"You don't inherit a throne like this. You either survive it… or become part of the furniture."
Location: Memory Construct – The Riftmade Wastelands
World State: Burned Timeline
Threat Level: Too Much Drama, Not Enough Therapy
Ren landed hard — not metaphorically this time. Face-first into black sand that crunched like glass and whispered things in languages no living thing should know.
He rolled over and looked up.
A throne stood in the distance.
Bent. Broken. Made of gearbones, mirror-shards, and fractured glyphs.
And on it?
Someone who looked just like him.
Except older. Stronger. Eyes full of failure turned into power.
The Riftmade King.
Then came the voices — his crew — not all at once, but in a chaotic, overlapping mess like a family group chat mid-crisis.
🔥 BLAZE (appearing midair in a backflip of literal fire):
"Okay WHAT in seven flaming hells is that?!"
REN (groaning):
"Pretty sure it's the version of me who didn't know when to stop."
FROST (materializing gracefully beside him):
"He overfed on glyphs. Surged beyond anchor stability. That throne isn't just his seat — it's the only thing keeping him from imploding."
SNARKSTEEL (clanking into Ren's hand automatically):
"I told you this trial was going to suck."
🕰️ TIME (upside-down, floating, probably drunk):
"Ohhh, I remember this guy! He thought he could control fate with a toothpick and raw trauma! It was sexy until it exploded."
🌌 SPACE (phasing in like she tripped through a black hole):
"Technically, this world isn't real. Or maybe it's the original. Or maybe you're the simulation, and this is the real Ren.
...Anyway, fight him."
🪨 GRAVITY (grinding through the world like a judge made of stone and sarcasm):
"He was Kaelreth's prototype. He didn't collapse. He devoured himself."
⚙️ AETHERIUM CORE (voice clean, robotic, trembling):
ENTITY [RECOGNIZED]
DESIGNATION: [RENEGADE RIFTBORN]
WARNING: GLYPH RECURSION LEVEL: CATASTROPHIC
PERSONALITY DISSOLUTION: 97%
SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: ∅
Ren took a breath.
REN:
"Cool. So we're fighting Super Me with identity issues and a chair fetish.
Do I have backup?"
🔥 BLAZE (stretching flames like arms):
"I got you, Captain Disaster."
❄️ FROST (sighing):
"If you die, I'm blaming Space."
🌌 SPACE:
"Fair."
🕰️ TIME (already whistling):
"I call dibs on narrating your slow-motion breakdown!"
🪨 GRAVITY:
"You all talk too much."
The Riftmade King stood.
A pulse hit the air — not magic, not pressure.
Just presence.
And he spoke.
RIFTMADE KING (in a voice laced with all of Ren's worst fears):
"You don't belong, little drift-child."
"You're what happens when Kaelreth ran out of time and gambled on a mistake."
REN (activating glyphs):
"Yeah?
Well, I am a mistake — but I'm the kind that kicks back."
TRIAL TWO BATTLE: Riftborn vs. Riftborn The Riftmade King uses collapsed echo-glyphs — corrupted versions of Ren's own. Every strike from him creates a timeline stutter, where Ren sees other possible deaths. Snarksteel fights like a pissed-off blender. Blaze and Frost tag-team support, using pure elemental collision to destabilize the throne's memory field. Space lies the entire time. Time makes bad puns. Gravity threatens everyone.
🎯 Mid-Fight Realization:
Ren lands a hit — direct glyph-blade into the King's side.
Blood spills.
But it's not red. It's… code.
Echo-code.
"You're not me," Ren whispers.
"You're what Kaelreth hoped I'd never become."
The King laughs — a horrible, broken laugh.
"You think you're better than me?
You're just a cleaner fracture."
Ren doesn't kill him. He absorbs the throne.
Threadbreaker activates — slicing through the throne's anchor code and binding its memory into Ren's own glyphs.
The Riftmade King vanishes in a flash of erased history.
📜 Trial Two Reward: Second Riftborn Fragment Unlocked
Not all Riftborn were stable.
Some lost their identity entirely, becoming memory predators. The throne was not power — it was prison.
Aetherium built it to trap the unstable prototypes. Ren's glyphs evolved — absorbing memory-stabilization nodes from the throne.
Now he can see echo decay in other beings.
(Think: lie detection + memory fracture spotting.) And worse?
"There's another throne," Gravity says.
"The final one. The true Core Seat."
"And it's not empty."