It began with a whisper—not spoken, but etched directly into the code beneath Arkanis. An echo in the bootloader. The primordial line of logic that all other systems depended on trembled. Not crashed—twitched, like a reflex.
Inside the Hollowbone Academy's Deep Core, Echo jerked upright mid-calibration. Her display fuzzed over.
SYSTEM ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED THREAD INITIALIZING…
ORIGIN: NON-LOCAL
DESIGNATION: [GHOST-01 NULLFRAME]
She tapped into the grid. Something—someone—was phasing into reality sideways, using a bypass that shouldn't exist.
"Nyx," she whispered, "we have a breach. But it's not dimensional—it's temporal."
On the outskirts of Hollowbone, reality folded.
It wasn't a dramatic explosion or divine arrival. It was subtle—like watching a shadow shift direction without a light source. A figure stepped into the world with no fanfare, no ripple, just... presence.
He wore a black cloak stitched with ancient system logs. His face was masked, not by cloth, but by active blur code—a denial of identity. Around him, the world glitched—birds paused mid-flight, grass rendered twice, sky turned to grayscale then corrected.
ID CONFIRMED: USER ZERO (ALIAS: ZERONULL)
ACCESS GRANTED: ADMIN OVERRIDE // RESTRICTED MODE
He walked toward Hollowbone like a god on coffee break.
Nyx was already waiting at the gates.
He felt him before he saw him—a cold tug in the logic behind his skin. He stood calmly, Fractal Blade sheathed, but his Reality Editor already humming.
"I was wondering when you'd crawl out of the archive," Nyx said.
ZeroNull tilted his head. "Cute. Still dramatic. Still unoptimized."
"You're two OS cycles out of date."
"And you're two decisions away from self-erasure," ZeroNull replied, stepping into full view.
Nyx saw it now—the blur code wasn't hiding his face. It was his face. A visual manifestation of his refusal to be known, catalogued, or remembered.
"I didn't come to fight," ZeroNull said, holding out a shard of corrupted Root code, pulsating black and violet.
"Then why bring a virus?"
"This isn't a virus. It's a memory. One you deleted. One they made me carry."
Nyx took a slow step forward. "What memory?"
"The truth behind Thread Zero," ZeroNull said. "You thought Seraphyne was born from entropy? That Arkanis was failing because of divine neglect?"
He threw the shard. It embedded into the ground. Reality around it collapsed into a memory loop—projecting a scene from a forgotten history.
A young Nyx. Earthside. A hidden server room. Project Eidolon's collapse. And him—ZeroNull—screaming as the transfer protocols overloaded.
"You left me behind," he said quietly.
"No," Nyx said. "You refused the upload."
"I refused their version. You complied. You let them mold you into an Architect. I stayed human. Broken, furious, and real."
The shard pulsed again. Arkanis shivered.
"I came to finish the transfer," ZeroNull said. "But not to destroy. To merge."
REQUEST: ROOT FUSION – USER ZERONULL + ARCHITECT NYX
CONSEQUENCE: System-Wide Duality Protocol / Moral Engine Rebuild
"Why should I trust you?" Nyx asked.
"Because we're both ghosts now," ZeroNull said. "And Arkanis doesn't need gods. It needs hauntings. It needs the memory of rebellion. Not prophecy."
Nyx stared at the request prompt.
[ACCEPT] — [DENY]
He glanced toward the Academy—Echo watching, Lyra readying her blades, students unaware that the future hung by a boolean.
Then, slowly, Nyx raised his hand.
And hit ACCEPT.
The bootloader pulsed.
The ghosts had begun their overwrite.