The world erupted in light.

  A blinding fsh—searing, absolute—swallowed everything in an instant. Shadows vanished, devoured by the sheer iy of it, turning the world into a formless void of brilliant gold. For a single, breathless moment, it was as if time itself had paused, suspended in that radiant, crag stillness.

  Then, just as suddenly, it was gone.

  I blinked hard, spots dang in my vision. The stoh my feet hummed with residual energy, the very air around us charged, vibrating with unknown magic.

  Lo let out a startled noise, gripping the edge of the parapet as if steadying herself against something unseen. Her wide eyes darted between me and the horizon, her brows furrowed in fusion. “Lady—what in the hells was that?!”

  Before I could answer, Prince Rendo spoke first, his voice smooth but carrying the weight of finality.

  “Too te,” he murmured, gaze locked on the horizon. “Your mother has finally begun summoning her demons.”

  I inhaled sharply, my pulse spiking—not in fear, but in something sharper, something thrumming with anticipation.

  And then, we saw it.

  Far in the sky—day’s travel away—an enormous circle began to materialize.

  It wasn’t some simple, glowing sigil. No, this was something demoniething designed—a strupossible scale. Tens of thousands of golden runes shimmered ience, meticulously arranged in yered, trigs, shifting, rotating in silent syny. They pulsed, humming in perfeison with the very fabric of reality itself.

  And we could feel it.

  Magic, raw and unfathomable, surged through the air, a current so imme pressed against the walls of the castle, against our very bones. It wasn’t just mana—it ower. A force bending the world itself to her will.

  The runes pulsed—owice—before, in a single, breathtaking moment, they colpsed inward.

  All that impossible energy coalesced, folding down, down, down—a golden spiral hurtling toward the earth far beyond the limits of sight.

  We couldn’t see the impact. It was too far.

  But we heard it.

  The supersonic crack split through the air, not a sound so much as a for explosion that sent a shockwave rag outward, rattling the stones beh us, thundering against the walls of the castle like the distant roar of an angry god.

  Then, silence.

  For a moment, everything was still.

  Then came the wind.

  A faint breeze—gentle, subtle, impossible—brushed against my skin, curling through my hair, rustling the loose papers in Lo’s arms. It was nothing pared to the scale of the event we had just witnessed.

  Ahe mere fact that even this far away, we could feel it?

  That was terrifying.

  Lo swallowed hard, gripping her scrolls like they might anchor her to reality. “Lady…?” she asked again, voice quieter this time.

  I exhaled slowly, my gaze fixed on the distant horizon, where the golden glow of the ritual had already begun to fade.

  “Oh,” I murmured, a slow grin creeping onto my lips. “This is the army we’ll fight.”

  For a fra of a sed, the world just… paused.

  Not in a natural way—not like the eerie calm after a storm or the tense silence before a battle. No, this was something else. Something wrong. It was as if reality itself had gged, and I was suddenly trapped inside my own body, uo move, uo even shift my gaze.

  Then, ay vision, a crisp message flickered ience.

  [Pyers, this is a message from Nathan, your dear creator of the game. Please be patient.]I sighed internally. Of course.

  There was nothing I could do but wait. Nothing moved. Not the banners in the breeze, not the distant birds mid-flight, not even the subtle rise and fall of Lo’s breath.

  Just stillness.

  Then—

  Like a fast-forward button had been smmed, the world lurched bato motion.

  Everything surged around me in a blur—Prince Rendo had shifted a dozen times in the span of a single heartbeat, adjusting his posture, tensing, rexing, sing his surroundings like a warrior caught in an ambush. Lo’s papers fluttered as if time had skipped, the quill she had been holding now resting on the floor.

  And then—

  [Pyers, I’m gd to annouhat the scheduled patch 2.0 has been applied.][Please be patient with our support team as we ahe details and wait for the gelist.]I blinked.

  What.

  “This is… weird,” Lo muttered, adjusting her gsses with slow, deliberate movements, as if testing whether time was still funing normally.

  I turo Rendo—only to find him frozen in pce, his mouth hanging slightly open as he stared at the space between us, his golden eyes unfocused, reading something that wasn’t here.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, uo hide my grin. “Too scared you lost your purpose?”

  His gaze so me. “Pretender!” he all but yelled. “The level cap was increased from 25 to 75!”

  “It… wasn’t?” I asked, my brows furrowing as I tried to remember. But nothing came. The patch wasn’t normal. Nathan stepping in to personally announce a pato. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be done—would be done.

  A creeping utled in my chest.

  I had assumed that everything followed a structure, that the game had rules, that even the chaos had a limit. But if this wasn’t pnned, if Nathan himself had to step in and justify it st minute…

  Maybe Riker was right. Maybe Rimelion was real. And we were just accessing it. It would expin a lot.

  But it was still terrifying.

  Prince Rendo exhaled sharply, shaking his head, clearly trying to process the same realization. “Since forever,” he started, his voice tight with something close to disbelief, “the first five levels were easy. The five? Harder, but still fairly manageable for anyone dedicated. Up to level twenty, only the best of the best could reach. And the level cap—” he paused, his fingers curling into fists, his entire posture stiffening.

  “The level cap was only for the ridiculously powerful.”

  His golden eyes locked onto mine, his expression unnervingly serious.

  “Everything is thrown into a whack with your mother meddling,” he tinued, voice lower now. “She… she ged how the world itself works.”

  “That’s all well and good,” I said, rolling my shoulders, “but theorizing won’t help us.” I turo Lo, who was still trying to juggle her scattered quills and papers. “My lovely assistant, whely should we head to the teleport?”

  Lo gnced around, hastily gathering her fallen quills before cheg one of the many dots she had tucked under her arm. Her brows knit together, flickering across her face. “Lady, with all this…” she hesitated, then gave me a pointed look. “Shouldn’t we call an emergency meeting?”

  I sighed. Of course she’d suggest more meetings.

  “Let’s walk to the teleport,” I said, waving a dismissive hand. “I already told you—it won’t work. But people are expeg it to, and they’re going to panic when they realize they ’t just flee the impending rebellion.” I exhaled, casting a g Rendo. “e too, Prince. I think—”

  “Let me go back.”

  I blinked, caught off guard.

  He was serious.

  His golden eyes held ation, no doubt—just a quiet certainty. I swallowed. “Are you sure? Without a body—”

  “Yes.”

  He dismissed my s before I could even voice them properly and, without another word, sat down on the cold stone floor. Just like that. I watched him carefully as he closed his eyes, his expression perfectly at ease, as if waiting for nothing more than the passing of a gentle breeze. There was no fear. No tension.

  “Very well,” I murmured, resigning myself. I reached for my amulet, fingers brushing against the etal. With a pulse of light—he was gone.

  Lo blinked rapidly, caught between fusion and . “Lady?”

  I waved a hand as I tucked the amulet back beh my colr. “He’s a spirit,” I said simply. “Don’t worry about it.”

  I turned on my heel, already heading toward the stairs.

  “Now,” I tinued, my voice firm. “We have so much work to do.”

  As we walked through the fort, the entire pce was a blur of motion—soldiers, officers, and messengers all rushing somewhere, moving with the urgency of people who had somewhere to be—even if they wereirely sure why.

  Ah, military efficy.

  Despite the storm of movement, only a handful of people paused long enough to throw quick, breathless questions at us, answered by Lo. Most were too focused on their own objectives to care that I assing through. Fine by me.

  We exited the fortress and made our way toward the rgest tent in the encampment—a huge structure, t as high as the Sn of Ice, its reinforced vas stretched so wide it could easily house a small army inside.

  I strolled forward as if it beloo me. I grinned, because, in a way, it did. The momeepped inside, a wall of chaos hit us.

  Hundreds of people—officers, strategists, soldiers—were everywhere, packed so tightly that the very air felt charged with fusion. The st of sweat, ink, and magic-ced part g thickly to the fabric walls. Shouting voices yered over one another. Some barked ands. Others fired off questions that had no answers.

  he ter of the anarchy, a handful of robed mages were arguing—vehemently—over some obscure pieagical theory, their gestures desperate.

  And at the heart of it all?

  The portal.

  A t arch of cold, silvery metal gleamih the flickering torchlight. Runes coiled across its surface like veins of liquid moonlight, their soft glow pulsing in uneven intervals, so unstable. The eructure thrummed with power, a faint hum filling the space, as if it were trying to activate, trying to do something, but couldn’t quite break through.

  People were gathered around it, arguing, recalibrating, pressing hands against the runes in vain attempts to stabilize the magic.

  But the portal—like the rest of the world—had ged.

  And it wasn’t listening.

  I let out a slow, amused breath, sing the mess before me, before walking toward the circle.

  I let out a slow, amused breath, sing the mess before me before striding toward the glowing circle at the heart of the chaos. “Nonsense! We o activate it. You saw the lights.”

  I khat voice.

  The imperial attaché.

  A bureaucrat down to his marrow, ging to procedure as if it could hold back the storm that was rapidly ing his carefully ordered world. And if he was here? That meant he was where the more capable minds had gathered, desperately trying to impose logi something far beyond it.

  I stepped closer, weaving through the shifting bodies, catg glimpses of the man himself.

  He stood stiffly, dressed in formal imperial attire that looked painfully out of pce among the rugged soldiers and frantic mages. His thinning hair was ly bed back, his posture by the book despite the sweat beading at his temple. “If not—” he started, his tone measured, but before he could tinue—

  “No.” A defeated voice rejected the idea. One of the robed mages—a man with ink-stained fingers and exhaustion carved into the lines of his face—shook his head, his shoulders slumped as if the weight of reality had finally crushed him. “Magic doesn’t work,” he muttered. “I’m useless.”

  There was a finality to his words, the kind nation that came from watg everything you’ve built your life around crumble before your eyes. “I dedicated my career—”

  “With no teleporter, there is no career,” the attaché pointed out, his voice still maddeningly calm. Not angry. Nent. Just a simple fact.

  The mage let out a strangled noise—half gasp, half disbelieving ugh—and then, without warning, started ughing ht. A broken, manic sound.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  The others—mages, officers, people who had no tingency for this level of catastrophe—began ughing too.

  Not because anything was funny. But because panic had finally caught up to them.