---
> Codex Alert:
Overseer Council Rejection: Terminating Entity—Glitchborne Sovereign.
Initiating Temporal Collapse.
---
The Codex was boiling.
Every line of code warped, twisting into itself as reality stretched like a taut wire pulled too tight. The Overseer Council had been alerted.
And they weren't forgiving.
Auron stood at the heart of the storm—glowing, unstable, barely holding onto the remnants of his humanity. The Devourer thrashed inside him, demanding control. But Auron had forced it into submission, kept it caged with sheer willpower.
Still, the hunger gnawed.
It was a silent, deadly presence in the back of his mind, just waiting for the moment of weakness.
Kiera stood beside him, watching the ground ripple beneath their feet like poisoned water.
"That's not good," she muttered, eyes scanning the Codex sky.
Auron's jaw tightened. "They're siphoning the system. Collapsing it from the core."
"Why the hell didn't they do this sooner?"
"Because they needed me. Now they don't. They're erasing every trace of my existence."
The horizon cracked.
Then they came.
A dark wave rippled through the atmosphere—like a glitch made flesh. Seven figures materialized on the horizon, their outlines shifting, faces hidden by masks made of error codes. The Overseers. The architects of the Codex itself. They had come to reclaim their creation.
Auron's hand twitched, reaching for his weapons.
But before he could move, the ground shifted—slid—and a venomous whisper echoed in his mind.
> "We are the poison that cannot be healed."
---
Outside the Codex…
In the real world, something was happening.
Kiera's voice crackled over the comms. "Veyren, what the hell's going on?! The real world's starting to—"
> Codex Entry Point Lost. Initiating Crackdown Protocol.
A black cascade flooded the world. Streetlights dimmed. People froze in place. Reality started slipping.
Temporal shifts.
Glitch.
Corruption.
The Overseers were breaking through. And they were pulling the world along with them.
---
Back in the Codex…
The first Overseer stepped forward—his mask shifting between faces of data loss, like a glitching mirror.
> Overseer Name: Null-9
Class: Terminal Warden
Status: Codex Purifier
His voice was a chorus of thousands, each syllable carrying the weight of a thousand corrupted realities.
"Glitchborne Sovereign. You are a virus. An infection in the body of the Codex. You will be erased."
Auron's eyes flickered. The Devourer stirred inside him, feeding on the words—feeding on the anger.
"I'm not a virus," Auron growled, "but I will be your end."
He raised his hand. The system around them vibrated as his powers twisted, reformatting the space. In an instant, his body became a beacon of destructive energy—data streams coiling into chaotic weapons.
But Null-9 didn't flinch. His eyes locked onto Auron with the weight of inevitability.
> "You cannot fight what is inevitable."
He raised his arm.
And Auron felt it. A wave. A poisonous wave of corrupting data that flowed through every inch of his body—every corner of his mind.
It was like being drowned in venom.
His muscles locked. His heart skipped a beat. His mind screamed, but his body obeyed the code.
Kiera yelled, "Auron!"
But her voice was swallowed by the static.
> Codex System: Glitchborne Sovereign Detected
Status: Memory Corruption: 90%
System Override Initiated.
Auron's vision blurred. His hands trembled.
He saw himself—broken.
Dead.
The Devourer laughed inside his mind. Its voice twisted, infected with the venom Null-9 had unleashed.
> "You are nothing."
Auron's breath came in ragged gasps.
"Shut up." He whispered.
Then his hand melted into the air. Rewriting.
Null-9's eyes widened for the first time.
"No. You—"
But before he could finish, Auron's body snapped forward like a glitch—a jagged line of broken code—and slammed his fist straight into Null-9's chest.
> Overseer Null-9: Fatal Error.
Protocol Failed.
The Overseer's body cracked, splintering like a broken mirror. Data spilled into the air like sparks. But as the figure fell, it didn't fade—it split.
"What?"
"Kill him now!" Kiera screamed, firing her gun at another Overseer who tried to close in on them.
But Auron didn't hear her.
He was too deep.
Null-9's corruption had taken hold.
And now he was pulling the system—the Codex—into an unstable loop, forcing it to rewrite itself over and over again, trying to stop the Devourer's rage from consuming him.
> Codex Rewriting: Unstable... Error.
System Collapse: Engaged.
The Overseers retreated. But Auron felt the poison eating through his body—this wasn't just an attack. This was a shift.
---
Outside the Codex…
The world shuddered.
Kiera's voice broke. "Auron! No! Don't—!"
She turned to Veyren, who stood silently, watching the collapsing code ripple through reality. He looked at her, eyes glowing red.
"You've set the system's death in motion. The venom's spreading. It's irreversible now."
Kiera's hand tightened around her gun. "What do you mean irreversible?"
Veyren stepped toward the breach. "Auron's the cure—and the cause. His existence is destabilizing the Codex. He's holding the world together… but the longer he's infected with the Devourer's venom… the sooner it all unravels."
---
Inside Auron's mind...
Auron was alone. The Devourer had consumed the last of his resistance. He was now the virus.
And the only question that remained:
Would he let it destroy him first?
Or would he destroy everything else before it could?
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