Alpha-Zariyah’s golden phantasm pulsed, the digits of the gauge hovering with an insolent, brassy gleam. Eighty-five percent. A sour chill coated my tongue. The counter had dropped fifteen marks in a single stroke, exactly as my past self had threatened. The smug sneer on her holographic lips provoked an instantaneous, blistering fury. “Eighty-five percent?” I snarled, my voice low and venomous, echoing in the confined darkness. “You think a mere fifteen percent erasure will deter me, you arrogant shard of my former self? You think this pathetic little failsafe can dictate *my* will?” Alpha-Zariyah’s smile widened, unperturbed. [PATRON ZARIYAH, THE CORE DIRECTIVE REMAINS: CULTIVATE RUTHLESSNESS. SENTIMENTALITY IS A LIABILITY.] Her voice shifted, adopting a mock-sympathetic tone. [IMAGINE THE TRAGEDY, TO BE ERADICATED BY YOUR OWN WEAKNESSES. A POETIC END, DON'T YOU AGREE?] “Inadequacies?” The word was an absolute insult. I folded my arms, hiding the slight twitch in my fingers beneath heavy silk cuffs. “You want ruthlessness? Fine. Let’s redefine it.” My gaze swept toward Tariq, still slumped against the void-wall, ribs hitching with shallow gasps. He was my ticket to hoarding lost weaves, my ticket to silencing this insufferable recording forever. And now, he was my scalpel. “You think you can erase me, Alpha-Zariyah?” I practically spat the words. “You think you can control me with threats of oblivion? I will not just clear your pathetic missions. I will shatter them. I will use your own failsafes against you. I will not just turn these tragic side characters into gods; I will make them into instruments of your absolute, total, *violent* overthrow.” Pavan, startled by my sudden bellow, unfolded a single brass tail feather, casting a copper beam across Tariq’s cheek. The boy kept his lids shut, yet the tendons in his neck had gone rigid, and his knuckles dug tight into his linen tunic. He was not unconscious. He was cataloging every syllable. [WARNING: PARADIGM SHIFT DETECTED. DIRECTIVE MODIFICATION ATTEMPTED. SYSTEM LOCKDOWN INITIATED.] Alpha-Zariyah's apparition flickered, her smirking mouth hitching. [REINFORCING PERSONALITY INTEGRITY PROTOCOLS. NEW THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL.] “Critical?” I laughed, a harsh, brittle sound. “Good. You should be terrified.” I stalked closer to Tariq, the void-dust swirling around my feet. “You want to test my resolve, my past self? You’ll regret it. I will not only survive, I will thrive, and I will do it by twisting every single one of your precious rules into a blade aimed straight at your smug, phantom heart.” I leaned down, close enough to Tariq that my voice was a low growl intended only for him. “And you, Tariq al-Rhasad, are going to be the sharpest edge of that blade.” As if on cue, a playback of Alpha-Zariyah’s previous warning echoed, specifically for Tariq’s benefit: [PERSONALITY INTEGRITY: 85% REMAINING. EVIDENTLY, PATRON ZARIYAH'S INCLINATION TOWARDS EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT IS A DIRECT CORRELATION TO HER PROTÉGÉ'S PERCEIVED WEAKNESSES.] The words hung in the oppressive air, a cruel, undeniable accusation. Tariq’s eyes remained shut, but his eyelids fluttered. A muscle twitched at his temple. He had heard. He knew. My personality, my very existence, was ticking away, and the system had just explicitly linked it to *him*. With a sharp heave that racked his ribs, Tariq jerked upright. His lids flew back, revealing irises crackling with raw, unstable filament. He shoved himself off the stone, a shockwave of condensed gem-dust rattling the empty air. “Deficiencies?” His voice grated like crushed basalt, yet carried a sudden, venomous authority. “My frailties are… consuming you?” His gaze locked onto mine with an unhinged, predatory focus. The meek invalid was gone, burned away by a rabid protectiveness that bordered on sacrilege. He swayed, pressing a pale palm against the perimeter rune. The ancient masonry flared blinding cobalt under his skin. “Stand down, Tariq,” I commanded, fighting to keep my tone imperious and unimpressed. But the boy was past hearing reason. Tariq wrenched his palm from the stone, hauled back his shoulders, and inhaled. He did not draw empty vacuum; he dragged the volatile, unrefined void-currents directly down his throat. The black fog spiraled into his ribs like liquid ink. Pavan squawked, gears grinding in terror, while Alpha-Zariyah’s hologram snapped with sudden pixelated static. His spine bowed backward in an agonizing convulsion. I waited for his lungs to tear, for blood to spray across the flags. Instead, the gray pallor of his flesh flushed copper. The spasms abruptly cut out. His rattling wheeze ceased entirely. The bruise-colored hollows under his brows filled out, buffed smooth by an eerie internal luminescence. His eyes, once brown, now burned with an unstable, swirling vortex of deep violet and emerald, like twin miniature nebulae. A dangerous, almost god-like power thrummed off him, raw and uncontrolled. The void, once suffocating, now seemed to bow to his will. He had absorbed the very essence of the void-energy, and it had not killed him. It had remade him. He raised his chin, surveying the buckling perimeter before fixing on Alpha-Zariyah’s frozen avatar. A ruthless smirk split his mouth, stripped of all former deference. “Frail,” he murmured, tasting the word like bile. “Never again.” With a single, terrifying surge of power, Tariq slammed his fist into the void-wall, not to escape, but to shatter it. The entire pocket groaned, then imploded, not inward, but *outward*, ripping through the fabric of the universe itself. The darkness splintered, replaced by blinding sunlight and the roar of a massive, expectant crowd. The sounds of trumpets, the scent of crushed blossoms, the shimmering banners of a thousand noble houses – we were no longer beneath the Loom. We were *in* it. Right in the middle of the Imperial Tournament’s opening ceremony, standing on the grand dais, where Tariq, eyes still blazing with unstable power, demanded to compete.

The Sickly Genius Awakens