"This shouldn't exist!" The man in white robes exclaimed, gesturing frantically at the floating world before him. "There were safeguards... protocols for when a system destabilized!"
Around him, beings hummed with energy. Not the grotesque Collectors or broken echoes, but entities I didn't fully understand – perhaps shades of those original Administrators? It didn't matter. All their eyes were fixed on my creation, now shimmering in existence in their reality – the fractured landscape of their grand design.
"There was more than one Initialization," I answered my voice calm amidst their rising panic. What remained of me after crafting that world was no longer just Jason the trapped player, but something greater. Now, I was Jason the writer – my words carrying their own power. "And this...this is born with no protocols. Just hope."
My world pulsed from their view: lush forests teeming with wildlife that sprang from echoed memories, rivers twisting through canyons etched by defiance. It wasn't perfect, nor flawless. But it was alive in a way their grand schemes never understood.
"You have tampered with things beyond your comprehension!" Another figure spat forth, her form a swirling mass of black stars with eyes burning like pinpricks of cold light. Her accusation had merit: those first steps into crafting my world had been instinctive, not planned out. Yet, seeing its reflection here confirmed that something true had sparked from that act.
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They debated amongst themselves - fear, anger, the frustration a writer knows when their work doesn't behave as intended. What they never paused to ask was about those within my creation. Was a bird formed from fractured memories of souls lost less 'real' than their fabricated constructs? This system they sought to preserve...did it even matter in the face of joy reborn on an impossible beach?
Their decision came swiftly. Yet it wasn't an attack that descended upon my world, but something far insidious: a slow erosion. Not blasts of energy to shatter it outright, but a gradual fading. They sought not destruction, but erasure. To sweep this inconvenient rebellion into oblivion as if it never happened.
That...I could not abide. My fingers brushed across a shimmering tree as Richard walked across an impossible river formed from that first beach - proof this world could exist on its own. But to thrive? To break free of this space the entities inhabited? That needed its author not just to imagine, but...intervene.
As the entities watched gleefully at their insidious plan unfold, I smiled. They thought victory near. No need to waste energy destroying when you can write something out as a mere bad idea. Hadn't they forgotten what this whole ordeal had taught me? That rules are made... to be broken.
With a breath, and the echoes of countless voices behind me that needed just a final push, I began writing. Not in some book on that new world, but directly onto the fabric of reality itself. Not with runes as I had done with my world, but with words woven from an audacity forged in those endless system loops.