My lungs were burning, which was ironic considering I wasn't entirely sure I still had lungs.
"Move, Arthur!" Seraphina shouted, grabbing the back of my ruined hoodie and hauling me up a flight of floating marble stairs.
We weren't in the forest anymore. We weren't really anywhere. We were in the Skybox—the empty blue space above the world map where I usually stored unused assets. But right now, it was a war zone.
Below us, the world was gone. The forest, the village, the mountains—all erased. Replaced by a churning ocean of white nothingness. The Editor had scrubbed the hard drive. The only thing left was this floating archipelago of debris leading up to the Narrative Core.
And the path was blocked.
A screeching swarm of wireframe monsters dove at us. These weren't regular enemies. These were the "Rejected Drafts."
"What in the name of the gods is that?" Seraphina yelled, slicing a two-headed wolf in half. The wolf didn't bleed; it burst into a cloud of pencil sketches.
"That was supposed to be the comic relief sidekick!" I ducked under a claw made of unfinished polygons. "I cut him in the second draft because he wasn't funny!"
"He seems quite upset about it!" Seraphina parried a blow from a floating torso that had no legs, just a jagged error message where its waist should be.
I scrambled up the stairs, my legs feeling like lead. My health bar was a constant, throbbing warning in the corner of my eye.
[HP: 1/100]
[Stamina: Critical]
[Distance to Core: 50 meters]
"Behind you!"
I spun around just as a creature made entirely of bad dialogue—literally, its body was composed of floating text bubbles saying things like "You'll never defeat me!" and "Prepare to die!"—lunged at me.
Seraphina was there in a heartbeat. Star-Caller flashed, a beacon of silver light in the digital void. She shattered the text monster into alphabet soup.
She looked tired. Her armor was dented. The "Plot Armor" golden glow around her was flickering, like a lightbulb about to burn out. Even a Main Character has limits when the genre keeps shifting.
"We're almost there," I gasped, pointing upward.
At the top of the floating stairs sat the Narrative Core.
It wasn't a throne. It wasn't a magic crystal. It was a desk.
A massive, obsidian desk floating in the center of the universe. On it sat a typewriter the size of a car, glowing with a soft, pulsating blue light. Above it, a holographic monitor displayed the scrolling code of the entire world.
"That's it?" Seraphina stared at it, wiping sweat (or maybe rendered gloss) from her forehead. "That is the seat of God?"
"It’s a command console," I corrected, stumbling forward. "It’s where I type the reality. If I can get to that keyboard, I can stop the deletion."
"Then run," she commanded.
We sprinted. The stairs crumbled behind us as we ran, falling into the white void. The Editor was close. I could feel the static raising the hair on my arms.
We reached the platform. I collapsed against the giant desk, my chest heaving. The keyboard was right there. Each key was a slab of black stone etched with glowing runes—letters.
I reached out a trembling hand.
BOOM.
The platform shook violently, knocking me off my feet.
A shadow fell over us. A red shadow.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.