Reiji followed the flickering light toward the mountains. Every few steps, the terrain juddered—trees duplicating, pebbles rotating midair like confused fidget spinners, and one bird freezing mid-flight like someone hit pause on reality.
He didn't question it.
If he started questioning everything weird, he'd need a therapist and a holy water subscription.
Halfway up the hill, a notification blinked:
> Side Quest Available: "Get Milk From the Cow That Knows Too Much"
Reward: +10 Sanity, -1 Innocence
He stared at it. "...No."
The popup vanished, like it knew shame.
He kept walking until the grass gave way to cracked stone and the air got crunchy—not in a weather way, but in a corrupted-audio-file way. The air made bitcrushed static when he breathed too hard.
Then he saw it.
A small, ancient-looking tower, half-sunk into the mountainside, glitching at the edges like it couldn't decide if it was real or just extremely confident vaporware.
A floating sign hovered above the door:
> SYSTEM ARTIFACT #X-13
ACCESS RESTRICTED: DEVELOPER CLASS REQUIRED
Reiji cracked his neck. "Lucky for me, I'm the world's most underqualified dev."
The door opened on its own—without fanfare. Inside was... chaos.
It looked like someone tried to build a wizard's basement using IKEA furniture and quantum mechanics. Cables tangled with scrolls. Floating HUDs blinked on ancient stone. A coffee mug labeled "BUGS ARE FEATURES" hovered upside down, spinning slowly.
In the center? A console.
Not a game console. A literal command-line interface surrounded by CRT monitors displaying error logs in sixteen languages, three of which were definitely not human.
Reiji approached.
A prompt waited.
> > ENTER COMMAND:
His fingers hovered.
He typed: whoami
The console paused. Then responded:
> USER: DEVELOPER_CLASS_ENTITY (GHOST ACCESS)
ID: SATO_REIJI
ORIGIN: EARTH.PROTOCOL_USER_FEEDBACK
STATUS: ERRANT
> NOTE: YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO EXIST. DO NOT LET THEM FIND YOU.
Reiji exhaled sharply. "Okay. Existential crisis speedrun, any%."
He typed again: list_programs
A wall of gibberish scrolled—until something at the bottom blinked in red:
> [XENOMORPHIC THREAD DETECTED]
[INFECTION POINT: GAME SERVER / UNKNOWN ENTITY INTERFERENCE]
[CODE SOURCE: NON-DEV / NON-HUMAN / NON-LOCAL]
[SUSPECTED ALIAS: THE OBSERVER]
Reiji narrowed his eyes. "Observer? That's never a comforting title. It's always some cryptic cosmic pervert."
Suddenly, the door slammed shut.
The monitors screamed. Not a sound—text. Lines and lines of urgent command lines flooding like digital bile.
Then—silence.
One final message blinked in the center screen.
> THEY KNOW YOU SAW.
Reiji stepped back. "Okay. Nope. I'm not dying inside a geeky creepypasta tower."
The tower started to de-rez. Walls warping. Ceiling collapsing into code rain. He bolted, diving out the front door just as the structure collapsed into raw pixels.
He hit the ground, coughing. The air returned to normal.
Then a shadow loomed.
A tall figure stood above him.
Wearing armor stitched from literal debug logs and holding a blade shaped like an error cursor.
Eyes glowing blue.
"...Player_Sato," it spoke in a voice like dial-up static. "Unauthorized narrative deviation detected. Recalibration recommended."
Reiji sat up. "Yeah, well, your mom's a calibration error."
The thing raised its sword.
And just before it could swing—
> [DEVELOPER CLASS OVERRIDE – INITIATED]
A pulse of golden code erupted from Reiji's body like a server reboot fueled by rage and pettiness.
The creature staggered. Glitched. And then—
CRASHED.
Literally. It froze mid-frame, then exploded into blue screen fragments.
Reiji stood up, panting.
> New Ability Unlocked: [Emergency Override]
Cooldown: 24 hours
Description: Crash the nearest threat like it's running Windows ME.
He laughed, exhausted.
Then paused.
From the crater where the creature had stood, something remained.
A single line of text:
> HE SEES YOU.
Reiji didn't know who "he" was.
But he was getting real sick of being watched.
And somewhere, far beyond the pixelated sky, something was watching back.
To be continued