The world broke.
Not in shards. Not in smoke. In logic.
As Root slammed Prime into the center of the Bastion's altar, the system beneath them stopped trying to hold shape. Scripts fractured. Physics gave up. The Bastion peeled open like a flower, revealing what had always been hidden beneath the surface—a void laced with gold-threaded equations and glowing divine algorithms.
The System Root Directory.
A place no one was meant to see.
"Veyr," Root said, catching his breath as the fragments of the Bastion spun in slow-motion around them, "this is—"
"—the crown," Veyr finished grimly. "The place where everything was first named. Where the original classes were carved. Where the first quests were written."
They floated now. Not by flight. Not by power.
By narrative weight.
Prime rose slowly from the debris, cloak torn, interface flickering with visible damage. But his eyes—his clean, clinical eyes—remained fixed on Root. Not angry. Not afraid. Just… focused.
"You've breached a restricted zone," Prime said, his voice calm even as the space collapsed around them. "You've brought Hollow into the crown."
"That's kind of my thing," Root replied.
Veyr spun lazily beside him, arms folded. "You know what happens now, right?"
Root didn't look at him. "Yeah."
He pointed at Prime.
"No more copies."
He pointed at the golden scripts swirling above them—lines of divine programming, beautiful and cruel.
"No more crowns."
He let Hollow Points rise around his spine like a cloak of thorns.
"Time to break the story."
The first strike didn't make a sound.
It deleted sound.
Root lunged through the floating ruins, Hollow Points blazing through his veins. He didn't cast a skill. He wrote one—on the fly, with nothing but raw will and rejection in his bones.
[ Hollow Override: "NULL_LANCE( )" ]
The space in front of him rippled. A javelin of inverted light burst from his palm, not shining but consuming, like it had been carved out of unspoken possibility. It tore through the golden lines of System code in the air, leaving silence in its wake.
Prime countered instantly.
He extended his hand, not summoning a weapon—but a title.
[ Title Assertion: "The First That Chose Correctly" ]
[ All attacks against Root Prime are now treated as misguided actions. ]
Reality bent.
Root's lance curved mid-air, refusing to strike true. Prime's title had rewritten the narrative alignment—every attack Root made was now seen by the System as a "mistake." Not wrong in aim, but in intention.
"Cute trick," Root muttered, eyes narrowing.
He raised both hands—and rewrote the rewrite.
[ Override: Intention Lock > Author Unknown ]
[ Reclassification successful: Hollowed Actions no longer track morality alignment. ]
The title snapped.
Prime recoiled, his interface flashing a rare alert.
Veyr cackled in the distance. "He's learning, golden boy!"
They clashed again.
Not with blades—but with concepts.
Prime summoned a radiant glyph of "Justice Before Strength." Root tore it in half and wrote "Survival Before Approval" in its place.
Prime activated a chain called "Hero's Path." Root infected it with a broken line of narrative from the Ash Zone: "No One Remembers The Deleted."
The crown shuddered.
Each time they rewrote, the divine code twisted. The System's foundations flickered. And still, Prime didn't slow. If anything, he smiled.
"You're strong," Prime said. "Stronger than they predicted."
Root cracked his knuckles. "That supposed to scare me?"
"No," Prime replied.
He stepped forward.
"It's supposed to make you wonder… why they let you live this long."
And with that, Prime reached toward the core script.
The one that defined Root's entire existence.
[ CLASS: NULL ]
[ STATUS: UNSTABLE ]
[ ORIGIN: REDACTED ]
He was going to erase it.
The golden script hovered between them, fragile and sacred.
[ CLASS: NULL ]
[ STATUS: UNSTABLE ]
[ ORIGIN: REDACTED ]
Root saw his existence laid bare. Not stats. Not titles. Just raw lines of code that had never been meant to survive. And now Prime's hand hovered over them, glowing with cleansing light—ready to rewrite.
"If you don't stop me," Prime said gently, "this version of you won't vanish. It'll just… be better. Cleaner. We'll save the world. You and I."
"I'm not 'you,'" Root said.
He reached inside himself—not for power, but for refusal. For the stubborn belief that being broken was better than being false. And the Hollow answered.
[ Rewrite Request: Denied. ]
[ Root has severed all Class Dependencies. ]
He stepped into the air. Time didn't stop, but it paused—held its breath.
And Root reached toward the core script—not to defend it.
To erase it.
"What are you doing?" Prime asked, sudden alarm in his voice.
Root's voice was steady.
"I'm not reclaiming my class."
He dragged his hand through the glowing lines.
"I'm rejecting the concept of class itself."
The script screamed.
[ CLASS: NULL ] — TERMINATED
[ ROOT NOW EXISTS OUTSIDE SYSTEM VOCABULARY ]
[ SYSTEM CANNOT TRACK. SYSTEM CANNOT CONTROL. ]
Root Prime flinched.
Veyr whistled. "Well, that's one way to void your warranty."
The Bastion cracked. Not shattered—collapsed inward, like a library being erased from the end of the alphabet. Everything Prime stood for—every golden standard, every curated title—was falling.
"You've made yourself unwriteable," Prime said, genuinely shaken. "You'll have no path. No quests. No evolution."
Root grinned.
"I'll have something better."
He stepped into the void left behind and let it wrap around him.
"I'll have freedom."