The somber, droning dirge of brass trumpets vibrated through Ghavir’s ribs, a dull throb matching the ache in his left shoulder. Not a scar from battle, but a constant phantom thrum from the loyalty curse Ozarrak had branded him with – a leash that would snap his spine if he ever genuinely wished his master ill. Today, however, Ghavir’s thoughts were far from Ozarrak’s petty tyranny. Today, he was merely an extra in the grand ceremony of the Crimson Ziggurat: the state funeral of a minor regional potentate who had died in an inconvenient corner of Ozarrak’s territory. He stood among rows of grey-robed, sullen lackeys, his cheap tunic thin against the chill seeping from the obsidian walls of the Great Maw Vault. A massive, sarcophagus-shaped catafalque, carved from a single block of dark, veined stone, dominated the central dais. On its surface lay the deceased, a figure so heavily shrouded it could have been a sack of flour. This was all just set dressing, Ghavir knew. The real drama, his drama, was about to begin. [WARNING: PLAYER CHARACTER NARRATIVE COHERENCE ERROR] [SYSTEM OVERLOAD: SCRIPTED DEATH IMMINENT FOR GHAVIR. FATE: SUFFOCATION VIA IMPROPER FUNERARY RITES. INITIATING PROTOCOL “DISPOSABLE HENCHMAN’S END”.] [APPROXIMATED TIME UNTIL DE-SPAWN: 00:00:03:00. CONSIDER IMPROVING YOUR LIFE CHOICES. LOL.] A bitter laugh, thin and sharp as a shard of ice, almost escaped Ghavir’s lips. Three minutes. Three hundred words. The system, in its fractured, passive-aggressive wisdom, was generous enough to give him a countdown. Suffocation via improper funerary rites? Ozarrak’s theatrics knew no bounds, even for a nobody like Ghavir. But Ghavir wasn't a nobody. Not anymore. Not since the headache that had scrambled his brain a cycle ago, leaving him with memories of another world, a world where this reality was just a game. His gaze swept across the chamber, past weeping acolytes and stiff-backed elite guards, stopping on the figure near the bronze entryway. Taldan. The ‘protagonist’. The destined Hero who was supposed to claim the legendary Spectacles of the True Axis from this very mausoleum, during this very funeral, and then go on to defeat Ozarrak. Taldan, with his immaculate gilded armor, wore an ornate velvet-lined case tucked into his belt pouch—the reliquary housing the legendary lenses. “Chibek,” Ghavir murmured, his voice barely a breath. A small, grey, vaguely rodent-like creature, previously indistinguishable from a dust bunny at his feet, twitched. Its eyes, bright as polished obsidian, darted up at him. Chibek, his shape-shifting homunculus sidekick, was a constant, chittering presence, currently masquerading as a particularly fluffy clump of lint. “Mmm? Boss?” Chibek’s squeak was almost drowned out by the funeral horns. “Watch my back,” Ghavir ordered, the words tight. “And don’t make a sound, or Ozarrak will have you polishing his boots with your own fur.” Without waiting for a reply, Ghavir turned his back to the solemn proceedings, ignoring the side-eye from a nearby cultist. He moved toward a corner seam where two polished black slabs failed to meet cleanly. A few steps. Two. One. He kept walking, head lowered, as if in profound contemplation of the deceased’s questionable legacy. He didn't stop when his shoulder brushed the stone. He did not stop when a jitter in the black texture tore open at the point of contact. His body glided through the wall. Not through, but *into* it, a bizarre, disorienting sensation of displacement and non-existence. The horns cut out, replaced by silence and a high-pitched hum vibrating against his molars. He was in the hidden geometry, the out-of-bounds area, a place the game engine hadn’t bothered to render properly. It was a chaotic mess of stretched textures, inverted polygons, and flickering light sources. Above him, a translucent version of the vaulted ceiling drifted, inverted and torn at the seams. Below, nothing but an infinite, digital void. His feet were on an invisible floor, solid enough. He was breathing, somehow, in this non-space. He scanned the glitching environment, his eyes quickly snagging on a familiar, blocky figure. Taldan. Or rather, Taldan’s character model, standing precisely where it should be, oblivious to the fact that Ghavir was now a ghost in the machine. Taldan’s back was to him, still facing the catafalque, the ornate case for the Spectacles of the True Axis clearly visible, clipped to his belt. This was it. The sequence break. The moment he hijacked the main quest. Ghavir moved, a silent, gliding shadow in the glitch-world. He reached Taldan, whose rendered form remained motionless, a puppet on a string, utterly unaware of the intrusion. With a swift, practiced motion, Ghavir’s fingers closed around the Spectacles’ case. A faint *schwing* sound, like a menu opening, echoed only in his mind. The case unlatched. He pulled out the relic: two lenses of polished crystal set in tarnished silver. They hummed with an almost imperceptible energy. [ITEM ACQUIRED: SPECTACLES OF THE TRUE AXIS (CORRUPTED)] As Ghavir secured the Spectacles within his own tunic, a sudden, violent shudder tore through the hidden geometry. The high-pitched hum intensified, became a scream. The world outside, the real world, was reacting. Taldan’s character model, which had been static, suddenly jolted. The vast, dark sarcophagus on the dais, the one containing the dead potentate, began to move. Not slowly. It *accelerated*. Faster than anything so massive should. It shot forward, a black missile, with a force that defied all physics, slamming directly into Taldan from behind. There was no shout, no defensive stance from the golden-armored warrior. Just a sickening, wet *thwack* that vibrated through Ghavir’s very bones, even in this glitched space. Taldan’s model, instead of flinching or reacting, simply *flattened* against the wall, a two-dimensional smear of polygons and textures. The stone box rebounded instantly to its dais, leaving only a crimson smear across the flagstones. [FATALITY: TALDAN (ORIGINAL PROTAGONIST) HAS BEEN DE-SPAWNED VIA UNFORESEEN PHYSICS INTERFERENCE.] [QUEST LOG UPDATED: ‘DEFEAT THE TYRANT OZARRAK’ HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED TO GHAVIR.] [ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: ‘ORIGINAL PLOT CRASHER’] [REWARD: CORRUPTED STAT POINTS +5] Ghavir stared at the stain that had once been the arrogant Hero, a slow, cold smile spreading across his face. Five corrupted stat points. A proper reward for a proper sequence break. He had not only stolen Taldan’s destiny but brutally executed his very existence through a physics bug. The system, for all its snark, was rewarding his audacity. He reached down, his hands already moving to scavenge the remains of Taldan’s flattened form. A glint of gold, a pouch of coin, a minor artifact—all fair game now. This was glorious. This was revenge for every indignity, every scripted death, every time the game had treated him as disposable. He pocketed a handful of silver shards from Taldan’s crushed gear and pivoted toward the collision boundary. But as he turned, his hand still brushing the spectral boundary of the out-of-bounds zone, the true world suddenly bled into the glitched space. The carved threshold of the Great Maw Vault stood exposed where the textures failed to wrap. Framed in the doorway against the lantern light from the tiers above stood Naliri. The Saintess stared directly at Ghavir, her lips parted as she took in his bloodied hands, the mangled armor on the floor, and the unrendered void humming behind his heels.

The Physics of State Funerals