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The Hollow World — a collapsed layer beneath the surface of Ithrael, stitched together with ruins, echoing screams, and memories that refused to die.
Kael Draven stood at the edge of its abyss.
A blue flame flickered above his left shoulder — a sovereign trace, whispering in fractured tones.
> "Second Component... Identified."
"Memory Node: Law of Broken Continuity. Location: Forbidden Archive. Access Level: Nonexistent."
"Nonexistent?" Kael whispered. His voice vanished into the metallic winds that howled from below.
He clutched the Fragmented Cipher Key he'd stolen two nights ago — a hexagonal shard encoded with bits of ancient law, still humming with paradox.
Behind him, Sira adjusted her tattered cloak, face unreadable. Her right eye glimmered faintly — a pulse of the system interface, always watching, always hiding.
"You sure this place exists?" she asked, squinting into the abyss. "Every chronologian and script-keeper I met said the Archive collapsed centuries ago."
Kael didn't answer directly.
He instead turned, his Sovereign Core interface whispering low-level commands into his thoughts, like a maddened chorus of dying algorithms.
> "If a law is broken, it cannot be destroyed.
Only buried beneath rewritten truths."
"I don't need the archive to exist," he said, stepping toward the lip of the descent. "I just need its memory to remain."
With a blink, the Null Dive initiated.
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🌑 Descent: Hollow World - Layer 7: "Inscripted Wounds"
A gravity tear swallowed them both — and Kael fell into darkness, his body dissolving into particles while the Sovereign Core weaved a bubble of stability around his mind.
When he opened his eyes again, he was standing within a circular chamber. The walls pulsed like veins. A thousand glowing books floated in the air, chained by energy strands — each labeled with laws that had long since been erased from the world's surface.
Sira materialized beside him, blinking rapidly.
"This place... it's like standing inside the mind of a dead god," she said, voice hushed.
Kael's eyes locked on a single title: [The Law of Memory Refusal] — the same law that allowed the gods to rewrite the past and erase anomalies.
> "This is it..." Kael whispered. "If I rewrite this law..."
He didn't finish.
Because something else was watching.
From the far corner of the Archive, a ripple shimmered. A figure stepped forth — cloaked in living parchment, its face stitched with words that bled ink.
A librarian? A warden?
No.
A Script-Binder — an entity that guarded divine law by becoming it.
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⚔️ Confrontation: Script-Binder 08 — "Memory Consumption Protocol"
"Unauthorized presence. Nullblood Kael Draven. Breach level: Sovereign Class Threat."
Sira's voice turned sharp. "Kael. That thing's running an ancient divine heuristic. It's adapting to your mental pattern."
Kael stepped forward, calm despite the system's rising warnings.
> "Engage Sovereign Rewrite Protocol?"
"No," Kael replied coldly. "I need the law intact. I'll do it manually."
His hand reached for his soul-borne cipher blade, forged with rewritten mana loops. As the Script-Binder lunged, pages screeching and exploding with divine scripture, Kael side-stepped with surgical precision.
Each movement wasn't just combat — it was code manipulation.
He wasn't fighting the creature. He was debugging it.
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🧠 Memory Echo Triggered:
> Echo Detected: Version Kael.003-Beta (Killed by Memory Refusal)
A ripple tore through Kael's mind — he saw another self, a Kael who had died screaming as his identity was erased.
That Kael spoke one line through the echo:
> "Don't destroy the law. Bind it to your name."
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🔓 Sovereign Core Update:
▶ [Unique Command Unlocked]: Sovereign Imprint – Memory Law
Kael spun, ducked beneath the Script-Binder's final lunge, and plunged his blade not into the entity — but into the floating book itself.
[Imprinting…]
[Name Registered: Kael Draven]
[Law of Memory Refusal: Ownership Shifted]
The chamber froze.
All the books dropped at once. The air stilled.
The Forbidden Archive collapsed.
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🌌 Aftermath
Kael and Sira reappeared in the Hollow World's outer layer, bodies shaken, minds screaming.
Kael's right palm now bore an inverted sigil — the memory law bound to his soul-thread.
He had not just stolen power.
He had stolen the right to remember what gods tried to erase.
Sira looked at him differently now. Less with distrust. More with awe — and fear.
"...You're not just breaking fate, are you?" she asked.
Kael didn't answer.
He was already staring upward — toward the sky of Ithrael where the threads of fate moved like marionette strings.
Soon… they'd burn too.
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