[Optional Quest – The First Thread]
Objective: Locate and enter the deleted trial: "TRIAL ∅"
System Warning:
This trial is not archived.
Not indexed.
Not supposed to exist.
Sector coordinates looped endlessly. No stable entrance. No fixed time anchor.
But we had one clue:
The Threadless One had touched the gate.
And it had responded.
Zai, Trinity, Orion, and I stood before the cracked relic of Trial Initialization—what used to be Trial 0. The launch point of all Reapers. Now half buried in sand, code, and old memory echoes.
Only this time, the gate opened.
Not because of system code.
Because of me.
"You've rewritten enough to access what came before," Zai said quietly.
"Whatever this place is… you earned your way in by defying everything else."
The portal flared—not in light, but in static.
And we stepped through.
The world inside wasn't a trial.
It was a scar.
No environment.
No objectives.
Just fragments—
Of a trial that failed before the Game began.
Floating glyphs. Cracked throne symbols. Endless system messages looping like a heartbeat.
[Trial ∅: Echo Layer 1]
Purpose: Unrecoverable
Status: Denied
Message: "They shouldn't have remembered."
Trinity shivered.
"This place was erased on purpose."
Orion stepped into a faded memory flicker—his hand passed through an image of a player standing alone in front of the first Sovereign gate.
A player with no name.
Just a title.
"The First Reaper."
He looked like me.
But older.
Hollow.
Crowned in silence.
Zai accessed the flickering glyphs.
"They tried to build the Graveyard before the death engine stabilized. Before threads. Before roles. But something went wrong."
Trinity: "What?"
Zai turned to me.
"You."
[ARCHIVED SYSTEM ENTRY]
"Subject: The First Reaper
Result: Failed synchronization
Reason: Chose empathy over recursion
Action Taken: Trial Deleted
Consequence: System instability required creation of the Games"
"Note: Sovereignty is a risk if it remembers itself."
I staggered back.
I wasn't just wearing the Crown now.
I might have worn it before the Game even started.
The Threadless One's voice echoed from the void:
"They called it a bug. But it was a heartbeat."
"And it survived deletion by choosing you as its anchor."
"So ask yourself, Sovereign…
Were you chosen to rule the Graveyard—"
"—or to end it?"
[NEW SYSTEM FLAG: SOVEREIGN LOOP INSTABILITY – 1/3]
Future arcs may unlock legacy echoes from failed timelines
Current loop integrity: 88%
The trial collapsed behind us as we escaped—just ahead of the static consuming its final memory.
We made it back.
But we didn't return the same.
Because now…
We knew there was something older than the Game.
And it might not want it to end.