Chains. Iron, rune-inscribed, draining her core with every breath.
Lyra Veyne, once heir to the Dominion of Arcadia, now prisoner of the Arcanum Church, sat slumped in the altar cell of a ruined cathedral. The dawn sun spilled in slanted lines through shattered stained glass, painting the cold floor in fractured color. It should have been beautiful—if not for the gallows rising in the courtyard.
They said she was a heretic. They said she was a danger. They said the spell she inherited was forbidden.
They never said she was right.
The sound of approaching boots echoed down the broken marble corridor. Two inquisitors—robed, faceless, cruel. One held a nullblade, humming with mana suppression; the other, a parchment scrawled with her execution order.
"You'll be burned with the sunrise," one of them said flatly. "As the law demands."
"Any last words, witch?" the other mocked.
Lyra lifted her head. Her hair was tangled, her lips cracked. But her eyes—her mother's eyes—were clear.
"I hope the fire consumes your lies."
The inquisitor raised his hand to strike.
And time hiccupped.
There was no flash. No explosion. Just a shift. A ripple. Like a file corrupted mid-transfer. The world froze, flickered, and rewrote itself.
Chains unlocked with a whisper. The nullblade cracked in two. The parchment burned from its edges, words erasing themselves line by line.
The inquisitors gasped, stepping back. "What—what magic is this?!"
Footsteps. Calm. Measured. Intentional.
A cloaked man walked into the chapel, black hood pulled low, silver-threaded coat glowing softly. Data sigils hovered behind him like angelic wings. His eyes shimmered like a terminal screen.
"Permission requested," he said, half to himself.
Accessing Entity: Lyra Veyne
Status: Detained
Spell Core: Fragmented but Stable
Debug Mode: Active
Recompiling Memory Thread… Complete.
He snapped his fingers. The air rewrote itself.
"Who—who are you?" Lyra asked.
"Nyx," he said. "I patch broken things."
The inquisitors lunged.
Rewrite Room Parameters: Floor = Frictionless, Gravity = 0.4x, Air Density = 2x
They slipped. Floated. Spun midair. Slammed into a wall unconscious.
He turned to Lyra and offered his hand.
"I read your code. You're not a heretic. You're an update."
She hesitated, then grasped his palm. A surge of mana flowed into her. For the first time in months, her spellweb didn't feel like a cage.
Together, they stepped into the courtyard, where guards had already drawn swords.
Nyx stopped. No battle stance. No chant. Just a breath.
Mass Field Override: Weapon Materials = Sand
Swords disintegrated.
He walked through them like mist. Lyra, wide-eyed, kept pace.
"Why me?" she asked.
He smiled faintly. "Because your code sings in the same key as mine. And because you're not just a princess. You're a patch to this corrupted world."
Lyra looked back at the cathedral—its spire now crumbling under unreleased pressure—and forward, toward the road beyond.
"Then let's rewrite everything."
They walked into the rising sun.