The teleportation was not a journey; it was a glitch in the world's rendering engine. One moment, we were on the windswept, sun-drenched peak of the Dragon's Tooth Mountains. The next, we were standing in the heart of our hidden camp in the foothills, the air thick with the scent of pine and damp earth. The transition was instantaneous, seamless, and utterly disorienting. It was like a single, dropped frame in the movie of reality.
Our assembled warriors—the handful of Glitch Raider recruits and the fifty elite Fenrir scouts—had been waiting for our return, their expressions a mixture of hope and nervous anticipation. They saw us materialize from thin air, and their training took over. Swords were drawn, bows were nocked, and a wall of hardened muscle and sharp steel formed in an instant.
Then they saw who was with us.
They saw the small girl in the frilly black dress, holding their unconscious, formidable commander, Lyra, as if she were a sack of potatoes. They saw the bored, petulant expression on her face. And they smelled the power.
Every single warrior, from the most cynical human sellsword to the proudest Fenrir alpha, dropped to one knee. It was not a gesture of respect; it was an act of pure, instinctual self-preservation. Their animal instincts, their very souls, screamed at them that they were in the presence of a predator so far up the food chain that it existed on a different plane of reality entirely.
Iris, the Dragon Matriarch, looked at the kneeling army, blinked her massive sapphire eyes, and seemed utterly unimpressed. "Oh, look," she said with a yawn. "More noisy ones. Are they always this... bendy?"
She casually tossed the unconscious Lyra toward me. I scrambled to catch her, the unexpected weight of the warrior princess nearly sending me to my knees. "She's heavy," Iris noted with clinical detachment. "You should probably feed her less. Anyway, this camp is boring. The trees are all the same shade of green. Is there anything sparkly to eat?"
This was our new reality. We had returned from the roof of the world not with a weapon, but with a chaotic, petulant, and all-powerful child who was already complaining about the decor.
The journey south, back toward the heartlands of the kingdom, was a masterclass in controlled chaos. Iris, having decided that riding a pony was "bumpy and beneath her divine dignity," chose to float. She would hover a few feet off the ground, usually upside down, humming a tuneless, discordant melody and idly reshaping the clouds into rude gestures.
Her presence completely upended our pack dynamic.
Elizabeth tried, with admirable and foolhardy persistence, to treat her as a political entity. She would attempt to brief Iris on the strategic situation, laying out maps and explaining the complex web of alliances.
"Lady Iris," she would begin, her voice a model of strained patience, "as you can see, the Duke's forces are concentrated here, which means if we..."
"Is that a bunny?" Iris would interrupt, pointing a delicate finger at a distant rabbit. "It's so fluffy. I wonder what sound it would make if I turned it inside out."
Elizabeth would just stand there, her jaw tight, a vein throbbing in her temple, her entire, brilliant strategic mind rendered utterly impotent by a being who operated on a logic system that defied comprehension.
Lyra, upon waking, was a storm of wounded pride. She remembered being defeated, not in a glorious battle, but with a casual, dismissive poke. She would spend hours glaring at Iris's floating form, her hand clenching and unclenching on the hilt of her greatsword.
"I will win a rematch," she growled at me one evening as we made camp. "I will find a weakness. I will train until I am strong enough."
"She stopped your sword with her hand and then defeated you with a single finger, Lyra," I reminded her gently. "Her weakness is likely not something you can hit with a sword."
"Then I will find a bigger sword," she snarled, unconvinced.
Luna, bless her empathetic heart, was the only one who made any headway. She did not treat Iris as a god or a weapon. She treated her like a lonely, bored, and slightly strange little girl. She would braid wildflowers into Iris's silver-blue hair. She would offer her the first, best piece of roasted meat from the fire. She would listen, with genuine interest, to Iris's rambling, nonsensical descriptions of her butterfly dreams.
And Iris, in turn, seemed to tolerate Luna's presence. She would allow Luna to sit beside her, and would occasionally, in a rare moment of unguardedness, ask her questions.
"Why do your ears twitch when you're happy?"
"Why do you care so much about the big, angry one and the cold, pointy one?"
"Why does the glitch-boy smell like a sad, broken computer?"
It was through this strange, budding friendship that we learned the most.
And I... I was the zookeeper. My primary role was to keep the cosmic tiger entertained enough that she didn't decide to eat the other animals. It was the most stressful, exhausting job I had ever had.
[Strategic recommendation,] ARIA's voice cut in one afternoon as I was watching Iris try to teach a squirrel how to file tax returns. [Based on 147 hours of observation, Iris's primary motivation is the alleviation of boredom. Her secondary motivation is the acquisition of novel sensory input, primarily taste. I have cross-referenced these motivations with her known abilities. The optimal path to securing her long-term cooperation is to consistently present her with new, interesting, and ideally, edible problems.]
"So, I have to make the end of the world seem like a fun, new snack," I muttered.
[Precisely,] ARIA confirmed. [You must reframe our quest not as a desperate struggle for survival, but as a grand, interactive game with shiny, delicious rewards. You must become her Guild Master, and the fate of the world is the first quest on her board.]
It was a brilliant, if terrifying, insight.
That night, as we sat around the campfire, I put the plan into action.
"Iris," I said, my voice casual. "I'm bored."
The dragon-loli, who had been trying to levitate a column of ants into a spiral staircase, paused, her full attention snapping to me. "You're bored?" she asked, her sapphire eyes wide with interest. "I'm bored too! This forest is so green. It's very repetitive."
"Exactly," I said. "This journey is dull. We need a new game. A more interesting one."
"Ooh, a game!" she clapped her hands. "What kind of game?"
"A scavenger hunt," I said. "A race against two other teams. A very powerful, very cheaty team led by a man named Alaric, and a very angry, very destructive team led by a creature called a 'World Ender.' They are all trying to collect a set of five very old, very powerful, and, I am told, incredibly sparkly and delicious magical artifacts called Keystones."
Iris's eyes lit up at the word 'delicious.' "Sparkly and delicious?"
"The sparkliest," I confirmed. "And the first team to collect them all gets to decide the rules for the next game. Forever. But the other teams are trying to use the Keystones to do boring things. The World Ender wants to use them to turn everything off. Just... black, silent, boring nothingness. No naps, no butterflies, nothing."
A low growl emanated from Iris's throat at the mention of 'no naps.'
"And Alaric," I continued, "wants to use them to make everything orderly and predictable. All the trees will be the same height. All the bunnies will hop in straight lines. All the flavors will taste like lukewarm water. It will be the most boring world imaginable."
"Ew," Iris said, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "That sounds awful. Straight lines are so... pointy."
"Exactly," I said. "So, our team, Team Glitch, has to get the Keystones first. To make sure the world stays interesting, chaotic, and full of fun, new flavors."
I had just turned the fate of all existence into a competitive season of a cosmic reality show.
Iris floated over to me, her eyes gleaming with a new, focused excitement. "Okay," she declared. "I like this game. It sounds much more fun than my butterfly dream. What's our first move, Guild Master? Where is the first sparkly snack?"
The opening was there. It was time to get some real answers.
"That's the problem," I said, my expression turning serious. "The other teams have a head start. They have information we don't. We need to understand the rules of this 'game' better. We need to understand the prophecy Kaelen wrote about. The one about the 'children of the glitch.'"
Iris groaned, the excitement fading from her face. "Ugh, that old thing? It's so long and boring. And it doesn't even rhyme properly."
"But you know it," I pressed. "You told Kaelen he was a terrible poet. You were there when he wrote it. Please, Iris. We need to know. What does it say?"
She pouted, crossing her arms. "Fine. But you owe me something extra sparkly for this. It's so much effort to remember things."
She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was different. It was a perfect, mocking imitation of a dramatic, self-important scholar.
"When the cage of the world shows its cracks," she recited, her voice dripping with theatrical flair, "and the code of the sky bleeds static, the First Children will stir from their slumber. But the Dreamer's nightmare, the Ashen Legion, will rise to bring the Silence. They will seek to shatter the five locks that bind the dream."
"The Keystones," Elizabeth murmured.
Iris continued, ignoring her. "A glitch will fall from a dying star, a soul unwritten, a paradox born. He will die and be reborn, his power forged in the fires of his own deletion. He is the key, the unexpected variable, the bug that can become a feature."
She was talking about me. The prophecy was about me.
"But the key cannot turn on its own," Iris went on, her voice taking on a new, more ominous tone. "For the System will seek to patch its own flaws. It will raise up its own champions, users of a darker code, born of rage and despair. The glitch will not be alone. The world will fill with his brothers and his shadows."
My blood ran cold. Brothers and shadows. Other System Users. Like Marcus. Like Silas. The Duke wasn't just finding them. The world itself was creating them, as a natural immune response to my own existence.
"The true path to victory lies not in mending the cage, nor in shattering it," Iris recited, her voice now a low, serious whisper. "But in waking the Dreamer. And the Dreamer can only be woken by a song of perfect harmony. A song sung by three voices, united as one."
She opened her eyes, her playful demeanor gone, replaced by a look of ancient, solemn gravity.
"The Voice of the Mind, cold and sharp as winter's ice." Her gaze flickered to Elizabeth.
"The Voice of the Body, strong and wild as the heart of the hunt." Her eyes moved to Lyra.
"And the Voice of the Spirit, loyal and true as the northern star." Her final gaze rested on Luna.
"When the three voices join with the key," she finished, her voice barely a whisper, "a new System will be born. The cage will become a kingdom. And the Dreamer will finally awaken."
The prophecy hung in the silent, crackling air of the campfire. It was not a simple prediction. It was a blueprint. A recipe for apotheosis.
It was in that moment of profound, world-shattering revelation that the world itself screamed.
It was not a sound. It was a feeling. A deep, violent tremor in the very source code of reality. The trees around us flickered, their green leaves momentarily turning to static grey. The fire at our feet sputtered, its flames turning a sickly, unnatural purple.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM ALERT!] ARIA's voice was a frantic, screaming klaxon in my mind. [A 'Lock' has been broken! A Keystone has been compromised! I am detecting a massive, chaotic energy release from the southern continent!]
"The Flame of the Forge," Elizabeth breathed, her face pale as she stared at the map. "The Dwarven Keystone."
"The World Enders," I said, my voice grim. "While we were dealing with the Duke, they made their move. They've just taken a piece off the board."
Iris looked up at the flickering, unstable sky, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across her face. "Oh, goodie," she said, her eyes gleaming with a terrifying, childish delight.
"The game just got a lot more interesting."