He cast the patch.
Not a cooldown reset. Not an anchor delay.
This was deeper.
This was death suspension.
[⚠ PATCH REQUEST: INTERCEPT MORTAL STATE]
Target: Self
Condition: Death = Delay (10s)
Cost: Unstable | Thread Integrity: Compromised
Proceed?
"Proceed," Kael whispered, voice steady.
The glyph unfurled like a blooming wound.
It was red. Not rollback red — but something older. A color that didn't belong in system space.
The patch took.
And the chamber screamed.
The environment writhed as if reality itself was trying to reject the command. Rocks bent. Time shivered. The Minotaur — a boss hardened by thousands of runs — stepped back.
Kael collapsed to one knee.
Blood leaked from his nostrils. Light spilled from his palm.
And from beneath his shirt, a spiral of glyphs began engraving itself along his ribs.
[💥 DEBT SURGE DETECTED]
Physical Integrity: -37%
Neural Load: REDLINE
Thread Stability: Breached
User Status: Unprotected
From a private raid feed, Aria watched the telemetry flatline and spike.
"No, no, no—what the hell are you doing, Kael—"
The observer behind her muttered, "That's not a patch. That's a… suicide override."
Kael stood again.
His knees buckled. His vision doubled.
But the glyphs burned brighter.
He wouldn't die.
Not yet.
Not for ten seconds.
That was all he needed.
The Minotaur charged.
Kael didn't blink.
The air around him shimmered — not with power, but refusal. His presence disrupted every mechanic in the Gate's layered code.
The boss struck — but its axe phased through Kael's left side as if it wasn't sure whether he was still alive or already gone.
[DEATH FLAG: SUSPENDED (6s)]
[WARNING: Patch Debt Now Affecting Environment Threads]
[Rollback Boundary Drift: +3.1%]
Kael raised one arm.
The glyphwork there wasn't a cast. It was inheritance — shards of lifetimes layered over bone, past threads converging into a single motion.
Every motion he made bled memory.
Every step forward pulled a different version of him into sync.
He remembered skills he'd never learned.
He moved like all of them at once.
Aria's voice cracked through the comm.
"Kael! Cancel it! You're burning your thread identity—!"
He exhaled.
"No."
Pause.
Then, calmly:
"The system isn't broken."
"It's resisting me."
Around him, glyphs fractured into the air — spiraling like clockwork gears made of lightning and language.
The Minotaur paused.
It stared at Kael with those fire-coded eyes and took a single step back.
Not out of fear.
Out of confusion.
[Thread Divergence Expanding...]
[Rollback Core: Unstable]
[Patch Debt ≠ Registered Unit]
[ERROR: User Cannot Be Parsed]
Kael lifted both hands.
From his palms, a new glyph unfolded — no longer red.
This one was white. Still burning. Still dangerous.
But stable.
And for a moment…
It didn't look like a patch.
It looked like an answer.
The white glyph hovered inches from Kael's chest, spinning — not like an attack or command, but like a question.
And the world paused.
Not silence.
Not stasis.
Just… a moment pulled outside the stream.
Even the Minotaur froze — mid-snarl, eyes burning but unmoving, body locked between two rollback frames.
Kael stepped forward.
And reality whispered back.
[GLYPH: UNKNOWN]
[CLASSIFICATION: UNPARSABLE]
[THREAD ANOMALY DETECTED]
[LOCK: INSUFFICIENT]
As he walked, the light bent. Not just around him — through him. The edges of the Gate shimmered, then bent inward, folding like reflections in broken glass.
He saw them.
Other versions of himself.
Kael, bloodied and burned, holding Senna's broken drawing in a collapsed ruin.
Kael, laughing with Aria in a world that never fell.
Kael, alone in a black cell, glyphs carved into his eyelids.
Kael, dead in a field, with Dominion banners soaking up the rain.
All of them paused.
And then…
They looked at him.
One by one, every echo lifted their hand — same as him — and traced a line in the air.
The same line.
"You're not the first," a voice echoed from the white.
"But you might be the last."
Kael didn't speak.
He just traced the glyph again.
And this time, the patch didn't fix. It declared.
A system-level override.
A signature not of Kael… but of every Kael that had ever tried and failed.
Together.
They'd made something the system couldn't name.
A glyph that shouldn't exist.
Far above, Dominion's monitors scrambled.
Code streams flickered. Warnings stacked.
A single tag flashed on every screen.
[SYSTEM THREAT CLASS: UNDEFINED]
[POSSIBLE ROLE: PATCHBREAKER]
[ROLLBACK DEBT: INHERITED]
[SOLUTION: PENDING]
Back inside the Gate, the Minotaur began to move again — glitching, unstable, roaring with rollback feedback.
Kael didn't flinch.
He looked up, calm.
"Let's end it."
He stepped into the light, and the glyph followed.
"This one's for all of us."