Chapter 2The Glitch That Deletes Gods

Lank licked his lips, reluctantly placing the child back into my arms.

"Speak," I commanded.

The mother raised her head, her gaze sweeping across the crowd before quickly falling again. "The Shade is..."

She never finished. A sickening thud echoed through the hall, and she crumpled to the floor, a pool of blood spreading from beneath her.

"Whoops. Hand slipped," a man with a jagged scar across his face said with a grin, holding a small, wicked-looking blade. He stood there, casual, as if he'd just dropped a pen.

The truth, snatched from my grasp. A cold fury I hadn't felt in decades ignited within me. "You're looking for death!"

My hand shot out, closing around his throat. I lifted him off the ground, his face darkening to a bruised purple.

"If... I... die..." he choked out, "...you'll never... find him."

A threat? I loosened my grip, letting him crash to the floor, gasping and coughing.

"Talk," I said, my patience wearing thin. "While I still have some."

He looked up, a manic glint in his eyes. "What if I told you he's already dead?"

Trying to deceive me?

Fool.

My boot connected with his ribs, sending him flying across the floor. He staggered to his feet, wiping a smear of blood from his lips.

"Believe it or not," he rasped, "it's the truth. He's dead."

The rogue Shade was among the players. And every single one of them was a collaborator.

"Take him," I ordered my lieutenants. "Give him a private tour of the Abyss."

A collective gasp went through the remaining players. The Abyss was our deepest, most tormenting level. In the entire history of the Purgatory, its survival rate was a perfect zero. It was a death sentence, just a very, very slow one.

"The Shade is dead! Why are you still doing this to us?" a man who had been cowering in a corner finally found his voice.

I had Gallows drag him before me. "You feel so strongly for him. Perhaps you'd like to take his place?"

The man went silent immediately, shrinking back into the crowd.

Seeing the scar-faced man was still defiant, Lank's tongue shot out, ready to wrap around him and drag him away. At the last second, the man frantically pulled something from his pocket and held it up. "I bet you recognize this!"

Lank retrieved the object and presented it to me.

"Warden... it's a Shade's sigil."

He was right. It was one of the tokens I issued to my Shades. They served two purposes: to differentiate them from the player simulations and to act as a distress beacon if they were in mortal danger. A Shade would only abandon their sigil at the moment of their true death.

But a simple trick like this wasn't going to fool me.

"Now you have proof the Shade is dead! You can let us go now, right?"

"Please, I can't breathe..."

I nodded to Gallows. He reconnected the main oxygen line. The wilted players instantly revived, gulping down the clean air.

"Warden, maybe we should let them go," Gallows suggested quietly. "Every second they remain, they drain more of the system's resources."

His words made sense.

I glanced at the sigil in my hand and offered a cold smile. "Let them go."