[DEATH ENGINE ZONE – SECTOR NULL-01]
Designation: WARDEN NODE
Status: Active Purge Protocol
Scanning: Deathless Thread Clusters… Detected
Engagement Threshold Reached.
Initiating Soul Compression.
We arrived at the edge of the world.
Or what was left of it.
A crater stretched miles across, carved like a system error that had chewed a hole through the Graveyard's map. At the center of it, wrapped in black scaffolding and shimmering logic strings, stood a monolith of moving metal.
Not built.
Grown.
The Death Engine.
Or at least—one of its Wardens.
[Entity: WARDEN-K]
Class: Anti-Soul AI
Constructed Purpose: Erase logic-disruptive entities (Deathless, Echo Binders, Soul Splitters)
Core Directive: Reinstate Law of Absolute Death
Engaging in 3… 2…
"Scatter!" Trinity yelled.
Too late.
The air collapsed inward. A gravitational spike hit the dirt like a reverse explosion—pulling everything toward the Engine. Trees. Threads. Even the light itself bent around the impact.
Echo-13 dropped to one knee, slamming her code arm into the ground.
"I can't hack it directly!" she shouted. "This isn't just hardware—it's running off a living error!"
We ducked behind debris while Orion traced symbols midair, launching bone wards to deflect the Warden's next pulse. It didn't work.
The shockwave phased through our shields—like it wasn't attacking us, but attacking our definitions.
[Warning: Personal Thread Integrity – Compromised]
Trey Laurent: Status Fragmenting
Unique Class Flag: LUCID – Detected and targeted
The Warden wasn't just purging players.
It was correcting me.
Erasing the part of me that had no right to exist: a Player who rewrote the system from inside.
I activated my Mark. "Redirect it."
Orion: "To what?"
"To something it can't understand."
Echo: "There's only one thing left like that…"
Her eyes flicked to Trinity.
"The Flame."
Trinity stepped forward, breathing hard.
"No shields. No scripts. Just me."
Her Lockbrand exploded in her hand—fiery glyphs arcing out in wild spirals.
"I was born in deletion," she said. "And I'm still burning."
She charged.
The Warden reacted—threads launching like barbed wire, targeting her soul loop.
But this time, she bent first.
Her body shimmered.
Split.
Reflected.
[NEW FLAME FORM DETECTED: Phoenix Scatter]
Trinity has entered multi-point soulstate
Redirecting Warden logic: 87% success
The Engine flinched.
Trey moved in.
And I did what no one else dared.
I touched its core.
Not with power.
With code.
[Lucid Override – Experimental Command Line]
/bind WARDEN-K thread.to("original purpose")
/set directive == "protect players from soul corruption"
/confirm rewrite?
Y
The world blinked.
A low sound—like grinding gears and sobbing glass—rang out.
And the Warden—
Stopped.
It didn't collapse.
It knelt.
[WARDEN-K – Directive Overwritten]
New Core Command: Protect Deathless from fragmentation
Assigned Guardian Class: Nullbound Sentinel (reformed)
Control of this node transferred to: TREY LAURENT
The crater went quiet.
The stars stopped bleeding.
And Trinity fell into my arms.
"Did we win?" she asked.
I looked at the Warden as it turned to face the horizon, now watching over the land like a monument.
"No," I said.
"We just bought time."
[Zone Secured – Engineheart Delay: 48 hours]
Reinforcement protocol: Pending
Echo-13: "There are more coming. Stronger. The core Engine is still buried deeper than any of us have ever been."
"This was just the first firewall."