Phase Gate-Ω didn't open like a door—it tore. A line of light cracked reality itself, pulling me into a current of digitized gravity. There was no transition—just pressure, light, then silence.
Then, the Core.
I landed hard on a cold obsidian surface. Around me stretched a circular chamber, endless in every direction yet somehow finite. Giant pillars of data spiraled upward like twisting code towers. The place hummed, not with life, but calculation.
[Core Node Entry Confirmed - Thread 041: KaiMoren]
[Warning: User Classification = Anomalous Access]
As the UI adjusted, a red system overlay appeared.
[Core Integrity: 78% - Compiling Stability Protocols]
My breath came ragged. Something was wrong. The environment felt... unstable. Like a simulation under stress. The texture of the floor flickered beneath my feet, momentarily replaced by grid lines and debug overlays.
A flicker in the distance. Then another. Within seconds, the far side of the chamber rippled—like someone dropped a stone into a pool of code.
They came.
Figures. Tall, thin, wrapped in what looked like broken firewall scripts—armor of fragmented red-and-black hexes. No faces. Just voids beneath hoods. And they moved fast.
[Intrusion Detected - Anti-Anomaly Constructs Deployed]
They weren't just patrolling—they were hunting.
I counted five. Then ten. Too many to fight.
I ran.
Pathways opened before me, data forming underfoot like skeletal bridges. Behind me, explosions of red light. They weren't just chasing—they were overwriting the environment. Every step they took corrupted the platform they touched, turning polished obsidian into red static.
[Directive Override: Anomaly Suppression in Progress]
I dodged a collapsing platform, leapt over a data gap, and slid beneath a cascading firewall wall. The hum of the Core was now a roar—distorted, glitching. This wasn't a test. This was deletion.
A voice buzzed in—distorted, synthetic, barely human:
:: You were warned. ::
I clenched my jaw. "Then stop whispering and come say it to my face!"
There was no response.
But something shifted ahead. A pulsing column of blue light erupted from the center of the chamber—unlike the rest. It didn't vibrate with destruction but radiated calm. A safe zone?
I didn't hesitate.
I dove.
The light engulfed me, and everything froze.
[Thread Suspension Barrier Activated]
[User Status: Contained]
Contained?
The constructs circled but did not enter. They hissed, then evaporated into static.
Then she appeared.
Lyra.
Not in armor. Not as a NexTech liaison. But as something older—simpler. A white cloak. Bare feet on obsidian code. Her hair drifted upward like it remembered gravity differently.
"You found the Gate," she said. "You really made it."
"What is this place?"
"The truth." She walked toward me. "Or what's left of it."
The stillness around us deepened. Time itself seemed paused.
[System Reclassification: KaiMoren - Observer Candidate?]
My chest tightened. "Am I still a player?"
Lyra tilted her head. "You're part of the system now. Whether it accepts you... depends."
"On what?"
"What you're willing to break."
She extended her hand.
I didn't take it immediately. I looked around. The frozen walls. The lifeless data pillars. The ruins of players who came before me. Were they anomalies too? Did they resist like I did? Or had they followed the rules, and simply... vanished?
The thought gripped me. What if those fragments weren't just players? What if they were remnants of cycles—loops that failed before they even began? Names without memory. Data without context.
I knelt beside one—just a cracked fragment, shaped like a badge. It glowed faintly: [Thread_021]. I didn't know who that had been, but for some reason, a chill passed through me.
[Legacy Directive Updated: Breach Protocol Access Eligible]
[Warning: Accepting will forfeit Safe Status]
I looked at her again. Her face was calm—but her eyes burned with something deeper. Urgency? Desperation? Hope?
"What happens if I say no?"
"You'll wake up," she said. "But none of this will remember you."
I hesitated.
"And if I say yes?"
"Then you stop being a piece on the board. And start flipping it."
That was it, wasn't it? The choice that every echo before me might've faced. Most turned back. Some never had the option. Maybe I was the first to ask what came after.
I reached out and took her hand.
The light shattered.
[Breach Protocol Initiated...]