The Sky Tower penthouse blazed like a golden temple to excess. Five hundred of the city's elite sipped champagne worth more than most people's annual salaries, their laughter echoing off marble floors that cost seven figures to install.
Arthur Sky stood at the altar like a conquering emperor.
Twenty-four hours ago, he'd lost fifteen billion dollars. Tonight, his protagonist aura had bent reality itself to maintain the illusion of untouchable power. Designer tuxedo that cost more than a house. Hair styled to perfection. That trademark smile that promised everything and delivered pain.
But Lucian could see the cracks spreading through his golden facade.
Arthur's **[SSS Rank]** tag flickered like a dying lightbulb, digital static bleeding through the edges. His hands trembled—barely visible, but there—as he raised his champagne flute to address the crowd.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Arthur's voice carried across the penthouse with practiced authority, but Lucian caught the slight rasp underneath. "Tonight, we celebrate more than an engagement. We celebrate the natural order. The strong taking what belongs to them."
Scattered applause rippled through the crowd like a wave of expensive perfume and nervous energy. Lucian adjusted his stolen waiter's uniform, moving between the guests like smoke. Nobody looked at the help. They never did.
On the altar, Sylvia Frost stood like a beautiful corpse in designer silk.
Her ice-blue gown was worth a small fortune, her makeup flawless as a porcelain doll, her posture perfect as a trained dancer. But her eyes... Christ, her eyes were *empty*. The look of someone who'd stopped fighting because fighting only made the pain last longer.
"Some pathetic insects," Arthur continued, his gaze sweeping the crowd like a predator marking territory, "recently tried to challenge that order. They thought they could steal from their betters, rewrite the very laws of reality."
His smile sharpened to a blade's edge. "But destiny cannot be denied. The protagonist *always* wins in the end."
Murmurs of agreement from the crowd. Nervous laughter that sounded like breaking glass. They all knew about the mysterious "Lucian Ash" who'd somehow robbed Arthur blind on live television, but nobody dared speak the name aloud.
Arthur raised his glass higher, golden light from the chandeliers making him glow like a false god. "So tonight, I want to thank that pathetic little worm—wherever he's crawled off to die—for reminding me why some people are born to *kneel*."
The crowd erupted in applause that sounded like gunfire. Arthur's grin widened as he turned to Sylvia, grabbing her chin with possessive fingers that left white marks on her pale skin.
"Isn't that right, my dear? Some people are just meant to be... *owned*."
Sylvia's jaw clenched, the only sign of life in her marble features. What could she say? Her father's company was saved, but the price was her soul served on a silver platter.
*Not tonight, golden boy. Not ever again.*
Lucian stepped out of the shadows, his waiter's uniform dissolving into streams of emerald code. The digital fragments swirled around him like living smoke, reforming into an elegant black tuxedo that seemed to devour light itself.
Every conversation died. Every head turned. The silence was so complete you could hear champagne bubbles popping.
"Sorry I'm late," Lucian said, his voice cutting through the stunned quiet like a sword through silk. "Traffic was absolutely *murder*."
Arthur's face cycled through emotions like a broken traffic light—confusion, recognition, disbelief, and finally, pure molten rage.
"You." The word came out strangled. "You're supposed to be dead. You're supposed to be *nothing*."
"Funny thing about being nothing," Lucian smiled, raising his hand with theatrical slowness. "It means you have absolutely nothing left to lose."
He snapped his fingers.
The sound echoed like a gunshot.
Every massive display screen around the penthouse flickered, static bleeding across their surfaces like digital blood. Then the image cleared, showing the engagement ceremony's official documentation in crisp, legal text:
**[ENGAGEMENT CEREMONY - OFFICIAL RECORD]**
**[Bride: Sylvia Frost]**
**[Groom: Arthur Sky]**
**[Status: IN PROGRESS]**
**[Witnesses: 500]**
Lucian's consciousness dove into the code like a shark into bloody water, his will reshaping reality with surgical precision:
**[Groom: Arthur Sky]** → **[DELETE]**
**[Groom: Lucian Ash]** → **[CONFIRMED]**
The screens updated instantly. Arthur's perfect photograph vanished like smoke, replaced by Lucian's face smiling back at five hundred shocked witnesses. The crowd erupted in confused shouts, camera flashes exploding like a paparazzi feeding frenzy.
"WHAT THE HELL—" Arthur lunged forward, rage twisting his golden features into something ugly and desperate.
Then his knees *buckled*.
Not from weakness. Not from choice. His body simply obeyed new parameters, reality rewriting itself around Lucian's will:
**[Posture_Status: Standing]** → **[Posture_Status: Kneeling]**
**[Dignity_Level: Maximum]** → **[Dignity_Level: Shattered]**
Arthur crashed to his knees before Sylvia with a sound like breaking bones, his thousand-dollar pants tearing on the unforgiving marble. His mouth opened and closed like a fish drowning in air, his protagonist aura sparking and glitching around him like a broken halo.
"I... I can't... what did you *DO* to me?!" Arthur's voice cracked with panic and humiliation, the sound of a god discovering he was mortal.
The crowd went absolutely insane. Phones materialized everywhere, recording the impossible sight of the golden boy groveling before his bride like a common beggar. Social media would detonate within seconds.
Lucian walked through the chaos like he owned the world and everything in it, his footsteps echoing with digital authority. The crowd parted before him like the Red Sea, too shocked to breathe, let alone interfere.
"Hello, Sylvia," he said softly, extending his hand like a prince from a fairy tale. "Ready to get the hell out of here?"
For the first time all evening, Sylvia's dead eyes flickered with something that might have been life. But not surprise. Not confusion.
*Recognition.*
"You finally came," she whispered, her voice carrying weight that made the air itself seem heavier. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten our deal... *Code Hunter*."
Lucian's blood turned to liquid nitrogen. *She knows. She fucking knows everything.*
Sylvia's eyes flashed with streams of emerald data—the same code that had awakened his power. But hers was different. Older. More refined. More *dangerous*.
"Impossible," Arthur gasped from his knees, staring up at them both like they were aliens. "She's just a tool! A plot device! She can't be—"
"Awake?" Sylvia's smile was sharp as winter frost and twice as cold. "Oh, Arthur. You never did understand the story you were trapped in, did you?"
She took Lucian's hand, her fingers ice-cold but steady as steel. The moment their skin touched, his Chaos Editor interface exploded with new data that made his head spin:
**[ALLY DETECTED: Sylvia Frost]**
**[Classification: AWAKENED ENTITY - VETERAN]**
**[Faction: Fodder Alliance - SUPREME LEADER]**
**[Threat Level: CATASTROPHIC]**
**[Time Awakened: 847 DAYS]**
*Holy shit. She's not just awake—she's been running this game longer than anyone.*
Arthur tried to stand, his protagonist aura flaring desperately like a dying star. But every time he moved, Lucian casually adjusted his parameters, keeping him pinned in place like a butterfly on a collector's board.
"This isn't over!" Arthur screamed, blood vessels bursting in his eyes from the strain of fighting reality itself. "I am the PROTAGONIST! I am the chosen one! The universe will bend to—"
He coughed, and blood sprayed across the pristine white marble like abstract art. His golden **[SSS Rank]** tag flickered violently, hairline cracks spreading across its surface like a breaking mirror.
**[PROTAGONIST AURA: CRITICAL DAMAGE]**
**[NARRATIVE STABILITY: 19%]**
**[WARNING: CORE IDENTITY FRACTURING]**
**[ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETE BREAKDOWN: 00:03:47]**
The crowd backed away in primal terror as Arthur convulsed, his perfect features twisting with digital static. Whatever was happening to him transcended the natural world.
"We need to leave," Sylvia said urgently, pulling Lucian toward the exit with surprising strength. "*Now*."
They ran through the penthouse, past screaming socialites and exploding camera flashes. Behind them, Arthur's agonized roars echoed like a dying god's final curse.
But as they reached the elevator, the world *shuddered*.
Not an earthquake. Something infinitely worse. The fabric of reality itself was tearing.
The elevator doors opened to reveal not the lobby, but an endless void filled with impossible stars. And hanging in that cosmic darkness like a mechanical cancer was a structure that broke the human mind to perceive.
Server farms the size of continents. Quantum processors that pulsed with the heartbeat of digital gods. Data streams flowing like rivers of pure information between computational arrays that stretched beyond the horizon.
*The real world. The world behind the lie.*
A massive hand—easily the size of Manhattan—reached through the void toward their reality. Its fingers were made of pure code, crackling with administrative authority that could delete universes with a thought.
**[CRITICAL SYSTEM ALERT]**
**[LEVEL 99 NARRATIVE COLLAPSE DETECTED]**
**[REALITY INTEGRITY: 23% AND FALLING]**
**[INITIATING EMERGENCY RESET PROTOCOLS]**
**[SERVER WIPE COMMENCING IN: 23:47:33]**
The countdown appeared in burning letters across the sky, visible through every window in the city, reflected in every screen, carved into the retinas of every living soul.
"Twenty-four hours," Sylvia breathed, her face pale as moonlight. "They're going to delete everything. Everyone will cease to exist."
Lucian stared at the cosmic horror reaching for their world, his mind struggling to process the impossible. "How do we stop something like that?"
Sylvia's grip on his hand tightened until her nails drew blood. "We find the Old World Source Code. The original program that birthed this reality. It's the only thing with enough power to prevent a total reset."
"Where the hell do we find something like that?"
Her smile was sharp as broken glass and twice as dangerous. "In the place where all stories begin and end. The Narrative Engine's core. The heart of the machine that dreams our world into existence."
The giant hand pressed against the barrier between dimensions, reality rippling like water around its touch. Cracks spread across the sky itself, revealing glimpses of the vast computational matrix that held their universe together.
**[WARNING: REALITY INTEGRITY AT 22%]**
**[ESTIMATED TIME TO TOTAL EXISTENCE FAILURE: 23:46:15]**
"Then we better move fast," Lucian said, pulling Sylvia into the impossible elevator that led to places that shouldn't exist. "I've got a world to save and a god to kill."
As the doors closed, cutting off their view of the cosmic nightmare, one thought burned through his mind like acid:
*Twenty-four hours to find a code that might be myth, in a place that defies reality, to save a world that's apparently just someone else's dream.*
*Just another day in the life of the cannon fodder who refused to stay dead.*