Ren did not wake up in the Wastes.
He did not wake up in the ruins of Aegis.
He woke up in a place that had no walls, no ceiling, and no floor.
It was a void of absolute, blinding perfection.
It was the White Room.
But it wasn't the laboratory of his childhood.
It was a geometric nightmare of shifting cubes and humming gears the size of planets.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Location: The Weapon's Forge.
Status: Recalibration in progress.
Discrepancy 004: You have exceeded the allocated power ceiling for Sector Earth.
Ren stood up, his body feeling light and fragile.
The golden and red veins on his skin had vanished.
He looked down at his hands and saw they were made of translucent glass.
"Recalibration?" Ren asked.
His voice didn't echo.
It was swallowed by the hum of the Forge.
"You mean deletion."
A voice answered him, but it didn't come from a person.
It came from the cubes.
"Deletion is a waste of resources," the voice said.
It was calm, melodic, and terrifyingly neutral.
"You are a rare iteration. You have achieved high level logic using corrupted data."
A massive cube rotated in front of Ren, its surface turning into a mirror.
Ren saw his reflection.
He didn't see himself.
He saw a series of complex equations and fluctuating graphs.
"The Developer does not delete," the voice continued.
"The Developer balances. You are currently a weight that threatens to tip the scale."
Ren let out a short, cold laugh.
"The scale was already broken," Ren said.
"Silas and the Archivists were tipping it for a hundred years. Why didn't you 'balance' them?"
The cubes hummed louder.
"They were within the parameters of the simulation," the voice replied.
"You are the only variable that has attempted to edit the source code from the inside."
Ren stepped toward the mirror.
"Then let me finish the job," he said.
"If I'm a discrepancy, it's because your code is inefficient. You left a backdoor open in Iteration 0."
The Forge went silent.
The hum of the gears stopped.
The cubes began to shift, forming a long, narrow bridge that led toward a dark sun in the distance.
"The Forge is where we re-render the Sovereigns," the voice said.
"If you want to stay in Iteration 102, you must prove your logic can sustain the weight of a New World."
"Forge your weapon, Subject 004."
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Objective: Craft a Sovereign Class Weapon.
Materials Available: 99 Failed Iterations.
Ren looked at the bridge.
Along the sides, hundreds of translucent figures began to appear.
They were the ghosts of himself.
The versions of Ren that had died in the gas, in the library, and in the pits of Aegis.
They weren't screaming anymore.
They were waiting.
"I don't need a sword," Ren whispered.
"I need a scalpel."
New Earth – The Crystal Ruins
Anya stood over the single, red glowing pixel.
It pulsed like a dying heart in the middle of the glowing blue flowers.
The rainbow light from the Developer had faded, leaving the sky a bruised and angry purple.
"He's gone," Gage whispered, his voice trembling.
The young boy looked at Anya with wide, searching eyes.
"Is he ever coming back?"
Anya didn't look at him.
Her hand was gripped tight around the hilt of her blade.
The silver glow in her arms was steady, but her heart was racing.
"Ren doesn't leave," Anya said.
Her voice was hard, forged in the same cold logic as her teacher's.
"He just changes the position of his pieces."
Suddenly, the air in the ruins began to distort.
A flash of blue light signaled a teleportation.
Rivan appeared ten meters away, but he wasn't alone.
He was flanked by three Diamond rank Guardians, their armor pulsing with the green mana of the New Aegis.
"The Architect is gone, Anya," Rivan sneered.
He looked at the red pixel with a look of pure greed.
"The Developer has removed the anomaly. This sector is officially under my administration again."
Anya stepped in front of the pixel, her blade sliding from its sheath with a hiss.
"You're trespassing, Rivan," she said.
Rivan laughed, a harsh and grating sound.
"With what army? You're a girl with a broken sword and a handful of orphans."
Anya looked at the red pixel.
She remembered Ren's lesson about the "Malware King."
She remembered how he used failure as a weapon.
"I'm not alone," Anya said.
She reached down and touched the red pixel with her bare hand.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Secondary User Detected: Anya.
Link Established: The Shadow Protocol.
The red pixel didn't explode.
It expanded, covering Anya's silver light in a jagged, crimson shell.
Her eyes turned a deep, blood red.
"I am the firewall," Anya roared.
She blurred into motion, her speed so great that the Diamond Guardians didn't even have time to raise their shields.
Anya didn't strike their armor.
She struck their logic.
Every time her blade touched their green mana, the energy glitched and turned into red static.
The Guardians fell to their knees, their armor malfunctioning and crushing their bones.
Rivan backed away, his staff glowing frantically.
"This is impossible! You're just a Rank-F shadow!"
"I was," Anya said, her voice echoing with Ren's monotone authority.
"But I've been upgraded."
Suddenly, a massive boom shook the entire planet.
Anya and Rivan both looked up at the fractured moon.
A beam of pure, golden light shot from the lunar surface toward the Earth.
It didn't hit the city of New Aegis.
It hit the crystal ruins.
Within the golden light, a new object began to materialize.
It wasn't a weapon.
It was a black book, bound in silver chains.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
The Architect's Ledger: Acquired.
Status: The Final Strategy is being written.
Anya reached for the book, but a hand made of white light stopped her.
A figure stepped out of the golden beam.
It looked exactly like Ren.
But it was wearing the white robes of an Archivist.
"That doesn't belong to you, girl," the White Ren said.
His eyes were a terrifying, absolute white.
"Subject 004 has failed the trial. I am here to collect the data."