The skies bled light as Leon and King Drazek collided in a storm of will and system-borne power. The earth beneath them cracked not just from force, but from the very weight of their system authority colliding.
This wasn't a duel.
It was a clash between laws of reality.
The World Tilters
Leon's blade, forged from the remains of a collapsed system and embedded with fragments of old code, howled through the air. Each strike echoed with pulses of rewritten law time distortion, gravity flux, heat denial.
But Drazek's armor responded in kind.
[System Trait: Reality Enforcement – Level MAX]
Every time Leon twisted the world, Drazek's system corrected it, snapping things back to his favor. If Leon slowed time, Drazek erased the effect. If Leon altered terrain, Drazek hardened it with code-tempered stone.
"You see it now, don't you?" Drazek's voice thundered. "You're powerful… but not yet sovereign."
Leon gritted his teeth.
Then smirked.
"You talk too much."
Unleashing the Core
Leon activated the Mark of Dominion. Not the outer layers he usually tapped into, but the core the forbidden segment he had sealed away long ago.
[WARNING: Core Protocol Dominion Zero: Awakening Sequence Initiated]
[System Feedback May Be Lethal]
Power surged.
Light consumed him.
His skin cracked like porcelain under the strain, eyes burning gold, as the authority of not just a king but a founder system architect flooded his mind.
And suddenly, the battlefield stilled.
Even Drazek took a step back.
A Glimpse of the Past
Leon saw it.
In the data haze, through time's illusion, memories unlocked of a past life, when he was not Leon… but a nameless architect who helped build the first worlds of the System Matrix.
He had forged Dominion Zero as a failsafe: a foundational override to undo reality if ever the system grew corrupted.
But he sealed it away when the gods turned on each other… when the Ascended Court declared sovereignty.
He hadn't just lost his past he had erased it.
The Battlefield Awakens
As the memories surged through Leon, Dominion Zero activated.
Not just a weapon. A system field.
And the battlefield responded:
Enemy dreadships twisted mid-air, their code unraveling.
Data-missiles turned into harmless sparks.
The very laws governing that region shifted making Leon the central authority.
"Impossible!" one of the Ascended cried from afar, watching from the Woundspire's vision nodes. "That authority should be locked!"
"It was," whispered Elara, eyes wide. "But he's not Leon anymore. He's…"
"...the original."
The Cost
But power comes at a cost.
The override began tearing Leon apart. His flesh mortal, still bound by limits couldn't contain the fullness of Dominion Zero's awakening.
Blood ran from his eyes, his veins glowing with unstable light.
And Drazek smiled.
"Yes. That's it. Burn, boy. Burn for your stolen birthright."
"You don't get it," Leon growled through clenched teeth, standing even as his knees trembled. "This power… it was never yours to begin with."
With a scream, he drove his blade into the ground.
[World Edit – Locked]
[Bypass Permission: GRANTED]
Reality trembled.
The Shift
Across Ashenhold, everything changed:
Troop formations were instantly repositioned into winning tactics.
Entire fortifications self-repaired in seconds.
Wounded soldiers gasped as system-level healing purged corruption.
And most critically…
A prison vault deep beneath the Citadel opened.
From within, a woman stepped forward wrapped in living runes and bound by ancient fire.
The First Administrator.
"The moment has come," she whispered. "Let the Gods tremble… for the World Architect has returned."
---
The Administrator's Truth
Smoke and shattered reality still lingered over the battlefield. Soldiers stood still, blinking through the haze of impossibility. The clash between Leon and King Drazek had not just shifted the tide of war it had fractured the known laws of the System.
And now… the woman who had been forgotten by all, sealed for millennia, had awakened.
The First Administrator
She stood amidst flickering code-laced runes, barefoot on scorched obsidian.
Tall, ethereal, with silver eyes that reflected galaxies. Her name was once spoken in reverence but now it had been purged from the system registry.
[ERROR: Entity Not Recognized by Any Active Protocol]
[Classification: NULL – Root Authority Detected]
She smiled as she looked at Leon, her gaze piercing through timelines.
"You unlocked it," she whispered. "Dominion Zero. The Root Protocol."
Leon, weakened and kneeling beside his blade, looked up. His body trembled. Blood dripped from his hands. His vision split in two one eye seeing the present, the other the raw data code of the world.
"I didn't mean to" he choked.
"You were meant to," she said, stepping closer. "Because you are not a glitch in the system, Leon. You are its founder."
The Truth of the System
She raised her hand. The air shimmered as memories not just images, but raw truth poured into the minds of everyone present.
Across the battlefield, enemies and allies alike collapsed to their knees as knowledge not meant for mortals flooded their thoughts.
A world before systems. Before levels. Before classes.
When reality was malleable. When architects like Leon's past self wove fate with code and soul.
They created the System Matrix to maintain balance. To keep chaos at bay. But power breeds corruption.
The Ascended Court, once mere advisors, rewrote permissions, locked out their creators, and turned the system into a tool for control.
They had buried the Administrators.
And Leon? He was the last failsafe reborn without memory, hidden within the system, so that he might awaken when the time was right.
That time… was now.
The Court Responds
Far above, in the floating fortress of the Ascended Court, the vision feed shattered.
The Elder Judges rose from their thrones in horror.
"He unlocked Dominion Zero?"
"The First Administrator lives?"
"Impossible we scrubbed her existence from the last universal patch."
Then the most ancient among them Judge Nox opened a forbidden scroll and uttered four words that hadn't been spoken in eons:
"Prepare the Godlock Protocol."
The room dimmed.
Leon Rises
Back on the battlefield, Leon forced himself to stand. The Administrator placed a hand over his chest, stabilizing his spiraling system feedback.
"Your enemies will move quickly now," she said. "You've shattered their illusion of control. You need to gather your Dominions not just soldiers or lands, but the fragments of creation you once forged."
"How?" he asked, voice raspy.
"You'll know," she said. "But beware. Drazek was only the beginning."
Elsewhere: The Titan's Awakening
Deep beneath the Woundspire Citadel, King Drazek's broken body floated in a stasis chamber.
The Ascended had not abandoned him.
They had upgraded him.
His soul was now fused with fragments of dead systems, his body merged with world-forged alloy.
And when he opened his eyes, the world shuddered.
[Title Granted: World-Titan – Bound Executioner of the Court]
[Objective: Hunt the Architect. Terminate the First Administrator.]
---
The Hunt Begins
The night that followed was unlike any other. The stars themselves pulsed with strange, code-like constellations, and the moons over Leon's camp glitched flickering in and out of existence. Something was unraveling in the fabric of the world, and everyone could feel it.
Within the shattered remains of Drazek's fortress, Leon stood before a makeshift war table. His hands trembled not from fear, but from the sheer weight of memory slowly returning. The First Administrator, now known as Eira, stood silently beside him, gazing out over the ruins of the battlefield.
The silence between them was thick.
Finally, Leon broke it.
"How much more have they hidden?"
Eira's expression was unreadable. "Enough to drown every soul in this world in lies. Enough to twist the natural order of creation into a prison."
Leon clenched his fists. "Then it's time I rebuild what was stolen."
The Dominion Path
Eira traced a glowing line through the air, revealing a swirling map of the world. But this was no ordinary cartograph it was a Domain Matrix, an ancient blueprint that revealed the location of lost Architect Shards.
"There are five core fragments of your original power scattered across the world," she said. "Each one is bound to a Dominion a realm forged in secret by the Ascended Court to contain them."
Leon's gaze narrowed as he recognized some of the regions:
The Veiled Archives, where knowledge was sealed away by time.
The Obsidian Depths, where no light survived.
The Heaven's Scar, an open wound in the sky.
The Clockspire, frozen in an eternal loop of time.
And lastly, the Throne Below, a realm that even the gods dared not enter.
"These," Eira continued, "are the keys to restoring your full power."
Leon nodded, voice hard. "Then I'll claim each Dominion. And I'll tear the Court down piece by piece."
A New Threat Awakens
Meanwhile, across the world in a floating sanctum high above the clouds, Judge Nox watched the orb of surveillance flicker.
Within the stasis chamber, King Drazek's body had stabilized.
No longer mortal. No longer man.
He had become something else a God-Titan, crafted not just with dark magic, but reinforced by divine coding from the Ascended's Core Algorithms.
Judge Nox approached the platform and whispered:
"You failed to kill him before. Now… you will hunt the Architect as the Court's Executioner."
Drazek's eyes snapped open two burning voids of pure hatred.
[Quest Received: Hunt and Terminate – Code Zero Entity Identified as 'Leon']
The Titan rose, each step shaking the chamber.
Campfire Oaths
Back at Leon's camp, night had fallen. Around the fire sat his most trusted allies Kael the Shadowblade, Lira the Sky-Witch, and Juno the Beastkin Warmaster.
They had all seen the impossible. And now, they needed to believe in it.
Leon stood before them.
"I know I've changed," he began, "and I know some of you are wondering what that means. But I haven't forgotten who I was… or who I fight for."
He paused, locking eyes with each of them.
"We were chosen by fate. But now we choose ourselves. The Court took everything. Our kingdoms. Our memories. Our purpose. But together, we take it all back."
They each swore their allegiance that night not just to Leon, but to the idea of breaking the system and restoring a world where free will reigned.
An Echo in the Archives
Later that night, Leon and Eira walked alone through a glade that shimmered with anomalies. It was the path to the Veiled Archives, hidden behind a glitch in reality.
"Once we enter," Eira said softly, "they'll know where we are."
"They already know," Leon replied. "Let them come."
He stepped through the shimmer, crossing into a space untouched by time.