Ashes to Empress

Saturday mornings feel different when you've got money in the bank, momentum behind you, and coffee that didn't come from a suspicious discount bin. I rolled out of bed, stretched like a cat that knew it had no predators, and checked NovaFrame before I'd even opened both eyes.

150,042 downloads.

I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. Checked again. The number was real. Surreal. Glorious.

I opened the review section, half-expecting a minefield. Instead: a fan club. 4.8 stars, wall-to-wall praise. People posting side-by-side photo comparisons, screaming about how their three-year-old phones suddenly looked like DSLRs. Someone even wrote, "This app made me break up with SnapShot Pro." Brutal. Accurate.

My pulse quickened. I tapped into the System.

22 KP.

There it was. Solid. Beautiful. Earned.

I sat back in my chair with the kind of smug grin I hadn't dared wear in years. The good kind. The kind that says, "I'm not just surviving anymore. I'm winning."

NovaFrame had exploded. What started as a throwaway side project, a gesture to prove to myself I could build something beautiful—had become a legitimate force. And it wasn't just ego candy. It had a purpose. A pipeline. Because the truth was: NovaFrame was bait.

SecurityFix was the real game.

The teaser docs I'd sent out had drawn serious attention. But I couldn't keep operating from the shadows. I needed a way to make SecurityFix scalable, untouchable, and immune to theft.

Because if someone got their hands on the source code… it would be game over. Not just for me, but for everyone dumb enough to trust what came next.

I opened the Shop.

Scrolling through it was like flipping through a catalog of forbidden magic. Tech from fractured timelines, lost civilisations, futures where Earth no longer existed. Each item had a price in KP and a warning label dressed up as flavor text.

Then I saw it.

Oblivion-11: Post-Duality Development Environment (3112-Variant Build)

The title alone gave me goosebumps.

The description felt like myth:

"Originally developed in the Saturnian Belt by defectors of the Intercolonial Machine Ethic Accord, Oblivion-11 is a full-stack quantum-integrated language engine. It enables seamless multi-architecture execution across legacy and speculative systems, complete obfuscation at runtime, and zero-recall source encryption. All compiled binaries self-adapt based on hardware feedback loops, eliminating platform incompatibility."

I scrolled further.

"Used to construct autonomous defenses of the Oort Perimeter following the Collapse of Earth Communications. Source code never breached. Memory Lords failed to decompile."

Okay, maybe the Memory Lords bit was marketing. Or maybe not. I no longer assumed limits when it came to the System.

Oblivion-11 was exactly what I needed: secure, portable, utterly opaque to modern analysis. With it, I could build SecurityFix into a service no one could copy—or corrupt.

Cost: 23 KP.

I looked at my balance again. 22 KP.

"Figures," I muttered.

I flopped onto my bed with an exaggerated groan, arms thrown wide like some melodramatic stage actor.

So close.

Ding.

The sound nearly made me fall off the bed.

I scrambled for the laptop.

23 KP.

NovaFrame had climbed again. Another milestone crossed while I was mid-whine.

I laughed. "NovaFrame, you glorious app."

Purchase. Confirm. Install.

And then—

Nothing.

Blank.

No fanfare, no dialog box. Just everything in my head shifting.

The architecture of Oblivion-11 slid into my brain like it had always been there. Not memory—structure. Like my neurons had been rewritten to accommodate a language older than syntax.

I stayed horizontal for what felt like hours. When I finally sat up, the world tilted, then steadied.

I breathed in.

Time to build.

Saturday Night

Rebuilding SecurityFix wasn't just an upgrade—it was rebirth. I tore it down to the scaffolding and rebuilt every module from scratch using Oblivion-11.

At first, the new logic models felt alien. Recursive flux sequences. Autonomous boundary weavers. Compiler hooks that mutated based on runtime load.

But then it clicked. And when it did, the code didn't flow—it bloomed.

SecurityFix became something new. Something alive.

Each build was unique. Each deployment self-scrambling. No two instances identical. The source? Permanently encrypted at rest and in motion. Even I couldn't access it without biometric-paired decryption routines.

It was, by all definitions, unstealable.

Next came deployment.

Hetzner. I spun up five dedicated machines, naming them after the moons of Jupiter because I could. Custom OS builds. Isolated containers. Hardware-bound boot images. Load balancers like I was prepping for a cyberpunk war.

Then came the frontend.

A web portal so clean it made government dashboards cry. Clients could log in, define network ranges, schedule scans, and request analysis. The backend handled everything.

Report output included:

Fresh CVEs

Unknown 0-days

Predicted breach vectors

Patching recipes

Suggested reconfigurations for edge firewalls

Even diff logs for newly vulnerable subnets

Every scan ran fast. Ridiculously fast.

Even large corp networks—like UnuCom—processed in under ten minutes.

And CPU load? Surprisingly light. Oblivion-11 was not just efficient. It was hungry.

By 3 a.m., I had a full working pipeline. Frontend to backend, secure from top to bottom.

I'd built an empire's skeleton.

And no one could steal it.

Before crashing, I drafted a quick email to UnuCom:

"Dear UnuCom Team,

I'm pleased to inform you that the full SecurityFix platform is now available via a secure web interface. You may test the service using the following credentials:

User: test-client

Pass: trySecureNow23

The platform supports deep network analysis, real-time vulnerability indexing, and automatic reporting. Feel free to run a full scan on your demo environment.

Looking forward to your feedback.

– M. Wintershade"

Then I hit send and finally allowed myself to breathe.

Sunday, Late Morning

I hadn't slept.

Didn't need to.

I drank tea like it was holy water and checked the scan logs from the university job I'd queued up Friday.

Results came back cleanly.

Cleanly compromised.

Hundreds of vulnerabilities. More than I could scroll through without breaking a sweat. Dozens marked critical. And at least five 0-days so fresh they hadn't even made it into the System's threat database yet. I double-checked the protocol handshake just to be sure I wasn't hallucinating. Then I slipped through the breach.

I was in their network.

It was almost… too easy. They had left an outdated VPN tunnel connected to a mail server that hadn't seen a patch since 2018.

I tunneled inward. Quiet. Ghostlike.

Mail archive. Indexed. Keyword: Wintershade.

Hit.

Thread.

Sender: Armin Schmitt

Recipients: Disciplinary Committee (Internal Only)

"Her payment has been processed. I recommend applying further administrative pressure before she gets too comfortable. Delay any formal clearance notifications. If she objects, we'll cite protocol discrepancies."

I stopped breathing.

I clicked deeper.

"Her case still poses a useful precedent. Let's not finalize anything until we're sure she's no longer a reputational risk."

And then:

"To clarify, she no longer has legal access to university resources. However, the department would still benefit from retroactive enforcement."

My fingers trembled.

This wasn't bureaucratic inertia. This wasn't incompetence.

This was sabotage.

Targeted.

By him.

I scrolled back further. Months of emails. Little asides. Subtle digs. Schmitt had been following my situation obsessively, like I was a broken vending machine he was kicking for one last coin.

And now I knew why.

His architecture. His "revolutionary CPU model." The one I'd picked apart and proved had race condition vulnerabilities that would've tanked performance under load.

He'd thanked me.

Smiled.

Told me I was "sharp."

And then he'd gutted my academic record. Orchestrated my expulsion. Watched me drown in debt and stayed silent while they stripped my future bare.

And now? After I paid them? He wanted to retroactively punish me.

Like I'd gotten away with something.

I sat motionless.

Then I whispered, steady and cold:

"You picked the wrong girl."

I didn't know how I would do it.

But I would take everything from him.

Not out of revenge.

Out of principle.

You don't get to rewrite someone's life and walk away.

Not anymore.

That, I swore.