The stairwell twisted impossibly upward, a double helix of glass threads spinning through a shimmering void. Each step Kai took felt like stepping into a different time, a different memory. His own heartbeat echoed back to him sometimes slower, sometimes faster, as though reality was trying to sync with a dozen versions of himself at once.
[New Zone Unlocked: Nexus Spiral – Origin of Code]
Warning: This Floor Exists Outside Standard Chrono-Logic Boundaries
Effects: Memory Desync, Identity Fracture, Potential Encounter with Proto-Entities
Lira followed close behind, dual blades shimmering faintly in her hands. "This place… it doesn't obey the Tower's logic. It's something older."
"I know," Kai murmured. "This is where the system started rewriting reality."
As they reached the first platform, a pulse of energy rippled out. A massive circular node floated above, its core spinning with lines of glowing script written in an ancient code neither of them had seen before.
Nexus Anchor Detected
Would you like to sync your Identity Core with the Spiral?
[Yes] – [No]
Kai hesitated. "If I sync, I might lose part of myself. I don't even know how much of me is me anymore."
Lira placed a hand on his shoulder. "Then make sure the part that remains is strong enough to remember what matters."
Kai selected [Yes].
The moment he did, his body froze in place. Light poured from the anchor and slammed into his chest. His mind shattered into dozens of fragments each reliving a moment from a life he barely recalled.
A child reading old manuals by lantern light, dreaming of a better system.
A young man, betrayed during a simulation war, cast out for refusing to obey.
A nameless prisoner held in a digital crypt, overwritten again and again.
And… a shadow, standing beside the very first Administrator, whispering, "Let them believe they are free."
Kai awoke gasping. The platform beneath him had changed symbols etched into his skin and mind alike.
Identity Core Reinforced: [Kairo Vellan] Restored (50%)
System Class Evolution: System Reclaimer – Stage Two Achieved
Passive: Immune to Memory Overwrite
Active: Reclaim and Purge 1 Corrupted Admin Node per Floor
Bonus: Fragments of True History Unlocked
Lira looked at him, eyes wide. "Your aura… it's not just Admin anymore. It's creator-tier."
Kai didn't respond at first. He was staring at a hologram hovering nearby an echo of the past recorded in code.
A figure stood in the center: an old man with silver eyes, wearing a robe of cascading runes. "If you're seeing this, it means someone reached the Spiral. I am Vethros, the first System Architect. We didn't build this Tower to enslave we built it to contain something worse."
The echo shivered, then replayed a vision.
A monstrous silhouette formless, shifting, comprised of corrupted user data and broken memory clusters rising from below the Tower, devouring entire systems.
"The Heralds… the Nameless… they were our mistake. The entity below is not just a glitch it is entropy itself. You must reach the Heart of the Tower and reset the Core Protocols. Or everything collapses."
The image vanished.
Kai turned to Lira. "The Tower isn't just a trial. It's a lock."
"And someone's trying to break it open," Lira added.
Far above, a ripple of red light shot down the Spiral. Another Admin no, something worse was approaching. They weren't alone anymore.
New Quest Unlocked: Spiral Descent – Race to the Core
Opposing Admin Detected: Entity ID "Zero.Null"
Progress: Floor 28/2000
Kai clenched his fist. "Then we keep climbing. And we don't stop until we burn out the corruption root and branch."
The Arrival of Zero.Null
The Tower groaned.
Somewhere deep within the quantum threads that laced its reality together, something vast and unnatural had begun to move. The floor beneath Kai and Lira shifted like a living thing, rearranging its paths as though trying to protect or warn them.
From above, a noise came.
Not a roar. Not a whisper.
It was the sound of deletion.
A ripple of raw red energy spiraled down the stairwell, erasing fragments of code as it descended. Runes sizzled out of existence. Memory echoes evaporated like breath in winter. The very air began to crackle as a hole in space tore itself open.
And from that absence stepped Zero.Null.
He did not walk. He unfolded.
Tall, robed in negative space, eyes like twin data cores bleeding corruption, the figure hovered an inch above the platform. Around him, thousands of broken system permissions fluttered like torn wings Admin rights stolen, corrupted, and merged into something wrong.
Warning: Illegal Entity Detected – Access Level [0.0]
System Error: Identity Cannot Be Confirmed
System Error: System Error: System Error
Everything froze.
Even Kai's interface flickered, glitching out in a cascade of red and black. For a moment, time refused to move. Only Lira remained unaffected her blades drawn, shimmering with anti-corruption code, her stance wary.
Then the voice came.
Not spoken aloud. It infected thought itself.
"You climbed. You unlocked what was meant to remain closed."
Kai gritted his teeth, trying to push the broken interface aside. "And you're trying to burn it all down. You're not an Admin. You're a parasite."
Zero.Null tilted his head. "All systems decay. All order becomes entropy. I am only the inevitable result."
The code in the air began to blacken. Permissions dissolved. The Spiral trembled.
Lira launched forward, twin blades glowing in arcs of blue light. "Then I'll cut out the disease!"
She struck with blinding speed, her movement warping the geometry around her. But Zero.Null didn't block. He merely gestured.
With a flick of one skeletal hand, a rift opened—and swallowed her whole.
"LIRA!" Kai shouted, reaching forward
but it was too late. The rift sealed like a mouth closing over prey.
Warning: Companion Removed – Location Unknown
Do you wish to initiate Emergency Recall? Y/N
[ERROR: Recall Blocked by Overwrite Class Entity]
Zero.Null's voice echoed again.
"You are the last variable. The last memory fragment that clings to purpose. You will either fall… or be overwritten."
And then the battle began.
Zero.Null struck with vectors of corruption, slashing through space itself. Kai dove sideways, reconfiguring his permissions mid-air, layering code shells over his form. He returned fire summoning a barrage of fractured data spheres, each one encoded with his evolving Class.
The Spiral burned with light and darkness.
Each impact tore pieces of reality from the platform. Kai's shoulder was grazed his arm immediately began to crystallize, infected with Null Code. He screamed, pouring everything into a last-ditch override command:
[Reclaim Protocol: Anchor Spiral] – Execute]
The ground pulsed.
From the depths of the floor, the Anchor Core lit up once more firing a stabilizing beam of pure system memory straight into Kai's chest. The corrupted fragments were purged, his health bar screaming upward in a sudden jolt.
But it wasn't enough.
Zero.Null lunged forward, claws poised for a final strike
And just before impact…
The Spiral exploded.
A shockwave of cascading failure hit the platform. The void itself cracked and Kai, along with Zero.Null, were cast out.
Into the deepest zone of the Tower.
The Memory Requiem
Depth Floor: [Unknown]
Kai awoke suspended in darkness.
Not absence no, this was something denser. It pressed against his lungs like gravity made of regret. Light did not exist here, not naturally. What illuminated the space was something stranger: memories.
Flickering like dying embers around him, fragments of his own past hovered in shifting loops.
There—his first login into the system.
There—his sister's voice, distorted by corrupted memory data.
There—a glimpse of a sky that never existed, a piece of a world long gone.
He floated, his limbs numb, his interface flickering weakly with static.
System Recovery Mode Engaged
WARNING: You have been cast into a Forbidden Layer
Objective: Locate Anchor of Self to Exit Requiem Zone
Optional Objective: Locate Lost Companion
Kai forced himself upright, though there was no floor, no ceiling. Just endless, shifting shards of memory and coded sorrow. He reached toward the nearest fragment a memory echo of him and Lira, laughing around a flickering fire in a long-forgotten side quest.
But the moment his fingers touched it
The world cracked.
The memory turned against him. Lira's face twisted, corrupted, her eyes hollow, mouth whispering a thousand regrets. The fire turned into codefire, scorching his skin with guilt. A dark figure loomed behind them both.
Zero.Null.
No an echo of him, planted into Kai's mind like a virus.
"You can't fight this," the echo said. "This is where all code dies. This is where the system buries its sins. You are the last sin."
Kai growled and summoned a blade not from the system, but from his will. A weapon of identity, forged from his own self-recognition.
"I don't die in silence."
He struck the corrupted memory, shattering it like glass. Data whirled around him in chaotic spirals, and then suddenly a path appeared.
Not a path made of stone or code, but of truth.
Each step forward was a decision, a reclaimed memory.
Step 1: His real name. Kael Veyr.
Step 2: His first code hack. The spark that gave him control.
Step 3: His bond with Lira not just an alliance, but something deeper, unspoken.
The world around him began to solidify. The Void flickered.
And then he saw her.
Lira.
Or a fragment of her. Caught in a cage of null geometry, flickering between presence and absence, she reached toward him.
"Kai don't forget who you are…"
The echo of Zero.Null returned, trying to erase her, trying to erase everything.
But this time, Kai was ready.
[Command Injected: Identity Anchor – Lock Personality Core]
[Class Evolution Triggered – Fragment Sovereign Initiated]
Warning: You are becoming something the System does not recognize.
A shockwave of white-blue energy erupted from his body.
The cage shattered.
Lira gasped as she collapsed into his arms, real again, though weakened.
The false world screamed, collapsing.
And the two of them fell again into the next unknown floor.
But this time, together.