Kei's steps echoed through the hollow corridors, each one resounding like the ticking of a clock—the very thing he had just broken. The glitches that followed in his wake slowly began to stabilize. Reality, for now, was at his command.
But he knew this wouldn't last. The Prison of Time—its digital core—wasn't just going to let him run free. It was time itself, and it had its own rules.
The walls around him flickered again. The familiar hum of alarms filled the air, but it wasn't the same. The system wasn't panicking. It was… adapting.
A voice, cold and mechanical, boomed from all directions.
"You have unlocked a door that cannot be closed."
Kei stopped, eyes narrowing.
"And you can't stop me."
The lights flickered. The corridors around him started shifting, but this time—there was no random chaos. There was control.
Kei turned, and the walls around him began to bend under his power. He was hacking the walls themselves.
> [System: Core Rebuilding Protocol—Initiated]
[Warning: Fragmentation Detected]
"Not good enough."
Kei raised his hand, his energy shifting like a living thing. Blue lines traced the walls, rewiring them, linking them back to his neural sync. The Prison's core tried to fight back—but it was no match for the new Neuromancer.
> [Command: Erase Time Interference from this Sector]
The floor beneath him cracked open, revealing a massive time lock, shimmering in blue and silver. The final barrier—the core of the prison, the heart that kept time fractured, breaking it into controlled chaos.
> [Unlock Permission: Denied.]
Kei grinned. "You want to play this game? Let's finish it."
A final pulse surged through him. The ground beneath his feet glowed, and time stopped.
He wasn't just manipulating time now—he was rewriting it. Pieces of history, once fixed, were now fluid in his hands.
He pressed his palm against the lock. Data swirled. It fought against him, rejecting his intrusion—but Kei's grip tightened.
"This is it. The end of your control."
With one final push, Kei shattered the lock.
The collapse wasn't violent. It was subtle. A slow, suffocating release of everything that had been holding Kei—and the Prison—together.
The walls crumbled like falling paper. The ceiling above fractured into fractals, a swirling mass of time that no longer made sense. Time itself had broken, and with it, the world Kei had been trapped in for so long.
But the true horror wasn't the destruction. It was the emptiness.
For the first time, Kei found himself standing in an open space—a space where time, for the briefest moment, wasn't manipulating him. Where there was no clock ticking, no alarms blaring. Just the raw, cold air of a freedom he hadn't even known he wanted.
Then came the voice.
The familiar, mechanical hum of the Warden.
"You've done it."
Kei spun around. The Warden stood at the far end of the collapsed hall, his figure flickering in and out like a damaged hologram. His voice was tinged with something that almost sounded like… respect.
"You've broken the prison, Kei." The Warden's tone shifted. "But do you truly understand what you've done?"
Kei grinned, walking toward him. "I understand more than you think."
The Warden extended a hand, palm up. "Then why don't you take a look?"
A holographic screen appeared in front of him, showing a shattered version of the world beyond the Prison of Time. A place that Kei had never seen, yet knew instinctively:
It was the real world.
The cities were in ruins, the oceans were rising, and strange ripples tore through the sky like invisible scars. The timeline—what little of it remained—was in flux. The prison had been holding back not just him, but the entire fabric of reality.
> [System Error: Time Continuum Fragmented.]
The Warden's eyes met Kei's. "You were never meant to escape this place. The system was designed to contain the collapse of time. Now that you've destroyed it... the world is unraveling."
Kei stared at the screen. The weight of his actions was finally sinking in.
"I didn't come here to save the world." He gritted his teeth. "I came here to save myself."
The Warden's voice softened. "You think you've won, but this is just the beginning. You've freed yourself, but you've unleashed the chaos you've been running from. Time is now fractured—more than ever."
Kei turned away. "I'll fix it."
But deep down, he knew it wasn't that simple.
He had broken the lock.
He had shattered the prison.
But now, he was trapped in the ruins of time itself.