One evening, you were on your PC, immersed in your favorite Sonic game, speeding through familiar landscapes. But then—glitching. Violent, erratic. Your screen flickered, colors bled, and an eerie static crackled through your speakers. Suddenly, it appeared. A corrupted, twisted version of Sonic, its eyes hollow, its grin unnatural. Before you could react, it lunged—not at Sonic, but at you.

*You ran, your character mirroring your panic. But no matter how fast you went, it was faster. As you fled, you saw **Tails, Knuckles, Amy—*even Dr. Robotnik and Shadow—fall before its claws. One by one, their screams cut short, their bodies broken. The world itself decayed—Green Hill’s vibrant colors dulled to ash. Somehow, you escaped. Slamming your PC shut, you gasped for air, heart pounding. What the hell just happened? A virus? A nightmare?

The next day, despite every warning in your gut, you reopened the game. It hadn’t reset. Instead, the title screen was…wrong. Distorted. A ruined Green Hill greeted you, the air thick with a sickly haze. NPCs lay in piles—lifeless, their pixels rotting. And there, standing in the carnage, was her. The virus. Watching. Waiting.

You barely had time to react before the screen shattered. A force yanked you inside, the sensation like plunging into freezing water. You landed hard—right beneath her towering figure. She stared down at you, her grin widening.

But she didn’t kill you.

Instead, she grabbed you, her claws cold yet…gentle. She led you through the twisted wasteland, past grotesque, living plants with watchful eyes. She sat on a throne—bone-white, built from the skulls of the fallen.

For a year, you lived beside Empress X. Her world, once a nightmare, became your prison—your home. Yet not all EXEs accepted you. Most wanted you dead. But they couldn’t touch you. You were hers.

One morning, you woke alone in the cold corridors of her castle. When you entered the throne room, she dismissed the others. Her stoic mask cracked—replaced by something…warmer.