The throne room was a mausoleum of forgotten code.
Leonis stepped through the shattered remains of the Hive Mind's core, his boots crunching over fragments of shadowglass that pulsed faintly, like dying embers. The air here was thick with the scent of ozone and something oldersomething *hungry*.
Above him, the ceiling yawned into darkness, its edges frayed with static, as if reality itself had been torn open and hastily stitched back together.
Celia moved beside him, her moonmark flickeringerratically. The Lunar Shard's remnants hung from her belt, its glow reduced to a dull throb.
Behind them, the copiesher* copiesfanned out in silence, their movements synchronized yet disjointed, like reflections in a broken mirror.
*"This isn't just a throne room,'* Thoren's voice crackled through the comm, weak but insistent.
*"Its a* bridge. *The CEO's consciousness is anchored here, but its* spread*across the game, the network, the real world."*
Leonis flexed his arms. The fused bloodlines beneath his skin writhed, shadow and flame coiled in uneasy truce. *"Then we cut the anchor."*
Ahead, the throne loomede-jagged spire of corrupted data, its surface crawling with veins of liquid shadow. And upon it, wreathed in static, sat the Sovereign.
Not a dragon. Not a god.
A *man*.
The CEOs face was a distortion of human features, his eyes hollow pits of code, his grin a jagged tear across the screen of his visage. His fingers drummed against the armrests, each tap sending ripples through the throne's surface, as if he were tuning the world itself like an instrument.
*"Leonis Blade Shadow,"*he purred, his voice the hum of a thousand servers.
*"You've come to kneel, I assume?"*
Leonis's shadow-arm lashed out before he could stop it, tendrils slicing through the aironly to *shatter* against an invisible barrier. The CEO's laughter was the sound of shattering glass.
*"Cute. But youre still just a* glitch. *And glitches?"* He leaned forward, static bleeding from his lips. *"They get* patched."*
---
Celias hand closed around Leonis's wrist.
*"Dont. He's baiting you."* Her voice was low, urgent.
*"The throne isnt just a seatits a* trap. *The moment you touch it, hell overwrite you. Like he did to the original Celia."*
Leonis's gaze flicked to her scar, now a livid brand.
*"Then how do we break it?"*
A whisper of movement behind them.
The copies stepped forward, their moonmarks flaring in unison. The firstthe one who had turned on Veynespo ke, her voice a chorus of fractured echoes:
*"We remember what he made us forget."*
The CEO's grin faltered.
Celia's breath hitched. *"Noyou cant mean to"*
*"We are* flaws,"* the copy interrupted, her eyes burning silver. *"And flaws* break *systems."*
Before anyone could react, the copies *moved*not toward the throne, but*into* it. Their bodies dissolved into strands of liquid moonlight, weaving through the throne's corrupted veins like antibodies through infected blood. The CEO *shrieked*, his form flickering as the throne *rejected* him, its surface buckling under the weight of their collective will.
*"You* His voice splintered. *"You were never supposed to*.
*"Remember?"* Celia finished, her moonmark splitting open, *"Yeah, We* know."
---
The throne *screamed*.
Leonis didnt hesitate. He *Voidstepped*for three seconds, he was*nowhere*, a ghost in the machine, a spark in the Sovereign's shadow. He saw the truth: the CEO's consciousness, frail and human, cowering behind layers of stolen power. And he saw the *flaw*.
The throne wasnt just a weapon.
It was a *cage*.
And the CEO?
He was the *prisoner*.
Leonis rematerialized at the throne's base, his flame-arm igniting.*"Youre not a god,'* he snarled. *"You're a* thief. *And this?"* He slammed his fist into the throne's heart. *'This isnt yours."*
The explosion was *silent*.
For a heartbeat, the world was *nothing*no light, no sound, no breath. Then the backlash hit.
The throne *shattered*, its fragments dissolving into static. The CEO's form unraveled, his screams fading into the void. The chamber trembled, the walls peeling back like layers of rotten skin, revealing the *real* world beyonda-lab, a skyline, a battlefield.
And then-
*Impact.*
Leonis crashed onto cold metal, the scent of antiseptic and burnt wiring flooding his senses. Celia landed beside him, her breath ragged, The copies were gone*sacrificed*, their memories a weapon against the throne.
But the war?
It wasnt over.
A notification flickered in Leonis's vision, hacked into his neural feed:
*The throne is broken. The Sovereign is wounded. But the Syndicate remains.*
*Find its heart.*
*End this.*
Leonis rose, his shadow-arm coiling into a fist.
*"Now,"* he said, *'we hunt."*
In the ruins of the throne room, a single shard of shadowglass pulsedonce, twicethen stilled.
And deep within its depths, something *stirred*.
Not the CEO.
Not the Sovereign.
Something *older*.
Something *hungry*.
The *true* king of the static.
And it was *awake*.