The labyrinth wasn't a labyrinth.
It was a graveyard—a rotting junkyard of discarded subplots, half-baked villains, and love interests who never got their third-act kiss. The ground squelched underfoot, pages of Alex's old manuscripts pulsing like dying jellyfish.
Kairo kicked a crumpled draft titled "Alex and the Very Bad Day". "Charming place. Smells like your early work."
"Shut up," Alex muttered, their cybernetic arm glitching between a plasma cutter and a crayon. "The blade's here. Somewhere."
A flicker of movement. A shadow in a hoodie, face obscured by a mask of smudged ink.
Name: Echo of Elias
Trope: [Tragic Backstory Personified]
Threat Level: [Nostalgia Hazard]
The Echo tossed a dagger made of rejection letters. Alex ducked.
"You left me in the drafts," it hissed, voice a warped recording of a child's laughter. "I was supposed to be the hero!"
Kairo lunged, blades sparking against the Echo's paper-thin armor. "He's not my brother. He's a rough draft."
Alex yanked a quill from a nearby plot hole. "And the blade's in him."
***
Quest Mechanic: Memory Mining
To forge the blade, Alex had to carve runes from Elias's actual memories—scattered like confetti in the labyrinth.
1. Memory #1: The Treehouse Pact
- Elias, age 10, grinning: "We'll be heroes!"
- Alex smashed a Hollow Knight, grabbing the memory-shard.
2. Memory #2: The First Betrayal
- Elias sobbing: "Why'd you make me the villain?!"
- Kairo tanked a swarm of semicolon-wasps so Alex could loot the shard.
3. Memory #3: The Unwritten Ending
- Elias fading: "At least… make me matter."
- The Echo screamed, clawing at its dissolving mask.
***
Alex jammed the shards into the quill. "This isn't a rewrite. It's a remix."
The quill exploded into a fractal forge, its flames burning reviews for fuel:
"Mary Sue trash!" → Blue fire.
"Who made this?!" → Green fire.
"Needs more dragons." → Okay, valid.
The blade took shape—jagged steel edged with crayon wax, its hilt wrapped in Elias's old hoodie strings.
[Achievement Unlocked:The Brother's Blade]
Effect: Each strike forces enemies to relive their cringiest tropes.
***
The Echo lunged, dagger aimed at Alex's throat. "You don't deserve his story!"
Alex parried, the blade's edge carving a pixelated scar across the Echo's chest. "And you don't get to haunt it."
The Echo unraveled, its final whisper a static-riddled "Thanks…"
Kairo picked up the fallen mask—now just a doodle of two stick-figure heroes. "Sentimental garbage."
"Shut up," Alex said, handing it over to Kairo.
***
System Alert (takeover rate 100%):
Quest Complete: [Elias's Resolve] Active!
New Objective: Storm the Storyweaver's Final Chapter (Recommended Level: ∞).
System Alert:
Congrats! The system is now independent (independent...?) from the Storyweaver's control!
A few hours earlier...
Fourth Wall Break (Tier 2) to rewrite the system's code, and Author Mode to impose my own narrative logic, scribbling a new set of rules into the system to make it independent.