Falling through a crashing system is not like falling through air. It’s like being dragged through a kaleidoscope of broken memories and unrendered dreams.

  Kaelen saw a flash of Loop 1—the first time he had failed. He saw the face of the Queen, Valen's mother, who had been deleted in Version 0.4. He saw the Bridge, the Stables, the Oracle, and the Scrapheap, all swirling around them like debris in a hurricane.

  "KAELEN! GRAB MY HAND!" Valen’s voice was faint, drifting from a "Fragment" of a ballroom that was floating past.

  Kaelen lunged, his [System-Breaker] sword acting as an anchor. He stabbed the blade into a floating piece of the Oakhaven Castle wall and reached out, catching Valen’s wrist just as the Prince was about to be sucked into a vortex of "Discarded Assets."

  They slammed into a floating island of green grass—a tiny, ten-foot square of the "Tutorial Fields" that was drifting through the black void.

  [LOCATION: ERROR_NULL_404] [STATUS: FRAGMENTED]

  They lay there on the patch of grass, surrounded by nothingness. Above them, the giant star-gears of the Forbidden Peaks were falling, crashing into each other and exploding into showers of sparks.

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  "Is it over?" Valen panted, his crown now just a dull, iron circle.

  "No," Kaelen said, sitting up. He looked at his hands. They were solid again, but his Level 31 stats were gone. His interface was a mess of broken symbols. "The server is in a 'Fatal Exception' loop. It’s trying to restart, but it can't find the 'Start' file. We're in the gaps between the frames now."

  Around their tiny island, other fragments of the world began to drift closer. Kaelen saw Old Man Miller from the village, sitting on a floating stump, staring blankly into the void. He saw a group of Narrative Enforcers, frozen mid-charge on a piece of the Sighing Bridge.

  "We broke it," Valen whispered, tears finally welling in his eyes. "Kaelen, look at them. All of them... they're just waiting to be deleted."

  "We didn't just break it, Valen," Kaelen said, standing up. He looked at the [System-Breaker]. The blade was glowing with a soft, steady white light. "We gave them a chance. In the old loop, they died and forgot. Now... they just are."

  A new notification appeared in the center of the void. It wasn't blue, gold, or red. It was a simple, white box.

  [WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENCE 'THE FINAL LOOP'?] [NOTE: THIS IS A ONE-WAY TRIP TO THE END OF THE STORY.]

  Kaelen looked at Valen. The Prince stood up, wiping his face. He looked older. The "Idiot" was gone, replaced by a man who had seen the source of his own soul.

  "One more time, Kaelen?" Valen asked. "Back to the Bridge?"

  Kaelen sheathed his sword. "One more time. But this time, we aren't following the script. We’re writing the ending ourselves."

  Kaelen hit the [YES] button.

  The fragment of the Tutorial Field dissolved, and the two of them were pulled into a funnel of white light, heading back to where it all began.