The council chamber felt different this time.Maybe it was the urgency in the air. Maybe it was the maps spread across every surface, marked with red dots that represented active rifts. Maybe it was the fact that every guild master looked like they hadn't slept in days.Probably all of the above.The Gilded Fox stood in the center of it all, trying not to fidget. They'd been summoned directly from training, still dusty and bruised, but no one seemed to care about appearances anymore.King Aldric looked older than when they'd last seen him. The weight of the coming war was etched into every line of his face."The situation has changed," he said without preamble. "Three new rifts opened yesterday. Two in unpopulated areas. One here." He pointed at a spot on the map. "Near Oakhaven."Elara stepped forward. "How close?""Twenty miles from the town itself. But growing. Fast." The King looked at her. "At its current rate, it will reach Oakhaven in two weeks. Maybe less."Caspian did the mat

Morning came without sunrise.That was the first thing Caspian noticed as consciousness returned. The sky was wrong. Not just cloudy or overcast—wrong. Purple and grey swirled overhead in patterns that hurt to look at, blocking the sun completely. The world existed in permanent twilight now, shadows stretching in every direction from a light source that wasn't there.He sat up slowly, his body aching from yesterday's battles. Beside him, the others stirred, each reacting to the oppressive atmosphere in their own way.Tobin blinked groggily, then froze as he registered the sky. His usual morning energy was completely absent. "I feel like something's watching me. All the time. Like eyes in the back of my head that won't stop staring.""Something probably is watching," Fizzlewick muttered. He was already consulting his tome, though his hands shook slightly. "Rifts attract entities. Not just physical monsters. Things that exist between worlds. Observers. They might be studying us right no

The walk back to Oakhaven took three days.Three days of exhausted silence, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter when someone remembered something ridiculous from the battle. Three days of Marnie somehow producing hot meals from thin air and a very persistent spoon. Three days of Bulkan sleeping anywhere flat, Tobin talking endlessly about their victory, and Fizzlewick recalculating their survival odds approximately forty-seven times."It doesn't make sense," he kept muttering. "Twenty-three percent. We beat twenty-three percent. The math doesn't work. We should be dead.""Fizz," Tobin said for the tenth time. "We're not dead. Celebrate.""I am celebrating. I'm just also confused."Boris walked at the front of the group, his steps steadier than they'd been in years. The flask still appeared occasionally, but less often. Something had shifted in him during the battle. The old hunter was back.Elara noticed it too. She walked beside her father more often than not, talking quietly

The first thing Caspian learned about preparing for an apocalypse was that it involved a lot of yelling.Elara did most of it. Not because she was angry, but because no one was listening the first time. The town of Oakhaven had erupted into chaos the moment the sky changed, and someone needed to restore order."EVERYONE TO THE TOWN SQUARE! BRING YOUR FAMILIES! BRING WHAT YOU CAN CARRY! MOVE!"Her voice carried across the panic, cutting through screams and questions. People turned toward her, drawn by the certainty in her tone.Boris stood beside his daughter, old sword drawn, looking like the hunter he'd once been. "You heard her! Move! We don't have time for panic!"Slowly, impossibly, the town began to organize.Caspian found himself in the middle of it, his conduit shifting restlessly in his hand. The System was still screaming updates.< Recommended actions: Evacuate civilians. Fortify defensible positi

The Creator screamed.It wasn't a sound of pain—not exactly. It was the sound of a system encountering something it couldn't process. An error message given voice."What did you DO?" His form flickered wildly, purple light strobing across his features. "That's not possible! You can't access my code! I'm the administrator! I'm—""You're a programmer who forgot that users find exploits." Caspian landed on a shifting chess square, breathing hard. "You made this world like a game. Games have glitches. Glitches get exploited."The key was working. He could feel it—a connection to something vast, something that underlay all of reality in this world. The Creator's own admin access, now partially exposed.Fizzlewick's voice rose from below. "Caspian! The rifts! They're destabilizing!"He looked. The rifts dotting the horizon were flickering, some shrinking, others expanding unpredictably. The Creator's control was wavering.But the Creator wasn't done.With visible effort, he stabilized his f