The construct's utterance, a deep rumble of grinding slate, settled over the alcove. “Master?” The title, dredged from eons past and heavy with recognition, did not register as a question in his mind. It was a statement. A statement that shattered the carefully constructed facade of his tranquil, uneventful retirement plans. Zoryan, who moments before had been idly contemplating the digestive tract of an extinct basilisk, found cold clarity piercing the hazy contentment he had cultivated for millennia. He had dismissed the glowing status windows as ‘pollen,’ the students as ‘pets,’ the seals as local curiosities. But the Warden, this towering specter of living granite, knew him. Knew him by a title he had abandoned eons ago. His gaze, usually placid and mildly amused, hardened, focusing on the Warden with an intensity that pulled every stray thought into a single, devastating conclusion. The ‘Seals of Silence.’ The ‘purge sequence.’ The ‘protocol breach.’ They were not abstract concepts. They were *his* concepts. His failsafes. His ultimate, final act of world-shaping, intended to bring about an eternal, silent peace. He hadn't just retired; he had left a bomb ticking, set to trigger if he ever returned too close to its heart. And he had, unwittingly, detonated it simply by existing. His tranquil retirement, his simple dream of quiet days, was a catastrophic lie. These ‘pets’—Anka, Stasiek, Mila—were not merely subjects for his peculiar brand of husbandry. They were targets. Anomalies. And he, their oblivious caretaker, was the unwitting catalyst for their demise. Anka, still reeling from the construct's initial command, watched Zoryan’s face. The benign, detached expression had vanished, replaced by something primordial and chillingly precise. It was the face of a being who had just solved a particularly complex, universe-spanning equation, and the answer was far from pleasant. She felt the static hair-raising charge in the air, the ozone thickening, the centuries-old scrolls burning to carbon across the shelves. Stasiek leaned back against a smoking bookcase, whispering, “Uh, Zoryan? Your… your giant rock friend is looking at you weird.” Mila, ever practical, tugged on Zoryan’s sleeve. “He knows you, doesn’t he? Is this a bad thing? Because everything else bursting into flame feels like a bad thing.” The sentinel ignored them, its crimson optics locked onto Zoryan. Its voice, still a thunderous resonance, softened infinitesimally, though its message remained absolute. [PROTOCOL RECALIBRATED. PRIMARY MONARCH PRESENCE DETECTED. PURIFICATION SEQUENCE PRIORITY SHIFTED. COMMENCING RETRIEVAL OF ANOMALOUS LIFEFORMS.] “Retrieval?” Anka gasped, taking a defensive step forward. “What retrieval?” [ANOMALIES HAVE INTERACTED WITH MONARCH’S VESSEL, ACQUIRED UNLICENSED ENHANCEMENTS. THUS, THEY REPRESENT A DIRECT THREAT TO WORLD PURITY. SURRENDER THEM FOR IMMEDIATE ERASURE. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR OSTARA CYCLES WILL RESULT IN CONTINENTAL PURIFICATION.] The air itself seemed to shudder. Total continental sterilisation. Anka’s mind reeled. Her family’s warnings, the forbidden text, Zoryan’s ‘dietary supplements’ – it all clicked into a terrifying, coherent picture. He wasn't just *like* the Demon King; he *was* him. And his 'retirement plan' was about to erase everything. Zoryan, however, was no longer listening to the Warden’s immediate threats. The grinding syllables triggered an older memory that tore clean through his present thoughts. *He stood on a desolate, nascent world, a sphere of swirling energies and nascent life. The air thrummed with raw, untamed potential. Before him, colossal shards of primordial rock were being coaxed into a towering, intricate form. His own power, vast and inexhaustible, flowed into the construct, shaping its core, imbuing it with sentience and an unwavering directive. His face, then, was younger, perhaps, but etched with a deep, sorrowful weariness. Centuries of dying spheres and unending wars pressed upon him. He rested a hand on the construct's still-forming brow, the cold rock settling beneath his palm.* *“Guard this world from itself,” he murmured, his voice a whisper against the cosmic winds. “Protect it from its own folly, its own chaos. Let the cycle end here. Preserve the silence, the peace, until I return.” A tear, crystalline and heavy with the burden of ages, traced a path down his cheek, absorbed by the nascent stone. “Do not let it awaken until then.”* The memory faded, leaving Zoryan standing in the library, the smell of burning parchment sharp in his nostrils. His presence *was* the trigger. His return, however unwitting, had awakened his own apocalypse. His intention had been peace, not annihilation, but the sentinel, a literal-minded automaton, would execute its last order without deviation. He slowly turned from the towering, crimson-eyed construct to face his three 'pets,' whose faces were a mixture of abject terror and utter confusion. Stasiek was whimpering, Mila was clutching a singed book to her chest, and Anka looked as though she’d just been told the sky was falling, which, in a way, it was. Zoryan regarded them with an entirely new, calculating assessment. Not pets, but… integral variables. Not pollen, but a very dangerous, very active, self-correcting system. He had underestimated everything, including himself. “It seems,” Zoryan stated, his voice flat, devoid of its usual mild amusement, “my former housekeeping automaton is malfunctioning. We must discipline it.”

A Poorly Timed Retirement Party