The Paladin Captain didn't move like a soldier; he moved like a glitch in reality. As he stepped toward Jax, his golden armor hummed with a frequency that made the bone-walls of the bulwark vibrate and crack.
"You speak of 'saving' them," the Captain said, his voice overlapping in a strange, layered echo. "But you are merely prolonging the inevitable. The Server is full, Jaxon. Corruption must be purged so the Light can endure."
The Captain raised the golden orb at his belt. It wasn't a grenade. It was a System Override Hub.
[WARNING: EXTERNAL COMMAND DETECTED]
[ATTEMPTING TO FORCE-CLOSE 'LEGACY_SYSTEM.EXE']
[SYNC RATE DROPPING: 55%... 42%...]
Jax fell to one knee, his bone-armor beginning to flake away like ash. The "Vortex-7" rig in his spine screamed, the heat burning through his shirt. The Captain wasn't fighting his body; he was fighting his software.
"Unit... 01..." Jax wheezed.
The zombie paladin tried to lung forward, but it froze mid-step. Its violet eyes flickered to white, then back to violet, its limbs twitching as two masters fought for control of its neural-net.
"Give up, boy," the Captain commanded, walking calmly through the field of freezing dust. "I will delete you personally. It is the greatest mercy I can offer."
Jax looked up. Through the cracks in his HUD, he saw the terrified faces of the merchants behind him—files marked for deletion. He saw Sledge, her mechanical hands gripping a wrench, ready to die for a cause she didn't even understand.
"Don't fight his command, Jax," his father's voice whispered, clearer than ever. "The Paladins are rigid. They follow the Code. You... you are a Glitch. Don't resist the crash. Trigger it."
Jax's eyes turned a dark, bruised purple. He stopped trying to stabilize his system. He opened every port. He invited the corruption.
"You want to purge the system?" Jax stood up, his body flickering in and out of existence as the 'Glitch Step' went into an infinite loop. "Then let's see how you handle a Memory Leak."
[OVERCLOCK: UNLIMITED]
[SUB-ROUTINE: MALWARE INJECTION]
[TARGET: GOLDEN ORB (ADMIN HUB)]
Jax didn't run; he warped. In a spray of digital static, he appeared directly in front of the Captain. He didn't punch. He grabbed the golden orb with his bone-clad hand and forced his own corrupted, "Necro-Code" directly into the device.
The reaction was instantaneous. The golden light of the orb turned a violent, jagged violet. The Captain's armor began to scream—a literal sound of a thousand corrupted files being opened at once.
"What... what have you done?!" the Captain roared, stumbling back as his visor displayed a million error messages.
"I didn't delete you," Jax said, his voice now a terrifying harmony of his own and his father's. "I just filled your head with the ghosts you tried to forget."
The orb shattered. A wave of violet energy blasted outward, knocking every Paladin in the cavern to the floor as their HUDs rebooted in an endless loop.