“What… what did you do?”

He stepped forward and, with one clean strike, bisected the collapsing script of Darius. The Trainer exploded into harmless sand, which rained down over the gate like golden snow.

“Everything except myself,” the Prince replied.

“Ready for the final lesson?” Darius asked. “I will show you how to delete the vizier from existence. No fight. No cutscene. Just a command: /kill .”

“This is what he wanted,” the Dark Prince whispered, his voice no longer hostile but tired. “Not to save you. To replace you. You are not a prince anymore. You are a trainer’s sandbox. A cheat code that forgot the original game.”

And he felt nothing.