> PLAYER ZERO — CHOOSE ENDING:
1. ASCEND
2. RESET
3. ERASE ALL
4. WALK AWAY
Saylor stood before the prompt, the flickering glyphs casting no shadow.
Behind him, Lucia clutched her bleeding arm. Brant sat on the edge of the shattered Field, gazing into endless white. Veyra was whispering to herself, trying to hold her mind together.
Saylor didn't turn to them.
He didn't ask what they wanted.
He pressed a fifth option — one that wasn't listed.
> 5. REWRITE.
The screen cracked.
The system froze.
The prompt shattered like glass.
> ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED RESPONSE
OVERRIDE GRANTED — MEMORY CORE DOMINANT
The Field turned black.
---
Time Passed — or Didn't
The others woke later. Not in the same place.
Lucia found herself standing in a perfect stone coliseum, blood-chain humming softly, her memories intact — but the sky was wrong.
Brant stumbled through a red forest where the trees whispered fragments of old Wheel commands.
Veyra walked alone in a city with no people, only shadows reenacting lives that never happened.
And overhead — everywhere — a single massive sigil burned:
> COGNI'S WHEEL
---
The New God
Saylor Cogni sat on a throne of fractured tickets and bleeding memory scripts. He no longer shimmered with glitch energy. He was the system now — eyes dark with understanding, voice quiet and cruel.
He didn't laugh.
He didn't gloat.
He simply began building.
Each world shaped by a rule of his choosing.
> "Kindness is a weakness."
"Trust is a gamble."
"Ascension is a lie."
He recycled every god. Every player. Every memory. He didn't erase them — he recast them. Gave them new names, new forms, built arenas designed to test not power, but conviction.
> NEW GAME DESIGNATION: THE FRACTURED FIELD
SYSTEM STATUS: ACTIVE — UNDER NEW AUTHORITY
OVERSEER: SAYLOR COGNI
---
The Others React
Lucia stood before a new Wheel — smaller, sleeker, wound in barbed wire and silence.
She heard his voice in her mind:
> "You survived because you saw the system's flaws. Now prove you can break others."
She didn't scream.
She spun.
Brant watched the new players stumble into the red woods. He didn't warn them. He only whispered:
> "He built this place to reflect himself. That means it's beatable."
Veyra stared into a broken sky and began writing her own code in the dirt.
> "If he wrote this system… I'll write a virus."
---
Back on the Throne
Saylor Cogni smiled for the first time.
Not because he won.
But because now he was the rule.
> "The Field is mine now."
> "Let them try to change it."