The Field was not stable.
Saylor had reclaimed control, but the reset had not completed.
Pockets of memory clung to the new code like barnacles on metal. Time slipped sideways. Structures loaded in impossible sequences. Voices echoed from places that no longer existed.
The blueprint was burning beneath the surface.
And from that fire, they emerged.
---
Sector 9 – Western Drift
Naomi stood at the edge of a half-formed ridge, watching a mountain phase in and out of reality. The air smelled like ash and ozone.
Behind her, Eren stabilized Tomas, who hadn't stopped shaking since the reset began.
"Where are we now?" Tomas asked.
Naomi shook her head. "It's not where. It's when. This isn't a location. It's a failed rebuild."
A shadow moved through the haze.
Eren raised his fists. "Contact."
They turned, expecting a Trial. Or worse—a projection from Saylor.
But what stepped forward wore no god's mask.
It wore a fractured one.
A player's face. Two memories stitched together. A body glitching between lives.
It spoke in two voices:
> "I died… and then I didn't."
The creature's arm stretched sideways, forming a blade of crystallized code.
> "I remember everything."
---
Vault – System Anomaly Detected
Saylor watched from the command altar.
> ANOMALY CLASS: FRACTUREWALKER SOURCE: PARTIAL REBUILD / MEMORY RETENTION FUSE
He leaned forward.
"So the reset left residue... good."
He typed a command.
> RELEASE PROTOCOL: CLEANSE HUNTERS
From the sky, the next phase began.
Not just survival.
A purge.
Thunder cracked across the unformed sky.
The fractured player lunged, its blade slicing downward in an arc that bled static and code. Naomi rolled aside, just in time. The ground behind her fractured—splintering into hexagonal tiles.
Eren tackled the creature, fists glowing, slamming kinetic pulses into its midsection. It reeled—then split. Two copies phased outward, each one murmuring different timelines.
> "I chose the knife." "I chose to run."
Tomas backed away, heart pounding. "It's not just remembering… it's living them all."
One clone charged Naomi again. This time, she didn't dodge.
She drew blood.
Her blade—a fragment of the old Field—hummed as it sliced through the creature's left arm. It shrieked, glitching mid-motion, fragments of false memories spilling from the wound like black mist.
Naomi shouted, "They can bleed!"
"Then we kill them," Eren replied, blasting the second clone into a rock wall.
But the ground trembled.
And more came.
Five more Fracturewalkers emerged from the ruined hills—each a blend of multiple versions of past players: some with cracked god masks, others with rewritten trial glyphs embedded into their skin.
Tomas cried out. "They're the ones we lost. The ones who almost made it."
Naomi's face hardened. "Then this time, we end their suffering."
The wind shifted.
And from the sky, something new arrived.
Cylindrical pods slammed into the ground around them—metal and bone meshed together, hissing.
From within stepped bipedal constructs, clean and precise, bearing the emblem of the Vault.
> CLEANSE HUNTERS DEPLOYED.
Saylor's voice echoed across the Field.
> "Delete the broken. Burn the corrupt. Clean the code."
The constructs raised weapons forged of white light.
And opened fire.
Naomi grabbed Tomas. "MOVE!"
Eren covered their retreat, hurling a wall of debris into the advancing Hunters. A Fracturewalker screamed as it was bisected by the white beam.
"Doesn't matter who we were!" Naomi shouted. "We fight now!"
And the field exploded into chaos—memory anomalies, players, and Vault enforcers clashing in a storm of history and defiance.
Smoke curled across the battleground, rising in ribbons from the cracked terrain. White beams lit up the dust, vaporizing stone, cutting clean through fractured anomalies and stone alike.
Naomi vaulted over a crumbling platform, breathing heavy, her weapon now half-melted from repeated use. She skidded behind a warped arch of corrupted code and dragged Tomas into cover.
"Status?" she asked.
"Not dead," he coughed. "Yet."
A Cleanse Hunter passed overhead. Its lens scanned the terrain and fired a pulse that evaporated two approaching Fracturewalkers. Naomi peered out and noticed something: the beam didn't lock onto them the way it should have. It flickered.
"The system's aiming protocol is… misfiring," she said aloud.
"Lucia's residue?" Tomas asked.
"Could be," Naomi whispered. "Or the Field is starting to resist."
Nearby, Eren fought alone—arms coated in kinetic frost, fists detonating like grenades. A Fracturewalker pinned him against a pillar and slashed downward.
Naomi leapt from cover, intercepting with a midair strike. She slammed her sword through the creature's eye and twisted.
> "Thank you," the Fracturewalker whispered.
Its body disintegrated into particles.
Naomi didn't blink. "They're aware. They want to die."
---
Elsewhere in the Field
Across the reset layer, other anomalies began awakening. Not all were hostile.
One walked slowly along the grid edge—a young boy carrying the broken wheel of an old trial. He knelt beside a downed Cleanse Hunter and whispered something. The machine flickered… and shut down.
The boy vanished.
---
Vault – Saylor Observes
The projections across the Vault flared inconsistently.
> FIELD DESTABILIZATION: 12.8% HUNTER AI MALFUNCTION: SECTOR 6B UNKNOWN INTERFERENCE: PERSISTING
He muttered to himself, "They're learning from the Field. Not just fighting it."
A screen showed Naomi's team regrouping.
Another screen showed Cleanse Hunters falling—not to weapons, but to refusal. Refusal of the system to recognize them as valid.
"They're not just surviving. They're synchronizing," Saylor said quietly.
He tapped in a new command.
> PREPARE FINALIZATION: CODE ERASE PROTOCOL SIGIL-0
"Time to test the one thing they can't rewrite."