The man in white lowered his hands.
Evan clutched the single card he had picked. He was still surprised with the disappearance of the other cards. He knew that was not magic. It was something else.
He stared at card in his hand.
Did I make the right choice?
He was hesitating for a few more seconds before he flipped it over.
He expected a Joker. Or an Ace. Something that came out of a normal deck.
Instead, etched into the pristine white surface in deep, abyssal black ink, was a single word.
Evan stared at it.
It was the same word that had been on the black card in his pocket. But here, in this void, stripped of the noise of Edgewater, the word hit him with the force of a revelation.
"Emperor?"
The word echoed in his mind, dragging memories to the surface.
He thought of Mr. Greg blocking the stairs, sneering at his degree. "You're a burden." He thought of The Dean smiling behind his desk, crushing a future with a single signature. "Too clever for your own good." He thought of his father's defeated voice. "It's like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom."
The constant, grinding math of survival. The feeling of being a variable in someone else's equation—a variable that could be deleted at any moment.
Evan realized something.
He didn't want money. Money ran out.
He didn't want fame. Fame faded.
He wanted something else.
He wanted to be the constant. He wanted the power to set the variables. To dictate the terms. To never, ever be at the mercy of a broken system or anyone again. He wanted to run his life like an Emperor.
"Emperor," Evan whispered, his grip tightening on the card. "Absolute authority."
He stared at the card. "I want that kind of life."
FLASH.
Light exploded across his vision.
"What's happening?"
It wasn't a visual flash—it was a sensory overload. It bypassed his eyes and spiked directly into his optic nerve.
The void shattered.
Evan was yanked backward, dissolved into data, and reassembled in a new reality.
He wasn't standing on the rippling floor anymore.
He was floating in the sky.
Below him, the world was screaming.
[ ARCHIVE: FILE 001 ]
"Archive? What is this?"
Evan gasped, shielding his face from a phantom heat that blistered the air.
Even though he had a lot of questions now, he knew that he needed to find the answer himself.
Below him lay a vast desert canyon, carved from living red rock. In the center sat a throne made of molten gold.
A man sat there. He was massive, armored in plates of obsidian that glowed with internal magma. In his hand, he gripped a spear that pulsed like a contained star.
Armies knelt before him in the dust. Millions of them.
When the man stood, the tectonic plates shifted. He pointed the spear.
The sky tore open. Fire didn't just rain down; it erased. It scoured the earth. Beasts with iron scales and wingspans wide enough to blot out the sun—Dragons—screamed as they were vaporized instantly.
"He can wield fire…" Evan muttered, watching the devastation with awe. "Who is he? A god?"
But then, the vision zoomed in.
Evan saw the man's face.
He wasn't triumphing. He was weeping.
His skin was cracking, turning to charcoal. The fire wasn't just burning his enemies; it was burning him. He was consuming his own life force to fuel the spear.
He screamed—a sound of pure, regretful agony—as his own power turned him to ash on his golden throne.
[ STATUS: DECEASED. CAUSE: BURNOUT. ]
The scene dissolved.
The smell of salt and ozone filled Evan's nose. The heat was replaced by a bone-deep chill.
"It is changing," Evan muttered. "What am I going to see now?"
[ ARCHIVE: FILE 002 ]
Now, he was standing above an ocean that stretched forever. Dark, storm-tossed waves crashed against a citadel of ice.
An Emperor in crystal armor stood on the highest spire. His sword crackled with blue lightning.
He raised the blade.
The ocean obeyed. Tsunamis froze in mid-air, creating walls of ice to block the horizon. He weaponized the weather itself. It was the ultimate defense.
"Nothing can touch him," Evan breathed. "Water is his domain."
But the abyss leaked.
From the deep water, shadows rose. Not monsters—just darkness. Hollow-eyed nightmares made of ink and cold.
They didn't fight the Emperor. They ignored him.
"They went for his people," Evan muttered, watching the horror unfold. "He built a wall, but he left them inside with the rot."
Evan watched as the Emperor's subjects were dragged under, one by one. The Emperor slashed at the shadows, but you cannot cut darkness. You cannot freeze despair.
The Emperor roared orders, but his army broke. His kingdom didn't sink; it collapsed under the weight of fear. The Emperor stood alone on his spire, ruler of an empty iceberg, until the shadows swallowed him too.
[ STATUS: DECEASED. CAUSE: ISOLATION. ]
After the notification, the surroundings changed again.
The sea dissolved into steel.
[ ARCHIVE: FILE 003 ]
Towers pierced the clouds, so high they made the skyscrapers of New Orelis look like toys.
Evan floated before a chrome metropolis. Flying vehicles zipped along magnetic rails.
A woman in white robes floated in the center of a control room, her hands glowing with the pulse of the earth. She was typing on a holographic interface. Machines bowed to her. Starships launched into the void at her command.
"She's from a higher civilization or… a different world," Evan reasoned. "Technology. Efficiency. Logic. My kind of Emperor."
But the vision twisted.
Knives in the dark.
It wasn't monsters. It wasn't burnout.
It was her own people. Trusted ones.
Evan watched as the people closest to her—the ones she had elevated, the ones she trusted to run the system—became the virus. It was betrayal.
The towers crumbled. The fleets burned from the inside out. Her empire of steel didn't just fall—it rusted into oblivion in seconds.
She died with a look of total shock on her face, betrayed by the one variable she failed to calculate: human greed.
[ STATUS: DECEASED. CAUSE: BETRAYAL. ]
The visions spun faster now. A kaleidoscope of history on overdrive.
Evan saw them all.
Emperors of Wind carving paths through the sky, only to be scattered by storms they couldn't control. Emperors of Earth building mountain fortresses, only to be buried in their own tombs. They were a few more Emperors and Empresses of Fire and Water, too.
They all ruled. They were respected, feared, unstoppable.
But, every single one of them fell.
Evan floated there, suspended in the data stream, watching aeons of glory turn into garbage.
"All of them," he said, his voice trembling.
He understood.
This wasn't a highlight reel. It was more like an autopsy report.
"Emperors and Empresses," he whispered. "They had the power. They had the people. But in the end… they all lost."
He searched for the pattern. The code behind the collapse.
They were incomplete, he realized. They were absolute in one direction, and that made them fragile.
The light flared one last time—a violent, blinding white flash—before collapsing back into the void.
SNAP.
Evan was back on the rippling floor.
He gasped, clutching the white card to his chest like a lifeline. His lungs burned as if he had held his breath for a thousand years.
He stared at the word EMPEROR.
It didn't look like a title anymore. It looked like a warning label.
He looked up at the man in white.
The figure hadn't moved. He was still standing there, watching.
"What… does this mean?" Evan asked. His voice was steady now. The panic was gone, replaced by a cold, hard resolve. "Who were they?"
"They were the Candidates," the man said.
His voice was not an echo. It was clear and calm. It carried a weight that made the hair on Evan's arms stand up.
"And they all failed," the man continued.
He looked at Evan. The white shades reflected Evan's pale face.
"Some believed power granted invincibility, but they burned because they lacked restraint. Some tempered their bodies but neglected their mind."
He paused before adding, "Their kingdoms shattered because they could not conquer their own fear. Some Candidates sought efficiency through others; they placed their faith in the system, and died by the one variable they could not program—loyalty."
The man paused, letting the fate of the fallen gods sink in.
"They lacked the balance. They were strong, but they were not complete. But you… you are different."
"Wait a minute. What do you mean by I am different?"
The man in white tilted his head.
Then, with deliberate, terrifying grace, he moved.
He stepped back. He lowered himself to one knee. He bowed his head, the rim of his white hat hiding his masked face.
It was the posture of a servant before a King.
"I have been waiting for you, Evan Kyros, the next Candidate."