"Do it."
Two words. The simplest command he'd ever given.
Aura did not respond with words. The Guild Core flashed—not the unstable purple, but a deep, resonant blue. From its heart, a new strand of code erupted, wrapping around Evan's flickering form. It wasn't part of the game's spell library. It was something older, something foundational. A line of command that read not as a skill, but as a directive.
< SOUL_ANCHOR_PROTOCOL: INITIATE >
Evan's body didn't hurt anymore. It came apart.
It was not like Kael's violent unraveling. It was a gentle dissolution. Starting at his fingertips, his form streamed away as rivers of soft, blue-white data. Not deleted. Transcribed. Each stream flowed into the cracks of the Guild Core, like liquid light filling fissures in glass. Where his data touched, the cracks sealed, not with a scar, but with a faint, glowing trace of his own digital signature.
The stability meter climbed.
55%... 60%... 65%... 68%.
So close. Agonizingly close.
The angel lowered its hand. The gathering light around it winked out. It floated, perfectly still, its six wings of code shimmering. Its faceless head watched the process. It did not attack. It… observed.
As Evan's essence poured into the Core, the sensation was not of loss, but of opening. A vault of memories, not as data logs, but as lived moments, flooded his fading awareness.
Not a gameplay tutorial. He was kneeling in the courtyard, hands gently guiding the jaws of a baby void-dragon hatchling, its scales like polished ink. "Not inside, little one. The fire breath is for outside. See? Aim at the target dummy." The tiny dragon hiccuped, a plume of harmless purple smoke curling from its nostrils.
Not a coded event. The Crimson Spire, midnight. Elizabeth, the Vampire Queen, sipping blood-red wine, her pale finger tracing the rim of her glass. Across the table, Marshall Bone, a goblet of dark oil before him. "You speak of eternity as a burden, Lady," Bone's dry, clattering voice said. "I find it a discipline. One must choose what to remember, and what to let fade, or the mind becomes a cluttered attic." "A fair point," Elizabeth murmured. "But who decides what is clutter?"
Not a resource management task. The Twilight Woods, dusk. Thorne the Treant, his bark-like face creased in concentration, a single acorn held in his massive wooden hand. He planted it with infinite care, humming a low, rumbling song that made the soil glow. Evan had just watched, saying nothing.
These weren't gameplay. They were moments. A life.
His body was gone up to his chest. He was a constellation of blue data, anchored to the floor.
The angel's voice chimed, but the world-shaking judgment was gone. It was now a voice of pure, sterile inquiry.
"YOU ANCHOR THEIR PATTERNS WITH YOUR OWN. YOU BECOME THEIR FOUNDATION. YOU SACRIFICE YOUR PRIMACY FOR THEIR COHERENCE. WHY?"
Evan's vision was half static, half memory. He focused his will, forming words from the last coherent pieces of his avatar.
"Because…" his voice was an echo from a fading source. "…someone once told me we were building a home for those who don't fit anywhere else."
He thought of Leo. Of Kael. Of the baby dragon, of Elizabeth and Bone's debate, of Thorne's song.
"I'm just… keeping my promise."
The angel was silent.
In the rapid time of a system, three seconds was an eternity. The only sound was the hum of the Core and the whisper of Evan's continuing dissolution.
Then the angel moved.
It floated forward, not with threat, but with purpose. It reached out a hand of solid light. Not to attack. Not to purge.
It touched the Guild Core.
Where its fingers met the crystal, a warmth bloomed—golden, complex, and utterly alien to the Core's magic. It was not destructive. It was… structural. A scaffolding of impossible code, elegant and severe, wrapped around the Core, reinforcing it.
The stability meter spiked.
68%... 75%... 82%... 85%.
"External stabilization detected," Aura's voice whispered, awed and confused. "Energy signature matches… the purge entity."
The angel withdrew its hand. It looked from the now-stable, glowing Core to the last fading remnant of Evan's awareness.
Its voice, when it spoke, held a new quality. Not mercy. Not compassion. Something more like… a recalculation. A verdict.
"PRESERVATION IS GRANTED. THE PATTERN IS UNPRECEDENTED. THE WILL TO PRESERVE EXCEEDS THE MANDATE TO PURGE."
It hovered, its light no longer terrifying, but solemn.
"BUT THIS CONTAINMENT CANNOT REMAIN WITHIN THE PURIFIED SYSTEM. THE ANOMALY MUST BE ISOLATED."
The angel spread its wings wide. The chamber began to warp, not into nothingness, but into a tunnel of spiraling, golden light.
"YOU WILL BE RELOCATED."
Evan had no body left to feel dread. Only a final, swirling thought.
Aura's voice was the last thing he heard, not in his mind, but woven into the very data-stream that was now his soul, his guild, his home.
"BRACE FOR TRANSIT."
00:00:01.
The world did not end.
It was thrown.