CROWN FRAGMENT – LOCATION: ACTIVE]
Zone 14W – Hollow Fold Bastion
Protection Level: HIGH
Threat Detected: Former Reaper – Now Designation "Warlord Krell"
Class: Void-Forged / Rogue Sovereign
The Hollow Fold didn't look like part of the Graveyard anymore.
It was sharp.
Jagged.
Empty.
No flames.
No threads.
Just broken players building fortresses out of old system code, run by the one thing I thought I'd never see again:
A Reaper with a crown.
Orion and I moved through the outer ruins under cloaking threads. Zai remained behind to maintain the link to the Sovereign Platform. Trinity was still stabilizing.
"I've heard of this place," Orion whispered. "Where Reapers go when the System rejects them."
"Didn't know they could be rejected."
He nodded grimly. "They can. For remembering too much."
We approached the central gate.
Dozens of players watched from spiked towers.
Their marks were dulled—unlit.
These were unthreaded. Free from the Game.
But not by choice.
By fear.
Then the gate opened.
And he walked out.
Tall.
Clad in armor shaped from Nullmetal and Reaper bone.
A glyph of Sovereignty—inverted—pulsing across his chest.
[ENTITY: WARLORD KRELL]
Former Class: Trialmaster Reaper
Now: Thread-Eater, Ruler of the Hollow Fold
Crown Fragment Contained in Heart Core
"You smell like the Graveyard," Krell said, his voice like rusted steel. "And I don't bow to what I bled to escape."
I stepped forward. "You hold something that doesn't belong to you."
"I am what it became," he snapped. "The system cast me out when I questioned its justice. So I rewrote my role."
Orion readied his blade.
Krell raised his hand—and dozens of hollow players responded in kind.
"You think Sovereignty is a title?"
"It's a burden—and I buried mine beneath the bodies of the ones I couldn't save."
He charged.
The fight was savage.
No rules.
No system calls.
Just code-on-code, thread against bone.
He didn't use flame. He used absence—blades of silence that cut away memories, moves, options.
Every time I rewrote, he deleted.
But I had something he didn't.
A reason to still burn.
I drove my Lucid flame through his corrupted glyph.
His armor cracked.
His scream split the Hollow Fold open.
And his core—
the fragment—fell from his chest, still burning dimly.
[CROWN FRAGMENT ABSORBED – 2 of 3 RECOVERED]
New Ability Unlocked: Sovereign Override – Silence Break (1x/day)
Hollow Fold Zone: Stabilized
Warlord Krell: Defeated. Status – Dormant.
Krell lay at my feet, bleeding code, eyes flickering.
"You'll see," he gasped. "The last fragment doesn't want to be found."
I knelt beside him.
"Why?"
He laughed weakly.
"Because it's not a place."
"It's a person."