A hand, small and cool, pressed against his cheek. Nilya. Her eyes, once dulled by the curse, held clean, lucid sapphire. She was awake. And the red digits of her soul timer were gone. “No,” she whispered, her voice a fragile chime against the groan of collapsing stone. “You don’t get to leave.” A rush of power, raw and untamed, surged from her, lashing out like ethereal vines. It wrapped around the spear still lodged in Korshan’s chest, around his limbs, around his very fading essence. He felt himself being yanked back, tethered to the disintegrating world by her sheer will. Her soul, once fragmenting, was now a beacon, radiating a restorative warmth that defied the encroaching void. The red ‘Y/N?’ prompt on his retina wavered, then solidified. [WARNING: PLAYER_DELETION_REFUSED. REBOOT_SEQUENCE_ABORTED. WORLD_ERASE_SELF_STATUS: 15% COMPLETE. CRITICAL_FAILURE_DETECTED.] “I told you I’d burn the world for you, Nilya,” Korshan rasped, a sliver of his old smirk returning. “Not let it burn for me.” He pulled against Nilya’s tether, testing its strength. It held. His gaze fell upon Bramir, still frozen, a grotesquely perfect statue of an Admin Avatar. Then, to the floor beside him, where the blood-stained execution order – the very one that had woken him up – lay half-dissolved by the encroaching decay. It was the physical manifestation of his scripted end, the 'ERROR 404' that had initiated this entire, mad journey. A thought, audacious and utterly insane, sparked in his mind. “Rimefang!” Korshan bellowed, his voice flat against the crumbling stone. The frost drake, curled protectively around Kyradis on the precipice of the void, unfurled with a deep rasp. The colossal skull, plated in frost-rimed slate, dipped. Its eyes, burning with glacial fire, fixed on Korshan. “The order,” Korshan commanded, pointing a shaky hand at the blood-soaked parchment. “Eat it. Consume the source of the curse.” The beast lunged forward with sudden acceleration. Its jaws unhinged, revealing rows of teeth like jagged shards of winter ice. It snatched the ‘ERROR 404’ execution order from the floor, not merely devouring it, but annihilating it, reducing it to dust that vanished even as the world around them dissolved. [UNINTENDED_BEHAVIOR_DETECTED. CORE_FILE_CORRUPTION_SOURCE_ERADICATED. SYSTEM_REBOOT_INITIATED. DELETION_HALTED.] The low hum ceased. The fraying world flickered, then snapped back into place like a restored memory block. The Developer’s Room, though still scarred and broken, solidified. The gaping maw of the void beneath them shrank, receding into an abstract memory. Bramir, the towering construct, wavered. His form condensed, shrinking. The intricate, god-like robes faded, replaced by worn leather. The chilling, all-knowing light in his eyes dulled, replaced by a vacant, bewildered gaze. He became, in a flash of shifting code, a small, hunched figure, clutching a battered tome. “Ah, a newcomer,” Bramir chirped, his voice reedy and devoid of malice. He looked around the shattered room with a polite, if somewhat confused, smile. “Welcome to the Bastion. I am Bramir, your humble guide. How may I assist with your initial mana attunement?” Kyradis, who had been gripping the drake's hide with bloodless fingers, stared at the transformed mentor. “He… he’s a tutorial NPC again.” Her voice held a note of stunned disbelief, then a flicker of triumph. “You… you truly broke him, Korshan.” Iscara, her face streaked with dust and dried tears, stepped forward, her ice-blue eyes fixed on Korshan. The immense mana she had poured into him still thrummed beneath his skin, now a constant, revitalizing current. “Breaking him was only the start,” she murmured, a possessive glint in her gaze. “Now, he gets to rebuild everything.” The boundary field overhead fractured, drifting away in harmless silver motes on a rising draft. The sky, once a bruised crimson, softened into a brilliant, unblemished cerulean. The air, heavy with the stench of decay and fear, cleared, filled with the scent of distant rain and clean earth. Korshan pulled the spear free from his chest, the wound instantly closing, Nilya’s healing energy weaving through his flesh. He looked toward where the writ had vanished down the drake's throat, then at the pacified scholar, then at his sister standing firm at his elbow. He noted Iscara tracking his pulse with fevered focus, and Kyradis adjusting her rapier from the drake's saddle. The absolute magical hierarchy of Pyrrhen, built on calcified mana cores and scripted fates, was gone. Broken. Overwritten. He stood upright, a persistent memory leak in the core architecture. The sun, finally breaking through the clouds, cast a golden sheen on the world. [NEW GAME+ STARTED. CHEATS ENABLED.] Korshan Drast looked up at the boundless, brilliant sky. The death writ was ash. His sister was safe. And the corrupt Hegemony that had cursed his family? It was now just a world waiting to be speedrun. He grinned, a cold, predatory expression that promised absolute ruin for anyone who dared stand in his way. The game had just begun.

Any% Speedrun