Secret of the Thrones

The horizon cracked.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

Through the seams of the Fragments of Fiction, enormous fault lines split the narrative layers, revealing what lay beneath the foundation of dead stories.

A pulsing, molten core of collapsing worlds.

And from that abyss, they rose.

Thrones.

Towering, monstrous figures cast in obsidian and fractured script, their forms a grotesque fusion of machine precision and mythic grandeur. Shattered crowns of corrupted code hovered above their heads, spinning slowly like executioner's blades caught in orbit.

I'd seen them before, of course.

The Thrones of Regression.

Enforcers of the purge, heralds of the narrative collapse.

But standing here, in the bleeding heart of forgotten narratives, I saw them for what they really were.

"They're not just enforcers," I said quietly, a sick knot forming in my stomach.

"No," Lys confirmed, her voice grim. "They're more than that."

We watched as the Thrones marched across the collapsing fragment plains, each step sending tremors through the unstable architecture.

"They're the final evolution of failed protagonists."

The words left her lips like a verdict.

I felt my breath catch.

Failed protagonists.

I looked at them again — really looked. Behind the armored carapaces, behind the glitched visors and scrolling command lines, I saw hints of what they used to be.

Broken heroes.

Twisted echoes of once-noble figures, now bound to the very system that had devoured their worlds.

"It makes sense," I muttered bitterly. "Who better to enforce regression than those who were crushed by it?"

"They weren't just crushed," Lys said, her gaze distant, as though reading from a hidden history only she could see. "They were forged."

The Librarian stepped forward from the swirling mists of the library, their voice a solemn murmur.

"The system takes the data of failed protagonists," they explained, "and refines them into instruments of narrative collapse. Stripped of free will. Programmed to enforce loops and suppress anomalies."

The realization twisted in my chest.

"They're what I could've become."

The Librarian inclined their head. "What you still might become, if your rewrite falters."

For a heartbeat, I saw it — a future where I was trapped in armor of dead code, a puppet marching to the system's tune, erasing those who dared to defy the consumption cycle.

No.

Not me.

Never me.

"They're coming," Lys warned as the nearest Throne lowered its weapon — a halberd forged from collapsing plot threads — and pointed it directly at us.

[Target Locked: Ethan Kael — Rogue Author Candidate.]

[Directive: Enforce Narrative Regression.]

The sky darkened.

Scripted storms swirled overhead, raining lines of corrupted commands down upon the library.

[Environmental Hazard: Regression Storm Active.]

Pages of forgotten stories were torn from the vaults, shredded into confetti of lost meaning.

The Librarian's usually steady tone dipped with urgency.

"You cannot fight them as you are," they warned. "Thrones enforce causality. They rewrite time loops into reality itself."

"So what do we do?" I asked, my fingers tightening around the lantern.

Lys's eyes sharpened. "We rewrite faster."

A flash of defiance surged through me.

She was right.

This wasn't a battle of strength.

It was a race.

I poured narrative flow into the lantern, feeding it with the new thread of adaptive combat I had unlocked.

[Manual Override: Environmental Stabilization Script Injected.]

The Regression Storm slowed, its lines of command faltering under my influence.

But it wasn't enough.

The Thrones advanced, their every step accelerating the storm's collapse. They moved not with desperation, but inevitability, as if the outcome had already been written and they were merely playing their assigned roles.

No. Not this time.

I drove the corrupted blade into the ground, opening new narrative pathways between the fragments.

[New Thread Woven: Divergent Narrative Route.]

Immediately, the terrain shifted beneath the Thrones, forcing them onto unstable loops of decaying script.

They stumbled, their heavy forms faltering as the environment twisted around them.

Lys moved beside me, her voice sharp and commanding.

"I'll hold them in the loop," she said. "You stabilize the library."

I nodded without hesitation.

Together, we fought not with weapons, but with will.

We wove threads of forgotten plots into barriers and traps, chained the Thrones to recursive paths, and layered new scripts over their commands.

[Error: Narrative Feedback Detected.]

[System Stability: Critically Compromised.]

The Librarian's voice rose over the chaos.

"You are not defeating them," they cautioned, "you are delaying the inevitable."

"Then we'll keep delaying it," I growled, "until we find a way to end it."

Lys's eyes met mine, fierce and resolute.

"Until we rewrite it."

As we forced the Thrones into their looping paths, something flickered in the data streams above us.

A new thread.

A hidden layer beneath the library's collapse.

It pulsed, faint but growing, like a heartbeat beneath the noise.

"What is that?" I asked.

The Librarian's mask tilted.

"The Root Loop," they answered. "The cycle the Thrones are bound to. Sever it, and you break their chain of causality."

My pulse quickened.

"Then that's our target."

With renewed resolve, I seized the thread, channeling every ounce of narrative energy I could muster into the blade and the lantern.

[Command Injected: Sever Root Loop.]

The environment convulsed as the thread resisted, fighting to maintain its integrity.

But I didn't let go.

Lys joined her strength to mine, stabilizing the pathway as I pushed deeper.

The Thrones roared, their forms destabilizing as the connection to the Root Loop strained to breaking.

And then—

[Root Loop: Severed.]

The storm broke.

The Thrones froze mid-stride, their forms fracturing along fault lines of collapsing script. One by one, they crumbled, not into ash, but into fragments of liberated narrative flow.

[Narrative Collapse: Temporarily Averted.]

I exhaled, chest heaving, as the battlefield quieted.

"They're not gone," Lys said, her voice tight. "Only severed from their loop."

"But it's enough," I replied, lifting the lantern as its flame grew brighter still. "Enough for now."

The Librarian stepped forward, their tone dipped in rare approval.

"You have done the impossible," they said. "You've forced inevitability to blink."

But they weren't finished.

"Beware," they added darkly. "The system will not accept this breach lightly."

Above us, new lines of crimson code carved themselves into the fabric of reality.

[System Escalation Authorized.]

[Deploying: War Council of Broken Stories.]