The journey toward the castle unfolded in a heavy, surreal atmosphere. Comfortably seated inside the carriage, All For One seemed perfectly in his element. He questioned the old man with venomous politeness, seeking to understand the rules of this "prison."
"So, Maître Alistair, this world is nothing more than an abandoned story?" All For One asked, observing his own fingers, which occasionally emitted faint sparks of pixels.
"A forgotten chronicle, my lord," the old man replied in a trembling but fascinated voice. "The Author named us, and then he turned the page. We live in the margins of his mind. But the prophecies spoke the truth: the Great Rift would open one day to let through those who possess the power to rewrite reality."
Sitting across from them, Grey endured the ride as an ordeal at every moment. The confined space of the cabin did nothing to ease his unease. Thanks to his perception Quirk, he could see what the others could not: the oak landscape outside was glitching, sometimes losing its bark texture to reveal smooth, gray surfaces, empty of any code. Worse still, looking at his own hand, he noticed lines of source code beginning to flicker beneath his skin, betraying the degradation of his own body in this unstable reality.
When he looked up toward the hill through the window, the castle did not appear to him as a stone structure, but as an immense architecture of interconnected command lines. A digital fortress designed to lock away the core of this world.
Suddenly, the sky changed color, shifting from an azure blue to an inky black in the span of a second, without transition. The earth began to shake violently, jolting the carriage. In the distance, an entire section of the mountain sheltering the castle vanished outright, replaced by a chasm of white void.
"The script is collapsing," All For One murmured, glancing out the window from the corner of his eye. "The Author is trying to clear his workbench. Grey, get ready. If we don't take control of the core in this castle, we will be deleted along with the scenery."
The carriage accelerated brutally, shaken by the panic of the horses. Grey, gripping the seat opposite the supervillain, felt panic rise at the sight of the white void consuming the landscape. He turned an anxiety-ridden gaze toward his companion in misfortune.
"Then what do you suggest?" Grey asked, his voice strained with urgency.
Hearing this question from the young man's mouth provoked an unexpected reaction from All For One. His shoulders began to tremble, then a dark laugh, quiet at first, escaped his lips before turning into a full-blown laugh that echoed through the confined interior of the carriage, under the round, perplexed eyes of Maître Alistair.
"What do I suggest?" All For One repeated, amused, wiping away an imaginary tear. "This is fascinating. By default, I am merely a fictional character created out of thin air by the Author. A paper entity with no consciousness of my own, meant to follow a pre-determined destiny. So, asking for my opinion or asking me to devise an improvised plan... that is something particularly surprising coming from you, Grey."
He crossed his legs, observing the young man with a gaze of almost frightening lucidity, indifferent to the increasingly violent jolts.
"If I may," he resumed, "I feel as though, for the first time, I am truly a real person. An entity the Author did not construct, that he did not entirely program. Doing things on the fly, without really knowing what to do or where we are going... it is particularly amusing for someone who has always orchestrated everything. So, if I must suggest something to you, Grey, it would simply be to go with the *flow*. No need for a complicated plan when dealing with a world in mid-destruction. The rules change every second, so let's improvise."
Grey stared at him, incredulous, as the walls of the carriage also began to vibrate under the pressure of the world's distortion. A deep frustration took hold of him.
"I feel like you really aren't taking any of this seriously..." Grey thought to himself, his gaze dark.
It was at that exact moment that the carriage crossed the drawbridge in a clatter of hooves and ironwork. The heavy doors of the fortress slammed shut behind them with a dull thud, cutting short their conversation as they finally entered the depths of the castle.
The vehicle came to a dead stop in the inner courtyard with a metallic screech of wheels. No sooner had the doors opened than the men of the convoy rushed outside. The chaos was absolute: the soldiers, panicked by the inky sky, were running in all directions. Maître Alistair stepped down trembling, immediately followed by Grey and All For One.
Through the crowd, Grey finally spotted the silhouette of the King of this fallen world. Escaping the escort trying to drag him toward the basements, the sovereign stepped forward onto the porch, a tilting crown upon his head. His wide eyes locked directly onto them.
"It is them..." the king whispered, his face pale, pointing a trembling finger. "The prophecies did not just foretell the Rift. They predicted the arrival of the demons who would shatter the walls of our reality! Guards! Arrest them before they consume what remains of my kingdom!"
At this command, a dozen iron knights drew their swords and formed a wall of steel, surrounding the small group. All For One cast a circular glance at the blades pointed at him, his smile widening. He turned his head slightly toward Grey.
"Well, Grey, here is our welcoming committee," he said in a playful tone. "The king himself wants to play the tragedy hero. What does your precious moral compass suggest we do against these poor background extras?"
Grey did not even bother to answer him. He didn't have the time anyway. Faced with the threat of the knights surrounding him, the young man took the initiative and instantly went on the attack.
He thrust his arm forward to strike the first soldier charging at him. Upon impact, it was not an explosion of pixels or blood, but a terrible explosion of sound that tore through the air. The noise was so violent, so deafening resembling a sonic boom mixed with the crash of a giant sheet of parchment being ripped all at once that the entire courtyard shook. The acoustic shockwave instantly swept away the targeted soldier and hurled a second guard to the ground, his armor warping under the sheer pressure of the blast.
All For One let out a small, satisfied laugh, observing the damage caused by this raw manifestation.
"Well, there's your answer, Grey," he said, delighted to see how their powers were adapting.
Grey turned to him, his face stern and his gaze dark.
"We have no time to waste," he shot back in a freezing, hurried tone.
He had no intention of lingering in this courtyard. Without waiting, Grey dashed through the enemy lines. Chaos erupted completely. The surviving knights charged blindly. Grey dodged a steel blade with a fluid movement. Capitalizing on his speed, he unleashed a flurry of strikes, triggering localized sonic detonations with each impact that shattered armor and threw the attackers back several meters. However, every use of his strength sent a piercing pain through his left arm, which momentarily turned transparent, revealing his own internal data structures.
Meanwhile, All For One followed the movement with disconcerting ease, altering the ground beneath the guards' feet to paralyze them while keeping his eyes on the young man.
Suddenly, in the middle of the fight, Grey stopped dead. Ignoring the iron blades slicing through the air around him, he tuned out the surrounding commotion.
"The way things are going, this will take too much time..." he thought, his jaw clenched with urgency.
Grey closed his eyes for a brief moment. He focused, pushing his perception Quirk beyond its limits to probe the very data skeleton of this medieval prison. He searched for the anomaly, the purest concentration of energy, the anchor point of this world. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open, shining with a look of absolute certainty.
"So that's where you are..." he muttered.
He turned his head toward the supervillain.
"All For One, follow me!" he barked in an unarguable tone.
All For One didn't even have time to comprehend what was happening. Before he could utter the slightest ironic remark, a blast of unheard-of violence, triggered by Grey, shook the entire courtyard. The shockwave was so powerful that it kicked up a storm of dust and rattled the very foundations of the castle. In the blinding flash of the explosion, Grey vanished instantly from his sight.
When the smoke cleared, All For One stepped forward, intrigued. Right in front of him, at the exact spot where the young man had been standing, there was now a huge, gaping, dark hole plunging deep into the stone floor of the courtyard. Grey had pulverized the ground to carve a direct path toward the depths of the fortress.
Observing this dark abyss leading to the bowels of the world, All For One let a predatory smile stretch across his face.
"So, that's where it was..." he thought to himself.
He tilted his head slightly, observing the absolute darkness of the giant hole, and murmured to himself with an amusement tinged with nostalgia:
"A classic, obviously."
Without the slightest hesitation, the supervillain leaped into the void after him.