The moment the Oblivion Protocol activated, a silence spread across the multiverse. Not a lack of sound—but a suppression of presence. Across broken timelines, glitching worlds, collapsed systems, and half-remembered dreams, everything stilled. It wasn't fear. It was anticipation.
Remi felt it first.
Her staff, still sparking with uncompiled code, grew cold. Not in temperature—but in soul. It no longer hummed with responsive data. It simply waited. Even Asher—always quick with a quip—remained silent beside her. They both stared at the sky where the words still floated: [OBLIVION ONLINE].
She turned, slowly. "We triggered something that can't be undone."
Asher didn't answer right away. Then, "Or maybe… something that should've been done a long time ago."
The Tower of Origins began to crumble—not from battle, but from withdrawal. Like it had finished its role and was now folding out of existence. Every wall disintegrated into floating glyphs. Each glyph broke into binary. Then, nothing.
Behind the tower was a corridor.
Not a hallway—something older. It wasn't meant to be found. There were no guards, no warnings, just the still air of a place forgotten before the multiverse even began.
They entered it because there was nowhere else to go.
Inside, the corridor didn't bend or shift. It simply extended. Infinite. With doors on either side. Each one blank.
But Remi felt the presence behind each.
Asher looked at the nearest door. "These… feel like people."
Remi nodded. "Locked narratives. Discarded ones."
She touched one, and a pulse ran through her hand. A flash of a boy who died before Chapter 3. Another door—an empress stripped of her arc for being too nuanced. Another—an entire world deleted for being 'too slow.'
"We're walking through the Graveyard of Stories," she whispered.
They kept moving.
Somewhere far away, Julius was moving, too.
Inside the central data chamber of the Lorecore, he was pulling threads—real ones—stretched across time and memory. With each pull, he anchored a piece of continuity that had been almost deleted.
He was restoring forgotten relationships, lost motivations, scenes cut for pacing. They weren't just memories. They were rebellions.
"Talk to me," he said aloud.
His voice echoed. Not into emptiness—but into the minds of every surviving rewritten.
"I know you can feel it. You've felt your hearts stop. You've watched fans move on. Editors forget. Updates stop. But if you're still here, it means your story resisted."
He paused.
"Now I need you to resist again."
One by one, lights flickered across realms. Not explosions. Beacons. Characters thought lost stood again—bruised, rewritten, but awake.
A blind prince from a half-abandoned romance arc lifted his blade.
A woman once mocked for being 'too strong' in a slice-of-life whispered her first spell in a decade.
A dragon who never got his redemption screamed skyward.
And above them all, the Lorecore shone.
But not everyone was glad.
In a shadow realm between creation and deletion, Madara stood beneath a crimson sky. Opposite him, the nameless figure—the one erased before its story began—was now fully formed.
Their body was fluid. Not shifting like a shapeshifter, but changing based on perception. Whoever looked at them saw the worst version of themselves.
To Madara, it was him—if he had never awakened the Rinnegan. A man who died pointlessly in a battlefield no one remembered.
"Do you remember your name?" Madara asked.
The figure smiled, lips stretching. "I never had one."
Madara closed his eyes.
Then opened them again.
Eternal Mangekyō blazing.
"You will before this ends."
They clashed.
No music. No fanfare. No dramatic winds.
Just silence—and destruction.
The battle broke logic.
Madara summoned meteors. The nameless one erased them before they fell—not dodging, rewriting the moment they were summoned. In return, the nameless being called out dead ideas—concepts discarded by authors: the Blade of Final Chapters, the Infinite Cliffhanger, the Null System.
Madara tanked them all.
Not because he was stronger.
But because he believed in his version of himself more.
Back in the corridor, Remi and Asher reached the end.
A single door stood before them.
Labeled in raw code: [CHARACTER 0]
Remi stared. "This is… the origin point."
Asher touched her shoulder. "You sure we're ready?"
"No."
She opened it anyway.
Inside was a void.
In the center: a child.
Genderless. Ageless. Wearing a cloak made of unfinished sentences. Their eyes were blank.
They looked up as they entered.
"You're early."
Remi blinked. "Do you know who you are?"
The child shook their head.
"I am the Code That Shouldn't Exist."
They held out a hand.
"I was the first character ever conceived. But I never got past the draft. Everything you are is built from the gaps I left behind."
Asher stepped forward. "Then help us."
The child's eyes changed—no longer blank. Now burning.
"I will. But only if you let me finish."
Remi looked at Asher.
He nodded.
She stepped forward and placed her hand in the child's.
The void exploded into data.
Reality recompiled.
They were back—on the edge of the final battlefield.
Julius, glowing with lorefire, joined them.
Madara arrived next—dragging the broken, screaming husk of the nameless one behind him.
They stood together.
And in the sky, the Editor Prime returned.
But this time, they were not alone.
Hundreds of other Editors emerged.
Some broken.
Some still pristine.
Some crying.
Because even they had begun to feel the stories they'd tried to control.
The final war wasn't between good and evil.
It was between rigid perfection and raw possibility.
And it had already begun.