"They're using my old chair to break into my new house," I said, a slow, incredulous smile spreading across my face. "The sheer, unmitigated audacity. I think I'm in love."
Lia, my queen of logic, did not share my amusement. She studied the image of the Abyssal Throne, her expression a mask of cold, analytical concern. This is not a trivial matter, Kaelen, she sent, her thought a sharp, clean line of data. That throne was forged in a different reality, using a fusion of your Sovereign Will and the conceptual laws of the Abyss. It is not just an object. It is a key. A piece of your own, divine source code that you left lying around.
"So? They're a bunch of mortals from a backwater Ground Floor," I scoffed. "What's the worst that could happen? They show up here and I turn them all into sentient cheese? Been there, done that. It's a Tuesday."
You are underestimating them, she countered, her seriousness a stark contrast to my flippancy. You gave their world a story, and then you abandoned it. For the last ten thousand years, they have had only one unifying narrative: 'The Tyrant God Who Left'. Their entire culture, their technology, their very magic system, has been singularly focused on finding a way to hunt you down. They are not the simple cultivators you left behind. They are a civilization of professional god-slayers. And you are their final boss.
She was right, of course. Her logic was flawless. But the idea of my own, first, badly-written story coming back to haunt me was just too damn funny.
"Fine," I said with a theatrical sigh. "Let's treat this as a serious threat. What's their plan? How are they using my throne to get here?"
I focused my will, my Omnistructure's senses, on the faint, residual connection I still had to that old, forgotten artifact. I peered back across the void, into the heart of Aethelgard-1.
What I saw wiped the smile from my face.
Lia was right. They were not the simple cultivators I remembered. They had reverse-engineered the demonic technology and divine artifacts that all the players had left behind. They had built a civilization that was a strange, terrifying hybrid of cultivation, magic, and cosmic technology.
And my throne was at the heart of their grand machine. They had turned it into a power source, a conceptual anchor. They were using its connection to me, its "author," to try and write themselves into my new story. They were literally trying to brute-force their way into the sequel.
The machine was crude. It was dangerous. It was tearing at the very fabric of their own reality. But it was working. I could feel the thin walls of my Sandbox universe beginning to tremble, to strain under the pressure of an entire world trying to break in.
"Well, shit," I said.
My System, my loyal Executive Assistant, chimed in.
[SOVEREIGN'S WHIM: PEST CONTROL]
[Description: An unauthorized reality is attempting to merge with your own. This is a violation of cosmic zoning laws and a potential threat to narrative stability.]
[Objective: Sever the connection. Travel to Aethelgard-1 and destroy the 'Abyssal Throne' artifact. This will shut down their 'invasion engine' permanently.]
[Reward: A quiet, peaceful, and boring existence.]
"Boring," I muttered. "Where's the fun in that?" I looked at Lia. "What's the alternative?"
The alternative is to let them come, she replied, a dangerous, logical gleam in her eyes. You wanted a new, interesting story, Kaelen. A challenge. The universe has just delivered one. An entire civilization of your own, indirect creation, has come to challenge its creator. This is not a bug. This is a feature.
She was goading me. My own, perfect Echo was goading me into choosing the more chaotic, more entertaining path. She had learned my lessons all too well.
"A feature, eh?" I said, a slow, predatory grin returning to my face. "Alright. Fine. You win. Let the fan-fiction writers have their day. Let's see what kind of story they've written for themselves."
I made my decision. I would not stop them. I would let them come. I would let this new, unexpected, and deeply personal expansion pack play out.
I sat back on my throne, grabbed a bowl of cosmic popcorn I had just created, and prepared to watch the show.
The machine in Aethelgard-1 roared to life. A massive, unstable, and altogether ugly portal ripped open in the skies above my perfect, serene reality.
And from that portal, an army poured forth. An army of vengeful, technologically-advanced cultivators, led by my grim, determined, and now very old "brother," King Valerius.
They had done it. They had broken into heaven.
But as their army began to assemble, as they prepared to wage their righteous, holy war against the tyrant god who had abandoned them, a new, unforeseen, and utterly horrifying variable emerged from the portal behind them.
The twist wasn't just that they had succeeded. It was that they had not come alone.
The crude, reality-tearing engine they had built, powered by my own abyssal artifact, had not just opened a door from their world to mine. It had punched a hole through a dozen different, forgotten realities along the way.
And now, things were starting to crawl through.
The first was a creature of pure, geometric chaos, a being from a reality where angles were alive and hungry.
The second was a legion of silent, weeping angels, their tears burning holes in the fabric of my world.
And the third, the one that made even my own, ancient, god-like blood run cold, was a single, simple, and terrifyingly familiar figure.
It was a man in a rumpled, gray suit, looking profoundly annoyed.
The Janitor.
"Really?" his voice echoed across my entire universe, a sound of pure, cosmic disappointment. "I leave you alone for a few millennia, and you've already broken a hole in the side of your own, custom-built playpen and let the horrors from the server basement crawl in?"
He looked at the invading army from Aethelgard-1. He looked at the weeping angels. He looked at me.
And he sighed the sigh of a being who was about to file the largest, most complicated bug report in the history of all creation.
"Alright," he said. "Everybody out. The party's over. This entire sector is now under... divine quarantine."