Light.
White-hot. Absolute.
Not illumination. Not salvation.
Erasure.
Rael feels his limbs vanish first.
Fingers. Arms. Then legs.Like the tower is rewriting him out of its story.
But he holds on.
Not with power. Not with skill.
With memory.
Her face…
The real her.
Not the warden. Not this flame-choked puppet the tower is wearing.
But the girl in the rain.
Barefoot. Laughing. Reaching for his hand that day under the broken sky.
He speaks.
Not a spell. Not a command.
Just her name.
"Elira."
The throne shudders.
The wires spark. The fire glitches.
And for a breath—The eyes in her stitched face widen. Remember.
"…Rael…?"
He surges forward.
Breaks a chain with sheer will.Shadow erupts from his core—jagged, erratic.
Not clean. Not beautiful.
Just rage.
[Override Protocol Engaged][Memory Sync: Incomplete – Instability Warning]
Doesn't matter.
He tears another chain loose.Elira screams—not in pain. In conflict.
Two voices fighting inside her skull.
The warden wants order.But she remembers the chaos.
The escape.The loop that shattered.The last kiss through a glitching window before time ate them both.
Rael grabs the final wire.
"Choose."
She trembles. Sparks raining down. The tower collapsing around them now.
"Choose me… or choose the tower."
Silence.
Then—
"I chose to burn," she whispers.
And bites through the wire herself.
The tower howls.
The floor vanishes.
And Rael falls—With her.
No sky.No ground.Just the endless void between layers of unfinished code.
He clutches her body.
Feels the fire in her dimming.
[Warning: Entity 'Elira' is unstable][Fuse or Fragment?]
Time slows.
System presents a choice.
Fuse – Take her into your code. Absorb her memories. Lose the real her.
Fragment – Cut her out. Save her soul. Lose the part of her that remembers you.
He breathes.
Tightens his grip.
Whispers, "No. I don't choose either."
And stabs the system itself.
Shatters the prompt.
Splits the options.Refuses the rules.
He screams into the void—
"She's not a variable."
And from the black—
A spark answers.
Tiny.Defiant.
Her voice.
"Elira," she says softly.
Not the system. Not the warden.
Just… her.
And the void begins to reshape.
Around them.
For them.
Not a tower.
Not a prison.
A place where names are real.
Where choices don't cost souls.
A glitch-space.
A seed of rebellion.
A world waiting to be born.
To be continued…