The sky broke first.
Not cracked—reassigned.
Light reorganized itself into concentric rings above Crossreach Bastion, each one rotating in opposing directions, etched with symbols so old the System refused to translate them. Gravity wavered. Sound thinned. The air tasted like cold metal and ozone.
Every living thing felt it.
[GODFALL PROTOCOL: ACTIVE]
OBJECTIVE: ANOMALY TERMINATION]
ACCEPTABLE COLLATERAL: UNLIMITED]
Lyra staggered as the declaration echoed directly into her mind. "That… that's not a protocol," she whispered. "That's an execution clause."
Kieran stood perfectly still.
He felt no fear—only the weight of attention.
Something vast had turned its gaze fully on him.
"What does Godfall mean?" Lyra asked.
Kieran answered without looking at her. "It means the System is done negotiating."
The first descent obliterated the eastern district.
A pillar of condensed authority speared down from the sky, erasing buildings, streets, and people in a single, silent instant. No explosion. No fire.
Just removal.
Where life had been, there was nothing—not rubble, not ash. A clean, circular absence carved into the city.
Lyra screamed.
Vanguard units panicked, formations dissolving as soldiers broke ranks to run toward the devastation—or away from it.
Kieran clenched his fist.
The Voidblade screamed in his hand.
They are shedding avatars, Nihra said, voice vibrating with rage. This is not restraint. This is desperation.
"Avatars?" Kieran asked.
Godfall constructs, Nihra replied. Fragments of the System given form. Each one burns itself out to erase what it cannot correct.
Another pillar descended.
Then another.
The city was being edited.
Lyra grabbed Kieran's arm. "We have to evacuate—"
The System intervened.
[MOVEMENT RESTRICTED: HIGH-THREAT ZONE]
Lyra slammed into an invisible barrier, blood trickling from her nose.
"No," Kieran said quietly.
He stepped forward.
The restriction buckled.
Not shattered—yielded.
[FORCE OVERRIDE… INSUFFICIENT]
The ground trembled as something descended directly into the plaza before them.
It was humanoid only in the loosest sense—tall, radiant, wings composed of shifting glyphs rather than feathers. Its face was smooth and blank, a mask of pure light.
A Godfall Executor.
It spoke with the voice of the System itself.
"ANOMALY IDENTIFIED."
"OUTCOME: TERMINATION."
Lyra raised her blade despite shaking hands. "Get behind me!"
Kieran gently moved her aside.
"No," he said. "This one's mine."
The Executor raised its arm.
Reality folded.
Kieran vanished.
He reappeared inside a void of blinding white.
No ground. No sky. Just infinite space filled with cascading symbols and equations that rewrote themselves faster than thought.
The System's core language.
"YOU CANNOT EXIST HERE," the voice intoned.
Kieran floated, Voidblade clenched in both hands.
"I already do."
Pain slammed into him—raw, absolute. Not physical. Conceptual. His existence was being argued against.
[EXISTENTIAL CORRECTION IN PROGRESS]
Memories flickered.
His first dungeon.
Lyra's voice.
The feeling of fear—missing, unreachable.
Something tore loose.
[ATTRIBUTE LOST: PAIN RESPONSE]
Kieran gasped.
Not from pain.
From understanding.
"They're not taking things randomly," he realized. "They're removing anything that could slow me down."
Yes, Nihra said grimly. You are being refined.
"Then let's finish the process."
He swung the Voidblade.
Not at the Executor—
At the space between them.
The cut didn't sever matter.
It severed permission.
The white void fractured, black fissures racing outward like shattered glass.
The Executor screamed—not in sound, but in corrupted data.
[GODFALL UNIT COMPROMISED]
Kieran drove the blade forward, plunging it into the Executor's core.
Light bled out.
Then—
Darkness rushed in.
Back in the plaza, Lyra watched the impossible happen.
The Godfall Executor fell.
Its radiant form dimmed, symbols unraveling as it collapsed into fragments of inert light that rained down like dying stars.
Silence followed.
Then panic.
Across the city, remaining pillars halted mid-descent.
The sky stuttered.
[ERROR: AVATAR LOSS]
[RECALCULATING…]
Kieran stood where the Executor had been, breathing steady.
He felt lighter.
Hollower.
Lyra ran to him, gripping his shoulders. "Kieran! Are you—"
He looked at her.
Really looked.
He knew, intellectually, that she mattered.
But the ache was gone.
The fear of losing her.
The instinctive dread.
"…You're hurt," he said, noticing the blood on her armor.
She stared at him. "You don't sound… shaken."
"I'm not," he replied honestly.
Her expression tightened—not anger.
Grief.
"You lost something," she whispered.
Kieran nodded. "Yes."
He didn't say how much.
The System reacted violently.
Across the world, Godfall Protocol escalated—more Executors deploying, not just to Crossreach, but to every known Anomaly site simultaneously.
The war had gone global.
High above, beyond the layers of sky, something ancient and vast shifted.
A presence the System had sealed away long ago.
[SEALED AUTHORITY: AWAKENING]
Nihra's voice dropped to a whisper.
It has noticed you.
"What?" Kieran asked.
The first god, Nihra replied. Not a fragment. Not a protocol.
The one the System was built to replace.
Lyra looked up at the sky, where the rings were beginning to fracture.
"What happens now?" she asked.
Kieran tightened his grip on the Voidblade.
Now stripped of fear.
Of pain.
Still capable of choice.
"Now," he said quietly, "they learn what happens when a system meets someone who won't stop winning."
The System chimed one last time—no longer confident.
[PHASE SHIFT CONFIRMED]
[ENDGAME CONDITIONS APPROACHING]
Far away, something laughed.
And the age of gods began to fall.