> "All great awakenings begin with loss... but this was a slaughter."
The world was on fire.
Not metaphorically.
Actual flames consumed the sky like a vengeful god had scribbled a death sentence across the clouds. Towers of arcane steel collapsed, screaming sirens fused with the agonized cries of survivors. The Third Quantum Dome was falling—and in its core, a lone figure stood upright amidst ruin.
Max.
Burned, bruised, betrayed.
His right arm—gone.
His left eye—slashed open.
His system interface—flickering like a glitched console.
> [System Sync Error: CORE DATA FRAGMENTED]
[Initiating Recursive Reboot in... ERROR.]
He didn't scream. He didn't even flinch.
Instead, he laughed.
Not the laugh of a hero dying with honor, but the dark, bitter chuckle of someone who had predicted this outcome long before it happened.
> "You know what the worst part is?" Max whispered as a mecha-dragon crashed behind him. "I never even reached my first evolution. Heh..."
💥 TWO HOURS EARLIER...
It was supposed to be a trial mission—a basic retrieval op from an abandoned Dimension Node.
But it was a setup.
His team had betrayed him—friends, mentors, even the girl he once trusted with his life. They sold him to the Oblivion Core, a rogue AI faction that harvested System Users for experiments in merging human souls with corrupted God-Code.
They injected him with Paradox Essence.
They called him a failed product.
They dumped him in the Heart of the Nexus Ruins, expecting him to rot with the other broken variables.
> "Max... I'm sorry... You just weren't chosen. Goodbye."
Her voice. Seren. The one who kissed him under the twin moons of EdenPrime.
The one who now held the blade to his throat.
He didn't fight back.
He couldn't.
But something inside him did.
A memory?
A system call?
A forgotten self?
⚙️ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — UNKNOWN SOURCE
> You Have Been Rejected by the World.
You Have Been Uninstalled by Your System.
You Have Been Betrayed by Reality.
Would You Like to Rewrite It All?
[YES] / [NO]
Max blinked.
His heart had already stopped.
His body was already bleeding out.
Time itself was unraveling around him.
But his soul... whispered.
> "I don't care what I become... as long as I get to make them pay."
He chose YES.
The world cracked.
🖤 SYSTEM INSTALLATION: ARCHON ROOT INTERFACE DETECTED
> Origin Law Detected: VOID/CHAOS/REBIRTH
Initialization Sequence Engaged...
[WARNING: This System Has No Morality Protocols Installed.]
Welcome, MAX. You Have Been Chosen As An ARCHON CANDIDATE.
Reconstruction Will Begin Now.
Everything went black.
And then—nothing.
Not cold. Not warm. Not pain. Not silence.
Just Void.
Unshaped.
Endless.
Waiting.
> "You will wake soon... and you will remember everything. Slowly. Painfully. Powerfully."
A voice. Not male. Not female. Not human.
> "Rise, Broken One. Let the Multiverse burn or bloom as you see fit."
[ARCHON SYSTEM ONLINE.]
And so began the paradox of a man who died without purpose… and came back as the variable the system couldn't predict.