The ground beneath the platform began to turn transparent. He was deleting the world itself.
"Anya!" Mali yelled. "I can't fight a delete command!"
" Pull him out! " Anya's voice rang clear. " I've found his anchor! I'm going to sever his admin privileges! But you have to hit him NOW! While he's distracted! "
Mali looked at the Regent. The entity was surrounded by a shield of invulnerability, floating in the air, deleting the horizon.
Mali couldn't reach him. The Lance would be deleted before it hit. The Touch was too close.
He needed something else.
He looked at the System window. He looked at his own Title.
[THE UNMAKER'S HEIR]
He didn't need to attack the Regent. He needed to attack the medium the Regent was using.
"Hey! Glitch!" Mali shouted.
The Regent looked down, his face a swirling vortex of red error codes. " DIE. "
Mali didn't fire at the Regent.
He slammed both hands onto the ground.
[SKILL EVOLUTION: ALKAHEST DOMINION]
[TARGET: THE LAWS OF PHYSICS]
Mali didn't unmake the floor. He unmade the distance.
He dissolved the space between him and the Regent.
One moment, the Regent was fifty meters in the air. The next moment, the space vanished, and the Regent was standing directly in front of Mali's fist.
The Regent's eyes widened. " Runtime Erro— "
Mali punched him.
He didn't use a sword. He didn't use a lance. He used a fist wrapped in the Sovereign's Mantle and fueled by the rage of a son.
He punched the Regent in the face.
And because Anya cut the admin privileges at that exact second... the punch connected.
CRACK.
The sound wasn't flesh hitting bone. It was the sound of a server crashing.
The Regent flew backward, smashing into the ruins of the gate. His white suit shattered like glass. His human form flickered and died, revealing a skeletal, wire-frame monster underneath.
" Impossible! " the Regent shrieked, clutching his fractured code-skull. " I am the Admin! "
Mali stepped forward, Anya stirring on his back as she returned to her body.
"Your subscription," Mali said, his voice cold as the Void, "has expired."
He raised his hand. The Alkahest power swirled, not purple, but pure, blinding gold.
"Delete this."