I made it to the balcony just as the Throne Room was consumed by a wall of static.
The cool night air hit my face, but it smelled wrong. It smelled like ozone and burnt toast. The sky above was flickering. The stars weren't twinkling; they were blinking in a rhythmic pattern, flashing hexadecimal codes: `0xFF`, `0x00`, `ERROR`.
I leaned against the railing, panting. I wiped the blood from my nose on my sleeve. My hoodie—a generic "Urban_Wear_Grey"—was torn, revealing the pale, unathletic skin of a writer who hadn't seen the sun in years.
"Status," I coughed.
[User: Arthur]
[Role: Administrator (Corrupted)]
[HP: 15/100]
[Source Points: 4/100]
I was running on fumes. That little stunt with the mountain had nearly wiped my memory. I couldn't remember what I had for breakfast. Did I have breakfast? Or did I just write that I was hungry?
The castle groaned beneath me. The deletion zone was spreading. I needed to move. I needed to get to the Safe Zone in the forest before the renderer crashed this entire sector.
I climbed over the railing, looking for a way down. The vines on the wall looked sturdy enough.
That’s when the notification chimed.
It wasn't the soft ding of a loot drop. It was the harsh, blaring klaxon of a server alert. A massive red window slammed into my vision, blocking out the stars, the glitching castle, and my will to live.
[ALERT: PROTAGONIST DETECTED]
My heart skipped a beat. No. Not her. Not yet. She was supposed to be three chapters away, grinding XP in the Swamp of Despair.
[Entity: Seraphina]
[Distance: 200 meters and closing rapidly]
[Hostility: 100% (Bloodlust)]
I looked down into the courtyard below.
Amidst the chaos of falling rubble and glitching debris, a figure stood perfectly still. The rendering engine seemed to prioritize her above everything else. Her silver armor caught the moonlight with ray-traced perfection. Her cape flowed with physics that defied the lag destroying the rest of the world.
She looked up.
Even from this distance, I saw her eyes. Glowing, electric blue.
They weren't the eyes of a hero. They were the eyes of someone who had watched her family die, her kingdom burn, and her lover perish, all because I thought it would make for good character development.
She raised a sword that pulsed with broken, red code.
"Found you," a voice whispered in my ear, bypassing the distance, speaking directly through the narrative narration.
The UI flashed a final, terrifying message:
[Objective Updated: SURVIVE.]
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," I muttered.
Then the balcony collapsed, and I fell into the dark.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.