I GUESS NO ONE IS UP FOR VOTING YET. NO WORRIES. I WAITED TO SEE, BUT I WANT THIS STORY TO LIVE, SO I GUESS I WILL PICK IT AND MAKE THE BOOKS I WANT TO READ. MAYBE THEN I WILL HAVE ANOUGH ACTIVE READERS WHO WANT TO VOTE. I JUST WANTED TO GIVE YOU ALL THE OPPORTUNITY BEFORE I RUN WITH IT. BUT IT IS GO TIME. I WILL STILL GIVE SPACE FOR POLLS AFTER EVERY 3 CHAPTERS, SO STAY TUNED FOR A NEW EPISODE WEEKLY. WITH THAT BEING SAID, LET'S GO!

  The chains bit deep. Every step Mackiaveli took across the gravel training yard was a silent negotiation with his body—a body bruised, burned, and betrayed by the limits it had once laughed at. Each breath rasped through cracked lips, his throat still raw from the dust and the chants of the mob.

  “Slay the Phoenix!”

  “Show him death!”

  “Feed him to Carbo!”

  The cheers echoed in his skull, looping like corrupted code. The Bloody Menagerie hadn’t just tested his strength. It had broken something deeper. They hadn’t come to see him fight. They’d come to see him fail. And for a moment—he had. Not because he bled. But because he doubted. Now, the blood crusted on his armor felt ceremonial, almost holy. A grim tapestry of rage and regret. Falco’s compound loomed ahead like a Roman fortress stitched from both history and hallucination—archways lined with metal vines, murals bleeding static at the edges. Past and future merged in surreal brutality.

  And Falco—damn him—was waiting. The Lanista stood at the edge of the stone platform, arms crossed, flanked by a pair of clone-gladiators with halberds longer than Mack was tall. His tunic was spotless, ivory-white with gold embroidery. His face was carved marble: unreadable, amused, and very aware that he owned everything Mack had left.

  “Come,” Falco said, voice cool. “You walk like a man half-dead.”

  “I feel like one.”

  “You fight like one too,” Falco added, eyes narrowing. “But that last kill? The smile you wore when you broke his jaw? That was art.”

  Mack didn’t respond. He ascended the steps with slow precision, noting the tremor in his left thigh. Pain data, still calibrated to peak realism. No more safety net. No more dev-mode.

  “What now?” Mack asked. “Another bout? Another public flogging for the Roman faithful?”

  Falco chuckled. “No, no. I have something more... sacred in mind. But first, tell me—how badly do you want revenge?”

  Mack's jaw tightened. He didn’t answer with words. He didn’t need to. The scar on his chest still pulsed faintly, a glitch within the glitch, reminding him of Grieger. Of the Hacker. Of Sarah. Falco nodded, pleased.

  “Good. Then you’ll be interested to know your friend Carbo is hosting a gathering tonight. The Feast of Tethers.”

  Mack blinked. “You mean Marcus Aurelius Carbo.”

  “The same,” Falco confirmed. “He sponsors half my games. But he also… plays games of his own.”

  Mack's eyes narrowed. “He’s not a sponsor. He’s a manipulator. A predator.”

  Falco raised a brow. “He’s also Caesar’s third cousin. Speak lightly.”

  “I’ll speak with my blade,” Mack muttered.

  “You won’t get the chance,” Falco replied. “Unless you attend the feast. And if you’re clever, you’ll do more than attend.”

  He reached into his tunic and pulled a scroll bound in red silk.

  “Tonight,” Falco said, handing it over, “you wear no armor. No weapons. Just silk and silence. You’ll be my guest of honor.”

  Mack stared at him.

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “I don’t need you to,” Falco said. “But if you want the Key—the one he carries around his neck like a status icon—you’ll need my help.”

  Mack’s heart spiked. Key.

  “You’re sure he has it?”

  Falco smiled. “I’m sure he stole it from the Time Keepers the day you died.”

  The Temple of Masks was less temple and more simulation hallucination. It was built atop Rome’s highest spire, the architecture both ancient and impossible—stone columns supported by nothing, torches burning without fuel, and doorways that rippled like liquid when passed through.

  Everyone wore masks. Even Mack. His was carved from obsidian, smooth and featureless, a symbol of his anonymity. Around him, senators, generals, and digital nobility moved through the space like shadows in a shared fever dream. The scent of oil and blood hung thick in the air, mixed with jasmine, firewood, and algorithmic desire. A woman laughed, her mouth exposed beneath a silver mask. A young boy danced in robes too large for him, trailing sparks with each step. And there, seated atop a throne of circuit-threaded marble, was Marcus Aurelius Carbo.

  The Hacker. He wore the face of a god—chiseled, youthful, untouched by war. But Mack saw through the skin. He recognized the code beneath. The posture. The glitch. The way his eye twitched every seventh blink. That was him. The man who hacked the Sword of Shadows.

  The one who took Sarah’s final scream and rewrote it into data. Mack’s fists clenched. The silk robes hid his tension, but his mind raced with entry points, variables, options. He needed to get close. Close enough to take the Key from around that bastard’s neck. And close enough to know if killing him would even matter. Falco stood nearby, sipping wine.

  “You look like you’re about to murder the floor tiles,” he whispered.

  “You sure he won’t recognize me?”

  Falco smirked. “Even if he does, that’s the point. He wants to know you’re alive. He wants to see what you’ll do.”

  Mack exhaled, calming himself.

  “Then let’s give him a show.”

  Carbo rose with a dramatic flourish.

  “Honored guests,” he proclaimed, “tonight we celebrate the binding of flesh and flame, soul and code. The ancients burned offerings. We—we burn fear.”

  Two acolytes brought forward a cube—transparent, glowing, humming with inner fire. At its center: a fractal key, black and gold, spinning in slow, hypnotic rhythm. Mack’s stomach flipped. That was it. The Key.

  He moved slowly through the crowd, timing his steps with the music—a strange mix of harp and synthesizer. When he reached the base of the platform, Falco was already there, flanked by masked nobles.

  “Mack,” Falco murmured. “Now.”

  Mack stepped forward. Carbo turned. For the briefest moment, their eyes locked—and Carbo smiled.

  “You,” Carbo said, voice smooth and honeyed. “You are the fighter from the blood ring, yes? The phoenix of the arena.”

  Mack bowed low.

  “My lord,” he said. “I am... reborn.”

  Carbo’s smile widened.

  “And what gift do you bring to this sacred rite of recursion?”

  Mack rose, hands trembling beneath his sleeves.

  “Only the truth.”

  And he lunged. It wasn’t elegant. He didn’t phase into shadow. He didn’t slow time or bend the code. He tackled him. A collective gasp echoed through the hall as Mack crashed into Carbo, slamming him into the offering platform. The cube teetered. The guards froze, unsure if it was performance or heresy.

  Mack’s hand shot out—wrapped around the Key. A pulse. White-hot. REAL. He yanked it free—and the world screamed. An explosion of golden light swallowed the ritual chamber. Guests flew backward, some shattering like glass, others flickering and rebooting. Falco roared something Mack couldn’t hear. Carbo’s mask cracked. His real face peeked through. And for a second—just one—Mack saw the Hacker. No disguise. No arrogance. Just fear.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Then—Snap. Not a sound. A sensation. Like being yanked out of your own heartbeat and thrown sideways through time. Mackiaveli felt it before he saw it—a lurch in his gut, as though gravity had been inverted, torn out from under him and replaced with raw force. The thunder of the arena, the stench of sweat and blood, the roar of the crowd—gone in a breath.

  White. Everywhere. Blinding, endless white. He slammed hard into something that should have hurt but didn’t. A chair, somehow already cradling his weight. A dining chair. Carved wood and ivory trim. His armor, splintered and singed from the last fight, flickered at the edges like a badly rendered texture. He looked up.

  Across from him sat Callahan. The bastard was twirling a spoon in a steaming bowl of soup, the kind you remembered from a childhood you weren’t sure was yours. Garlic, tomato, wine. Steam curled up toward a nonexistent ceiling. The void was silent, save for that spoon.

  Callahan looked like the head waiter at a five-star bistro for damned souls, napkin tucked neatly in his collar, grin as smug as ever. His eyes glittered like corrupted data packets.

  "Congratulations, Gladiator," he said, voice smooth and punchable. "You didn’t die this time."

  Mack didn’t speak. He breathed—slow, measured. His gauntlet twitched. He hated how real the soup smelled. He hated how much he wanted it. His HUD was gone. No status bar. No alert tones. No mission tracker. Just him, Callahan, and the soup. Callahan dipped his spoon again, sipped. Closed his eyes like it was divine.

  "You’re not eating," he noted. "Must’ve lost your appetite during the crucifixion sequence."

  Mack glanced down. The burn marks on his arm were gone. So was the gladius. Even the pain had been neatly excised.

  "I’m waiting for dessert," Mack muttered, voice dry as ash. "Or the next kick in the ribs."

  Callahan chuckled. That same corporate laugh. The sound that belonged in a glitchy help desk tutorial, not a cosmic judgment chamber.

  "Oh Mack," he said. "Always so dramatic. You passed the test. Rome was never the mission. It was your resurrection. The real game’s just beginning."

  "Right," Mack said. "Because nothing says resurrection like being stabbed, sold, and humiliated."

  Callahan ignored the sarcasm. He reached beneath the table and unfurled a scroll. It rolled open with an audible shhhk, revealing an intricate lattice of circuits and symbols. Nasu runes crawled along its edges, glowing faintly with recursive pulses. At the center was a spiral made of numbers. 6174. Again and again.

  "The Legacy Circuit," Callahan said reverently. "Time Keepers. Stroma. The recursion of fate, quantified and gamified. Every player with potential is logged here. But you?"

  He tapped the scroll.

  "You’re not a player. You’re an anchor."

  Mack studied it, jaw tight.

  "I don’t want to be an anchor."

  "Didn’t ask," Callahan replied, slurping his soup.

  Mack closed his eyes. The weight of what he’d just gone through hadn’t hit him until now. Falco. The Hacker. The arena. The damn wraiths. The sword. Every moment felt both blisteringly real and distantly orchestrated, like someone else had pressed play on his story. He opened his eyes. Callahan was watching him.

  "You're wondering how much of it was real."

  Mack didn’t answer.

  "All of it," Callahan said. "And none of it. Welcome to the paradox of recursion. You didn’t live it. You didn’t die in it. You were... processed."

  "You talk like a god," Mack snapped. "But you’re just another program with a clipboard."

  Callahan smiled.

  "And yet, here you are. Sitting across from me, again. Funny how that works."

  Mack’s fingers brushed something warm near his collarbone. The Amulet. He jerked his hand up—but Callahan was faster. He flicked two fingers and the amulet disintegrated in a flash of blue flame. The static in Mack's chest flared, brief but intimate, like someone had just deleted a memory and replaced it with a hole.

  "No," Callahan said, almost tender. "This one doesn’t go with you."

  Mack stood, fists clenched.

  "Give it back."

  "No," Callahan said, still seated. "You don’t get to bring souvenirs from a simulation that never truly belonged to you. Rome was a crucible, not a destination."

  "That amulet was mine."

  Callahan's smile widened. "Was. Everything you think is yours has already been sacrificed. That’s how recursion works. You trade pieces of yourself for access."

  Mack's breath was ragged now. The silence pressed in around him, thicker than any void he'd fallen into.

  "So what? I just keep giving until there’s nothing left?"

  Callahan leaned forward. "Exactly."

  He placed three scrolls on the table. Each one shimmered with its own strange hue. Gold. Neon. Ice.

  Callahan tapped the first. "Greece. Trial of the Titans. Gods. Betrayal. Olympus as code."

  The second. "Cyberpunk. Neon Run. Corrupted networks. Fractured truths."

  The third. "Norse. Frostborn Trial. Memory war. Deception. Lethe."

  Mack stared.

  "No context. No warning. Just... pick?"

  Callahan tilted his head.

  "There is no wrong choice. Only different scars."

  Mack reached forward. His fingers hovered.

  “Why does this feel familiar?”

  He didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t need to. Callahan smiled like a man reading his mind.

  "He didn’t ask if I wanted to continue," Mack thought. "Just assumed I would. Like this wasn’t a trap—but a habit. Like I’ve done this before."

  Still silent, Mack grasped the golden scroll. It ignited in golden flame. The embers rose, shimmering, twisting upward like a soul being lifted. Callahan chuckled.

  "A fine pick. The gods love a fool."

  Mack met his gaze.

  "They’re about to meet one who fights back."

  Callahan winked. " Anyway!” Callahan rolled his digital eyes. “ You’re free to play Shards of Eternity now. No chains. No tests. Just choices. Enjoy your legacy access."

  And then—Snap. No portal. No warning. No UI. Just a snap. The chair dissolved beneath him, and Mack fell again—not through space, but through time. Through memory. Through himself. Through fire. The air shimmered like water. Then it broke.

  Sand greeted him. Fine, golden, and humming with heat. The moment his boots touched ground, the air thickened with incense and wind-borne dust. A sun like molten amber hung in a sky too perfect to be real. And before him—rising from the dunes like a vision dreamt by gods and built by sorcerers—stood the Library of Alexandria. Its white stone gleamed like bone beneath the sky, flanked by towering colonnades carved with glyphs both Egyptian and unfamiliar. The domed roof sparkled with inlaid lapis and fragments of starmetal, like a beacon to seekers beyond the veil of reason.

  Mack looked down at himself. No armor. No blade. He wore a robe of gold-threaded linen and obsidian bangles, the garment regal yet fluid. A serpent circlet rested against his brow, and a pendant shaped like the Eye of Ra pulsed against his chest. He was a prince here—no, more than that. He felt like memory had bent backward to rewrite his origin. Like the world had decided he had always belonged.

  And somewhere in the distance—he felt Moses. Not the myth. The man. The code. His brother. His other self. Before he could grasp the implications, a voice called out from beneath the shadows of the great columns.

  “Prince Makarev… over here!”

  Mack turned. A robed man, youthful yet weathered by knowledge, stood beneath one of the colonnades, waving him over. His skin was sun-dark, his hands ink-stained, and his eyes gleamed like someone who saw between pages—not just the words on them.

  “I found something,” the man said, voice half-whisper, half-prayer. “In the restricted vaults. A pair of scrolls. One on Spirit… one on Shadow. I think you’ll want to read them.”

  Mack said nothing. The name Makarev rang in his mind like a half-remembered dream. Was it his? Was it written into this path? Was it what Moses called him, once? He nodded—silent, regal, curious. Together, they turned toward the grand bronze doors of the Library. Carved with celestial maps and chants in Nasu script, the entrance pulsed as they approached. Mack’s pendant vibrated faintly, responding to some ancient recognition coded into the space itself. The man placed his hand to the door. It opened with no sound. Just a rush of cooled, sacred air. Knowledge breathed at them like a god inhaling a secret. Mack stepped forward. Into the Library.

  A year later, Mackiaveli stepped through the digital curtain into a vast atrium made of obsidian glass and golden veins, alive with runes that pulsed like a heart. He wore Olympian armor now—sleek, radiant, interlocked with fragments of Titans and gods alike. His left gauntlet hummed with lightning. His right hand clutched a memory sigil still dripping from his last victory. His level indicator pulsed softly behind his left eye.

  LVL 89 — Champion of Stone | Legacy Tier: Ascendant

  He was no longer a prisoner. Not a pawn. Not a puppet. He was free. The air was still. Silent. Until a familiar voice sliced through it.

  “Well, well, well... if it isn’t the golden boy of recursion.”

  Callahan stood across the chamber in a new form—dressed not in his usual help-desk robes, but in a high-collared indigo cloak that shimmered like the Aegean. Embroidered across the chest was the symbol of a coiled serpent eating its own tail—The Ouroboros, now the concierge sigil of Stone Chronicles: Shards of Eternity. He was the same. And yet not. Still smug. Still smooth. But the banter was sharper now. Like razors beneath the smile.

  “You took your sweet time,” Callahan said, conjuring a floating tablet with a flick of his fingers. “Do you know how many multiversal queue spots I had to delay while you flexed in Olympus?”

  Mack’s eyes didn’t leave him.

  “You stole my amulet.”

  Callahan shrugged. “You stole my sequence access. We all take things. Yours just happened to come with better fashion.”

  Mack stepped closer. The temperature in the room dropped. Callahan didn’t flinch—but the smile twitched.

  “You’ve changed,” Callahan said.

  “I got tired of dying.”

  “Not everyone gets back up with divine armor and a God-Sigil on their belt.”

  Mack’s voice was low. “Maybe they should’ve fought harder.” A tense beat. Then Callahan held up his hands.

  “Fine. You win the brooding contest. I get it. You’re ready to go. I’m just the travel agent now, right?”

  He flicked his wrist, pulling the holographic tablet down into his field of vision. His fingers danced across the air, glyphs shifting, circuits syncing. He tapped one last command.

  “Good luck, recursion boy.”

  And then—Snap. No portal. No warning. No UI. Just a snap. The chair dissolved beneath him, and Mack fell again—not through space, but through time. Through memory. Through himself. Through fire.

  It is time for the next choice. There are three scrolls offered by Callahan. Which one will you choose?

  1. ?? Trial of the Titans (Greece)

  2. ?? Neon Run (Cyberpunk)

  3. ?? Frostborn Trial (Norse)

  Which path do you choose?