The battle at the Tower of Origins was unlike any Remi had ever imagined. Every strike against the Editor Prime wasn't just a clash of energy, but a conflict of intent. She wasn't swinging to harm—it wouldn't work. She was striking to assert identity. To remind the multiverse that choice mattered more than tropes. That the heart of a character could defy the algorithm meant to contain it.
The Editor Prime didn't move like a being. It moved like a program. Every gesture was seamless, pre-rendered, perfect. Its robes shimmered with scripts, and its mirrored face reflected not Remi, but every version of her that had been denied existence. It taunted her by simply being accurate.
But Remi had learned something from Julius. Perfection was weakness. In a world built on growth and pain, flawless symmetry was artificial. Dead.
So she fought dirty.
Not with elegance. With chaos.
Asher provided the opening. He lunged low, forcing the Editor to raise its palm to deflect his phaseblade. In that moment of technical adjustment, Remi launched a command spike from her staff—an unscripted ability, pure improvisation. A spell not even she had practiced.
Code ignited in the air, but it didn't follow a structure.
The Editor faltered.
A moment.
Just one.
But it was enough for her to dive forward and crash her staff into its chest.
The mirror cracked.
For the first time, it tilted its head.
Like it was curious.
Then, reality snapped again.
They were no longer in the Tower.
They were on a stage.
Surrounded by an invisible audience.
Asher stood next to her, stunned. "Where the hell—"
The Editor Prime raised its hands and clapped.
Text scrolled behind it like a review page.
[Welcome to the Final Draft Arena.]
[Today's Episode: Rejected Characters vs. Canon Authority.]
Remi realized what was happening.
They were inside a meta-trial—an arena designed to strip characters down to their tropes and force them to defend their value. Not their power. Their narrative worth.
This wasn't just a fight.
It was a test.
And the audience—entities beyond the fourth wall—were judging.
The first wave appeared.
A version of Asher emerged from a different universe, stoic and perfect. Fully optimized. Popular. Streamlined.
He looked at them with a faint smile. "This is what you could have been."
Remi's counterpart emerged next—flawless, elegant, with none of the pain in her backstory. She looked sanitized. Marketable. She even had a catchphrase.
Remi whispered, "I hate her already."
The Editor's voice finally rang out.
"You will now be compared. You will be rated. You will be judged."
Scores appeared above their heads—stars, likes, trending values.
Remi's score started dropping the moment she hesitated.
She looked at Asher.
He was gripping his sword tight.
The streamlined Asher stepped forward. "You can't win this. You're a B-tier supporting lead. You have trust issues, memory gaps, and an unresolved family arc."
Asher's eye twitched. "So do most people."
He slashed forward. His blade didn't just cut—it rejected.
The moment it connected with his optimized self, there was a ripple.
The version blinked.
"Wait. I didn't account for emotional variance—"
Gone.
Disintegrated in a wave of rewritten code.
Remi faced her own copy. The optimized Remi was perfect on paper. But fake. There was no real loss behind those eyes. No reason to fight.
So Remi did the only thing the perfect version could never do.
She screamed.
Raw. Ugly. Desperate.
"I'm not made for your shelves! I'm not here to trend—I'm here to matter!"
The scream shattered the simulation.
They dropped out of the meta-trial, landing hard on the real floor of the Tower.
The Editor Prime was gone.
Not defeated.
But impressed enough to pause.
That was more dangerous.
Because it meant the war had escalated.
Back at the Citadel, Julius sensed it.
He turned to the Lorecore interface and summoned a council of key rewritten anchors. Not gods. Not leaders.
Just survivors.
Each of them had one thing in common: they were stories that should have been erased, but weren't.
A boy who never awakened his system.
A girl who failed her reincarnation trial.
A demon king who chose peace and lost everything.
They stood before him.
"I need you to build the foundation of the new mythos," Julius said. "Not from power. From belief. From the idea that broken stories are still stories worth telling."
One stepped forward.
"Why us?"
"Because you were forgotten. And you didn't vanish."
Julius uploaded a portion of the override key's framework to them.
"If the final erasure begins," he warned, "you'll be the firewall."
They didn't flinch.
In the distance, Madara was standing atop a collapsing world.
He was breathing heavily.
Not from fatigue.
From anticipation.
Because he could feel it too.
The battle at the Tower had caused a system rollback.
Somewhere in the deeper layers, someone—something—was waking up.
He opened his eyes, Sharingan spinning with awareness.
"So. You're finally coming."
The ground cracked.
From beneath, a hand emerged.
Silver.
Clawed.
Crackling with narrative entropy.
A forgotten villain.
Not from any known series.
An original character erased long ago.
But someone had remembered them just enough.
And now, they were back.
A remnant of a failed fanfic from a decade ago.
Their name wasn't known.
Their arc never finished.
But they had power.
Power fueled by resentment.
They looked up at Madara and smiled.
"You made it fun again."
Madara smirked.
"So did you."
They didn't fight.
Not yet.
Because behind them, the multiverse pulsed once.
And everything went still.
Julius looked up.
Remi looked up.
Even the Editors paused.
A word formed across the sky.
[OBLIVION ONLINE]
A new phase had begun.
And this time, the rules would be written by neither side.
But by the Oblivion Protocols themselves.
It was no longer just a war.
It was an extinction-level rewrite.
And there would be no reset button after this.