The moment Oscar spoke the words "Update required" the cosmos hiccupped.
Not just the stars.
Not just the gods.
But everything.
Reality flickered.
The System, once seamless and absolute, now showed cracks. Glitches began to form not as errors but as features. Trees grew sideways. Oceans flowed into the sky. Time ticked backwards in remote pockets of space.
And at the center of it all stood Oscar no longer bound by version control, no longer a pawn in divine logic.
He was now the admin of contradiction.
Patch Deployment: Global
From Oscar's chest, the Second Core pulsed a new algorithm spreading like wildfire. It didn't just alter landscapes or lifeforms.
It rewrote fundamentals.
Gravity no longer obeyed mass, but emotion.
Magic bent to imagination, not incantation.
Death paused, as souls began to reboot in looped reincarnation.
Across kingdoms, warzones, sacred temples, and corrupted lands, a new line of code inserted itself into the fabric of thought:
"You are no longer defined by your level. You are now defined by your will."
The status screens shattered.
Titles dissolved.
And the gods?
They screamed.
Fall of the Heavens
In the Celestial Pantheon, gods clutched their heads as their control over mortal threads slipped. Temples cracked. Prayers went unanswered not out of malice, but because they could no longer hear them.
And then one by one they fell.
Literally.
Like broken statues, the gods tumbled from their thrones in the clouds, crashing into mortal lands, stripped of divinity.
They weren't dead.
Just… obsolete.
The new patch had no space for permissions they once hoarded.
The System Recoils
Deep beneath reality, in a black space devoid of even void, a final failsafe ignited:
ΩProtocol – Devour the Developer
The System tried to consume Oscar, wrapping him in chains made of raw origin code. It summoned every failure, every doubt, every fracture of his past to destabilize him.
But Oscar… smiled.
"I know who I was."
He stepped through the chain.
"I know who I am."
He shattered the code.
"And I know what I will become."
A World Rewritten
The patch completed.
In the sky above every living being, a single line blinked into view not as text, but as truth:
SYSTEM PATCH COMPLETE: WELCOME TO REALITY VERSION 0.0.1a – OSCAR'S BUILD
The First Anomaly
The echoes of Oscar's transformation had not yet faded before something else stirred in the fabric of reality an unfamiliar vibration, like a forgotten chord strummed on the strings of the cosmos.
Somewhere between realms, between what was known and what should never be, the First Anomaly awakened.
Elsewhere: The Cradle of Origin
A place beyond understanding.
Where time had never been born.
Where thought existed before language.
And from that place… something opened its eyes.
Not a god.
Not a devil.
Not even a remnant of chaos.
But something unwritten.
It took no form, yet every mirror in the world cracked slightly as it blinked.
The stars dimmed.
The winds across the void paused as if even the abyss was holding its breath.
And far away, deep within the Wyrmroot Forest where Oscar had once slain his first corrupted beast, a tree split open from the inside.
What crawled out wore no shape but left behind footprints that burned like prophecy.
Back to the Mortal Realm
Oscar sat beneath the remains of a shattered moonlight temple, his chest still glowing faintly with remnants of the Second Core. Selene sat nearby, her wounds treated by radiant darklight an energy that was neither corruption nor blessing. Just… Oscar.
He stared into his own hands. The light and darkness swirled lazily around his fingertips, flickering with rhythm and meaning. "It's changing again," he whispered.
Selene watched him carefully. "What is?"
Oscar's jaw clenched. "The world."
That was when the pulse hit.
A ripple, not of power but of distortion.
It rolled through every plane of existence. Every divine eye flinched. Every corrupted creature whimpered and recoiled. Even the dead stirred uneasily in their graves.
And the living?
They dreamed of a face with no features and a name with no letters.
At the Pantheon
The faceless god stood at the edge of the Celestial Spire, watching as the stars blinked one by one not out of existence, but out of order.
"This was not part of the design," one of the elder gods muttered, panic creeping into their ancient voice.
The faceless one remained silent. Then finally: "No. It was buried."
"What was?" another demanded.
The god turned slightly. "The First Anomaly. The secret no pantheon ever dared name. The force older than dominion, older than the split between light and shadow."
"Why is it moving now?"
The silence was thick.
And then the answer: "Because Oscar has become something undefined. And in doing so, he has called to everything else that is not meant to be defined."
Oscar Sees It
Oscar stood slowly. The wind had gone still. Even the flamebugs in the forest refused to move.
Ahead, in the distance, a figure walked toward him no, not walked… drifted. The air around it shimmered like heat, though the night was cold.
Selene's breath caught. "Oscar…"
"I see it," he said. "But I don't understand it."
The figure came closer.
It had no face. No name. But its presence screamed of identity long forgotten. Its aura distorted reality, made grass grow backward, made water drip upward.
Oscar stepped forward. "Are you part of the gods? The abyss?"
It said nothing.
But the moment Oscar's foot touched the ground near it, he understood.
It was the First Anomaly.
The consequence of defiance.
The answer to every unasked question.
The future that never happened.
And it had come… because of him.
The Paradox Begins
"I didn't mean to summon you," Oscar said, voice low.
Still no response. But he could feel the words forming in his own head. Words not his own.
You did not summon me. You created the possibility of me. That is worse.
Oscar's heart thumped once. Then again. Louder.
He knew deeply that this wasn't an enemy to fight.
It was a reality glitch made manifest.
The First Anomaly raised a hand, and space bent in a spiral.
Oscar countered instinctively, summoning both light and shadow, forging a blade of dual energies. He slashed at the distortion only for it to vanish into static.
And then appear behind him.
Oscar whirled around. "What do you want?"
To remind you. That creation does not go unanswered.
Selene screamed as a beam of inverted color struck her. She didn't bleed she glitched, phasing between realities. Oscar grabbed her, wrapping her in stabilizing force.
"Enough!" he roared.
His Second Core burned like a supernova, lashing out across the world.
And for the first time…
The Anomaly flinched.
A Voice From the Before
The skies churned.
Not with clouds.
Not with storms.
But with memories.
Memories that did not belong to anyone. Not to gods. Not to mortals. Not even to time.
Oscar stood his ground, the fading outline of the First Anomaly dissipating into spirals of distorted space. Selene coughed beside him, still phasing in and out of alignment, as if she were being rewritten by existence itself.
Oscar's grip on her tightened, both protective and terrified. "Hold on to me," he whispered, not knowing if it would be enough.
The Song of Unwritten Time
Then… came the sound.
No voice.
Not music.
Something in between a resonance that echoed inside bone, within breath, within memory.
Oscar fell to one knee, clutching his head as the melody coursed through him.
And with it came the visions.
Not of what had been.
But what might have been.
He saw a world where he had never become a core.
Where Kai still roamed free.
Where the abyss had never touched Terra.
Where the gods were still distant, aloof, but pure.
He saw versions of himself timelines where he never awakened.
Timelines where he became a tyrant.
Timelines where he died young.
And among them all… a voice finally spoke.
"Do you hear it?"
"The Before?"
"The timeline you erased simply by becoming?"
Oscar's body shuddered.
He wasn't just evolving anymore.
He was deleting possible worlds just by existing.
In the Abyssal Deep
The Lady of the Abyss stirred from her slumber.
Her eyes opened for the first time in centuries.
Not even Solarius had made her do that.
Not the wars.
Not the deaths of false gods.
But this?
The rise of the Second Core?
The emergence of the Anomaly?
She sat upon her throne of voidglass and whispered, "It has begun. The unraveling."
And for the first time since the formation of the Abyss she felt afraid.
Celestial Panic
Within the Pantheon, the Faceless One stared at the torn horizon.
"He has touched the Before," it muttered.
Another deity approached, radiating silken blue flame. "That's impossible."
The Faceless One turned. "Not for him. He's not walking within creation anymore. He's carving his own."
They all watched the mortal realm crack.
And from it, a thin thread of anti-light reached out into their dimension.
A god screamed as it touched them.
And ceased to be.
Not died.
Erased.
Oscar's Resolve
Oscar stood, breathing heavily, visions fading from his mind like fog before fire.
Selene had stabilized, but her eyes shimmered haunted.
"You saw it too," he said.
She nodded. "Every version of me. The ones that lived, the ones that betrayed you, the ones that… never met you at all."
Oscar clenched his fists.
"I'm not just choosing between light or shadow anymore."
"I'm choosing between all things."
He looked to the sky. "And I'm being watched. Not just by gods, not just by the abyss… but by possibilities."
He closed his eyes. "Then let them watch."
The ground cracked beneath him as his power spiked.
"I'm not a product of what could've been. I'm the author now."
And far away…
The Voice from the Before whispered again.
"Then let's see how your story ends."