The obsidian chamber groaned as the holographic sky of the "City" began to flicker and tear like wet paper. Through the rips in the simulation, the grey, dead world screamed in.
[43:45:10]
"You knew," Seol-wol whispered, his eyes fixed on Miran. "The alleyway where we slept... the rain... the smell of the gutter. You knew it was all a program."
Miran didn't look away. His hand tightened on his pulse-rifle, his knuckles white. "I knew the world was dying, Seol-wol. I didn't know your heart was the battery keeping the lie alive. But if we don't turn that key, the dome fails. Everyone inside—the thousands of 'normal' people—they all turn to ash in seconds."
"Enough sentiment!" Borislav roared. He raised his hand, and the Reapers lunged.
The drones didn't move like machines anymore; they moved with the speed of thought, fueled by the Core's raw energy.
But Seol-wol felt something shift in his marrow. If this whole world was a construct—if the air he breathed was just a "suggestion" by the Cold Box—then he was the one who held the eraser.
"Miran! Cover the left!" Seol-wol yelled.
He didn't swing his plasma-cutter. Instead, he reached out his hand and grabbed the very air.
"Delete," Seol-wol hissed.
The floor beneath the leading Reaper simply ceased to exist. The drone plummeted into a bottomless pit of raw data, screaming in binary until it vanished.
Borislav flinched, his eyes widening. "You're rewriting the Core? Without the interface? You'll burn your brain out, boy!"
"It's already burnt!" Seol-wol screamed, the violet light erupting from his eyes and mouth.
Miran moved like a shadow, his pulse-rifle barking as he took down the remaining Reapers. He was a whirlwind of precision, protecting Seol-wol's blind side. Every time a stray bolt got close to Seol-wol, Miran stepped in the way, his armor sparking, his teeth bared in a snarl of possessive rage.
"Don't touch him!" Miran roared, slamming his rifle butt into a guard's visor.
Seol-wol stumbled toward the pillar where Junseo was strapped. His brother was shaking, his skin turning translucent as the Terraforming Engine began to draw too much power.
"Junseo! I'm here! I'm coming for you!" Seol-wol reached for the silver wires, but a wall of white fire slammed him back.
Borislav stood over them, his neural-suit glowing with a blinding, celestial light. He had plugged himself into the secondary port. He was becoming the "User" of the dead world.
"You think you can stop the rebirth of the planet?" Borislav's voice was a booming thunder. "I am the only one with the will to lead! I will scrub the Earth clean, and I will be the one who decides who gets to breathe the new air!"
Borislav raised a hand, and a localized gravity well began to crush Seol-wol into the obsidian floor. The pressure was immense—it felt like a mountain was sitting on his chest.
"Seol-wol!" Miran lunged forward, but Borislav flicked a finger, and Miran was tossed across the room, crashing into the glass window. The glass cracked—the only thing separating them from the toxic grey void outside.
Seol-wol looked at Junseo. His brother's eyes were rolling back. The "Master Key" was being turned, but it was grinding Junseo's soul into dust to do it.
Do it, Seol-wol. It was the voice of the Architect—the real one. Not the ghost of a grandfather, but the cold logic of the machine.
Turn the key. Save the world. Lose the brother. This is the trade.
"No," Seol-wol wheezed, his fingers clawing at the obsidian floor. He found a piece of jagged scrap—the metallic bolt that had fallen from the tray.
He didn't use it to fight Borislav. He jammed the rusted bolt into his own neural port at the base of his skull.
The scream that left Seol-wol's throat wasn't human.
By introducing the rusted, "real-world" object into his own digital interface, he created a massive, catastrophic Logic Bomb. The simulation couldn't calculate the rust, the dirt, and the memory of the gutter.
The obsidian chamber began to dissolve.
Borislav's golden armor cracked. The white fire turned into black smoke.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" Borislav shrieked as his connection to the Core began to backfire, his body jerking with thousands of volts of feedback.
Seol-wol stood up in the middle of the digital hurricane. He walked through the fire, the bolt still sticking out of his neck, blood and violet light mixing on his tunic. He reached Junseo and tore the silver wires out with his bare hands.
The humming stopped. The light died.
Junseo fell into his arms, limp and cold, but his eyes were dark again. No more white light.
"I got you," Seol-wol whispered. "I got you, seo."
But the victory was short-lived. With the Core "glitched," the dome's stability was failing. The cracks in the glass window where Miran lay were spreading. The grey ash of the real world was starting to hiss into the room.
Miran stood up, blood streaming down his face. He looked at the window, then at the brothers. He knew what was coming. The dome was going to collapse.
"Seol-wol," Miran said, his voice strangely calm over the sirens. "The Engine... it's primed. But it needs a jump-start. Someone has to stay in the Core to manually vent the pressure so the atmosphere can reset."
Seol-wol froze. "No. We're all leaving. We found a way out."
Miran walked over to him. He didn't look like a prince or a monster anymore. He just looked like a man who had finally found something worth more than a throne. He reached out and cupped Seol-wol's face, his thumb wiping away the blood from the neural port.
"You're the Master Key," Miran whispered, leaning in for a final, lingering kiss that tasted of the end of the world. "But I'm the Heir. And the Heir always stays with his kingdom."
Miran shoved Seol-wol and the unconscious Junseo toward the emergency escape pod—the only thing shielded from the coming blast.
"MIRAN, NO!" Seol-wol screamed, reaching out.
Miran slammed the pod door shut and locked it from the outside. He stood before the obsidian heart of the world, his hand on the manual override. Through the thick glass of the pod, he gave Seol-wol a small, sad smirk.
"Go find the real sun, little thief."
Miran pulled the lever.
The world went white.