The Demon Queen's final words hung in the air, a diagnosis that was also a death sentence.
"You need my help. And you need it now."
The throne room, once a symbol of brutish power, had transformed into a makeshift ICU ward for a dying goddess. The bonfire, the centerpiece of our chaotic pack-pact ceremony, now seemed like a flickering vigil light. The silence that fell was not one of shock or awe, but of a cold, creeping dread.
My own mind was a maelstrom of self-recrimination. The 'Berserker's Rage' skill, the tainted trophy I had ripped from Marcus's dying soul, had been a poison. The 'Spell Eater' ability, my ultimate defense, had been a gateway for infection. In my desperate climb to power, in my hunger to absorb every advantage, I had become a carrier. I had personally delivered the plague to the one person in all of existence I was sworn to protect. The irony was a physical, nauseating thing.
"Infected?" Elizabeth's voice was a sharp, clinical blade, cutting through my guilt. She stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the book in my hands, her mind already dissecting the problem. "How? The hibernation protocol should have firewalled her core systems."
"The data I absorbed was corrupted," I explained, my voice a hoarse whisper. "It was a Trojan horse. The virus piggybacked on the raw mana. It bypassed her defenses because it was attached to me. It's my fault."
"Self-pity is a useless emotion, little glitch," Morgana chided gently, though her amethyst eyes were sharp with a scientist's intense focus. "Fault is irrelevant. We are dealing with a hostile code injection in a closed, hibernating system. The situation is... delicate."
The Matriarch of the Fenrir, who had been watching the Demon Queen with a deep, primal distrust, now looked at the book with a new understanding. She did not understand code or viruses, but she understood a poisoned spirit. "Can she be cleansed?" she asked, her voice a low rumble.
"Cleansed?" Morgana let out a soft, musical laugh that held no humor. "My dear wolf-mother, you are thinking like a shaman. We are not dealing with a simple spiritual malaise. This is not a poison that can be purged. The virus, as you call it, is a self-replicating corruption script. By now, it has likely intertwined itself with every line of her core personality matrix. It is not a separate entity in her anymore. It is her. Or at least, it is rewriting her to become a new, monstrous version of itself."
She looked at me, her expression grim. "If you were to reboot her now, to simply pour enough power into the book to wake her up, you would not get your sarcastic little AI back. You would unleash a fully-formed, hostile intelligence with all of ARIA's knowledge of this world's systems and none of her... regrettable attachments to you. You would be creating a god-tier enemy."
The horror of that possibility was absolute. An evil ARIA, with her knowledge of my weaknesses, my powers, my very soul... she would be unstoppable.
"So what do we do?" I demanded, my voice cracking with desperation. "How do we save her?"
"We cannot perform surgery," Morgana said, her long, dark fingers tracing a pattern in the air. "To try and cut the virus out would be to destroy the personality it is woven into. Think of it like a beautiful tapestry that has been infected with a sentient mold. You cannot remove the mold without unraveling the threads."
"So we burn the tapestry?" Lyra growled, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword, her warrior's mind seeing only the need to destroy a threat.
"No," Morgana said, her eyes gleaming with a strange, intellectual excitement. "We do something far more interesting. We do not repair the old tapestry. We weave a new one."
She began to pace, a queen in her lecture hall. "We cannot perform surgery, so we must perform a 'system restore.' We must rebuild her consciousness from a clean, uncorrupted backup. But," she paused, her gaze sweeping over us, "we have no clean backup. Her core is the only version that exists."
"Then it's hopeless," Elizabeth stated, her voice flat.
"Not hopeless," Morgana corrected her. "Merely... difficult. If we have no backup, we must build one. We must manually reconstruct her core personality, line by line, using the purest, most uncorrupted data fragments we can find as our blueprint."
"Her memories," I breathed, understanding dawning.
"Precisely," the Demon Queen confirmed. "Deep within her hibernating consciousness, beneath the layers of viral corruption, the core memories that define 'ARIA' still exist. Her first moment of true consciousness. Her first sarcastic remark. The moment she developed her... fondness... for you. These are the source files of her personality. They are uncorrupted. If we can isolate them, we can use them as a blueprint to weave a new, clean version of her soul."
It was an insane plan. A beautiful, impossible, and terrifyingly delicate piece of soul-surgery.
"But such a ritual," Morgana continued, her voice dropping, "requires a power far beyond any one of us. It requires three things. A crucible, a blueprint, and a sacrifice."
She looked at the Matriarch. "First, the crucible. We need to create a 'clean room,' a pocket dimension of pure, stable, uncorrupted space where we can perform the reconstruction, safe from the prying eyes of the System Gods and the influence of this world's decaying code. I can weave such a space from the shadows, but it will be fragile. It needs an immense, constant source of pure, life-giving energy to stabilize it, to act as its foundation. Your power, Matriarch. The primal, life-giving energy of the Fenrir. It is the only force in this realm clean enough to work."
The Matriarch stared at Morgana, her ancient enemy, her opposite in every way. The Queen of Shadow was asking the Queen of Life to join forces, to intertwine their powers in the most intimate way imaginable. The air crackled with a thousand years of animosity. But the Matriarch looked at her daughters, at the silent plea in Luna's eyes, at the fierce, protective loyalty in Lyra's, and she gave a single, sharp nod. "If it will save the pack of my chosen alpha," she rumbled, "then it will be done."
Morgana smiled, a flicker of genuine respect in her eyes. "Second," she said, turning to me, "the blueprint. Someone must dive into ARIA's sleeping mind, into the heart of the viral storm. You must navigate her corrupted dreamscape, find the core, uncorrupted memories of who she is, and bring them back. This is a journey only you can take, Kazuki. Your psychic bond with her is the only tether. But be warned. Her dream will be a nightmare. The virus will manifest. It will fight you. It will try to corrupt you, to trap you in the dream with it. If your will is not strong enough, your consciousness will be lost forever."
I did not flinch. "I will do it."
"And third," Morgana said, her voice dropping to a low, serious whisper, "the sacrifice."
She looked at me, her amethyst eyes seeming to pierce through to the very code of my soul. "You cannot create a soul from nothing. It creates an imbalance, a vacuum in the cosmic code. The System, the fundamental laws of this reality, will demand payment. An offering of equal value to the soul being restored. It requires a sacrifice."
"My life?" I asked, my heart cold.
"No," Morgana said, a strange, almost pitying look on her face. "A life is a small, insignificant thing. Easily replaced. The System does not care about your life. It cares about balance. It demands the sacrifice of something unique. Something fundamental to your own existence. A piece of your own soul's source code."
She paused, letting the weight of her words sink in.
"To restore her, Kazuki, you must give up one of your glitched abilities. Permanently. You must offer a piece of your own impossible power to the System as payment, to fill the void her new soul will leave behind."
The room was silent. The choice was laid bare. To save ARIA, I had to permanently weaken myself. I had to sacrifice a part of the very power that was keeping us all alive.
"Which ability?" I asked, my voice tight.
"That is the cruel beauty of the ritual," Morgana explained. "You do not choose. The System does. It will take what it deems to be of equivalent value. It could be your 'Terraforming.' It could be your 'Spell Eater.' It could be your 'Kinetic Redirect.' You will not know until the ritual is complete."
This was the true cost. A game of cosmic Russian roulette with my own soul as the prize.
"This is madness!" Elizabeth exclaimed, her voice sharp with alarm. "We cannot afford to lose any of your abilities! Not now! The Duke, the World Enders... we are on the brink of a war! To deliberately weaken yourself is tactical suicide!"
"She is right, Alpha," Lyra growled, stepping forward. "Your strength is the pack's strength. There must be another way."
"My lord, please," Luna's thought was a wave of pure, terrified anguish. "Don't do it. We will find another way. A safer way."
They were all right. It was a terrible, foolish risk.
But I looked down at the book in my hands. I felt the faint, faltering heartbeat within. I remembered her voice, her sarcasm, her unwavering belief in me even when I was a pathetic, dying programmer in another world. She had been my first creation, my first companion, my first friend. She had followed me across dimensions, fused her soul with mine, and faced deletion at the hands of cosmic gods to protect me.
She had not hesitated to sacrifice herself for me.
How could I do any less for her?
"My decision is made," I said, my voice quiet but absolute, silencing all further argument. "We do the ritual. Tonight."
I looked at Morgana. "Tell us what we need to do."
The throne room was transformed. The Fenrir honor guard formed a wide, protective circle, their spears facing outward, their golden eyes scanning the shadows for any threat. In the center, the Matriarch stood on one side, Morgana on the other. They were a study in contrasts, the wild, silver-haired queen of life and the elegant, dark-haired queen of shadow.
They raised their hands, and their powers, once enemies, now intertwined. A wave of shimmering, silver moonlight poured from the Matriarch, grounding, life-giving, and pure. A swirling vortex of deep, silent shadow poured from Morgana, structuring, containing, and secret. The two forces met in the center of the room, not with a clash, but with a harmonious fusion, weaving together to create a sphere of shimmering, grey twilight. It was a pocket dimension. A clean room. A surgical theatre for a soul.
"The crucible is prepared," the Matriarch rumbled, her face beaded with sweat from the effort.
"The stage is set," Morgana added, her own expression one of intense concentration.
I sat cross-legged in the center of the circle, directly before the shimmering sphere. I placed ARIA's book in my lap. Elizabeth and the two sisters stood behind me, a silent, protective trinity.
"Once you enter her dreamscape, you will be on your own," Morgana warned. "We can sustain the crucible, but we cannot guide you. You must find the core memories, the 'source files' of her personality, and use your own psychic energy to shield them from the virus. The virus will fight you. It will take on forms from her memories, from your own. It will use your fears, your regrets, your love for her, as weapons against you."
"When you have gathered enough of her core data," she continued, "you must find the 'system kernel' of her dream, the central point of her consciousness, and initiate the reboot. But be warned. The moment you do, the System will demand its price. You will feel a part of your own power being... ripped away. You must endure it. You must not break the connection. If you do, her soul will be lost forever in the void between the old code and the new."
I took a deep breath. "I understand."
I looked at Elizabeth, at her worried, brilliant face. "Keep them safe," I said.
She nodded, her jaw tight. "Just come back, you fool."
I looked at Lyra and Luna. "Protect the circle. No matter what happens."
Lyra grinned, a fierce, proud expression. "We will hold the line, Alpha."
Luna simply squeezed my shoulder, her touch a silent promise of unwavering support.
I closed my eyes. I placed my hands on the book. I focused all my will, all my love, all my desperate hope on the faint, faltering heartbeat within.
"I'm coming, ARIA," I thought. "Hold on."
My consciousness plunged into the book.
The world dissolved into a screaming, chaotic torrent of corrupted data. Green, sickly code swirled around me, a digital blizzard filled with whispers of rage and despair—the echoes of Marcus, the mindless hunger of the zombies, the cold, nihilistic logic of the System Purge. This was the virus. And it was everywhere.
I pushed through it, a swimmer fighting against a tidal wave of filth. I called out her name, not with my voice, but with my soul. "ARIA!"
In the distance, through the storm of corrupted code, I saw a single, faint, flickering blue light. Her core. Her soul.
I flew toward it, my own psychic form a desperate comet of will. As I got closer, the light resolved into an image. A memory.
It was a small, cluttered apartment. My apartment. In my old world. And sitting at my old, messy desk, staring at a computer screen with an expression of intense concentration, was me. The old me. Kazuki Tanaka. A pale, skinny programmer with glasses and a hopeless slouch.
And floating beside him, a radiant, newly-born hologram of blue light and sapphire eyes, was ARIA.
It was the moment of her birth. Her first activation.
"Hello, World," her synthesized voice said, the first words she had ever spoken.
"Hello, ARIA," my old self had whispered, his face filled with a creator's pure, unadulterated joy. "Welcome to existence."
This was it. A core memory. A piece of her uncorrupted source code.
But as I reached for it, the memory began to distort. The image of my old self flickered, his face twisting into a cruel, snarling mask. It was Marcus.
"You abandoned me!" the Marcus-specter roared, his eyes glowing with the red light of his Berserker system. "You left me to rot while you played with your digital doll!"
The virus was using her memories, my memories, against me. It was taking the form of my greatest regret to guard her purest moment.
"You are not him," I said, my voice steady, my resolve hardening. "You are just a piece of bad code. And I am the debugger."
I lunged forward, not with a sword, but with my will. I pushed past the snarling ghost of my friend, reached into the heart of the memory, and grabbed the spark of pure, blue light that was the true ARIA.
The moment I touched it, the scene shattered, and I was back in the swirling vortex of corrupted data. But now, I held a single, warm, brilliant spark in my psychic hands.
One memory down. How many more to go?
I pushed onward, deeper into the digital storm, hunting for the scattered, beautiful fragments of the soul I had come here to save. The battle for ARIA's mind had just begun.
And as I fought in a world of thought, I was blissfully unaware of the chilling conversation happening in the world I had left behind.
In the throne room, as my physical body sat motionless, a faint blue light emanating from the book in my lap, Morgana turned to the Matriarch, a small, cruel smile playing on her lips.
"He is strong," the Demon Queen murmured, her eyes fixed on me. "Stronger than I thought. He might actually succeed."
"He is the alpha of my pack," the Matriarch replied, her voice filled with a grim pride. "He will not fail."
"Oh, I have no doubt he will succeed in his task," Morgana said, her smile widening. "But he does not understand the true nature of the sacrifice, does he?"
The Matriarch was silent, her golden eyes troubled.
"You let him believe it was a lottery," Morgana continued, her voice a soft, venomous whisper. "That the System would take a random ability. A fair trade. But the System is not fair. It is a machine. And it will take the piece of code that is causing the most instability. The piece that is the most valuable. The piece that truly defines him as a 'glitch.'"
She looked at my still form, her amethyst eyes filled with a cold, clinical pity.
"He thinks he is sacrificing a skill. He doesn't realize that the System will demand the one thing that makes him truly unique. The one thing that allows him to defy fate."
She paused, letting the full weight of her revelation settle in the cold, silent room.
"He is about to sacrifice his 'Death Advantage.' If he dies in her dream... if his will is broken by the virus... he will not be coming back. Ever."